The War in Iraq: Who Wants or Needs Another Study?

Without acknowledging the universal truth -- that is that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have failed -- President Bush, in April 2006, commissioned the Iraq Study Group (ISG) to examine war policies and make recommendations.

The bipartisan panel, cochaired by James Baker, former secretary of state to former president George Herbert Walker Bush and former congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), is a blue-ribbon collection of Washington insiders. Not one single member of the ISG opposed the war in Iraq.

Just a few days before the ISG issued their much-anticipated report, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq exceeded the length of time it took to win World War II. On the day the ISG presented its 142-page report to President Bush, his cabinet, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the American people, 70 Iraqis were killed along with 10 American soldiers.

On the very same day, the U.S. Senate, on a 95-2 vote, confirmed former CIA Director Robert Gates as secretary of defense, replacing the disgraced Donald Rumsfeld.

The ISG report, titled "The Way Forward," is nothing less than a total repudiation of the Bush administration’s military and diplomatic approach to Iraq and the whole region. It listed 79 recommendations that can only be thought of as a U-turn away from the Bush administration’s “stay the course” policy.

President Bush told members of the ISG, “We will read this report and take these recommendations seriously.” The report gives a very tough assessment of the situation in Iraq and it brings some very interesting proposals. While the president said he would give the report serious consideration, he said he did not intend to accept all 79 recommendations. “Congress isn’t going to accept every recommendation in the report,” Mr. Bush said, “and neither will the administration.”

In a tone that almost scolded the administration, the first page of the report asserted “our leaders must be candid and forthright with the American people.” Key recommendations include withdrawing U.S. troops not specifically dedicated to the training and support mission in Iraq by the first quarter of 2008, engage in U.S. talks with Iran and Syria, and deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability.

Sen. Russ Feingold, one of the few U.S. senators who voted against the war, called the ISG report “a classic Washington compromise.” Feingold, as many others observes, believes the 2006 election was a vote to get the U.S. out of Iraq. Others have said, in effect, the ISG report keeps U.S. troops there indefinitely.

In calling the war in Iraq “grave and deteriorating,” the ISG asks the American people to support the report and accept its recommendations, while admitting doing so is “a tough sell.” In effect, the report seems to ask the American people to give Iraq and the administration “one last chance” to get it right.

Gone are the days when President Bush and war planners believe they can “bring democracy to Iraq and the Middle East.” Today, the Bush administration defines victory as “Iraq’s ability to defend itself.”

There was that one moment when I thought I heard President Bush call it “Vietnamization” but I am sure he meant "Iraqification."