Why I welcome the ISG report

The
ISG report,
released yesterday, did not urge two of the key steps that
I consider essential
if the US is to be able to undertake a troop withdrawal from Iraq that
is orderly, speedy, total, and generous.  It did not urge that President
Bush publicly specify a deadline or timetable for the completion of the US
withdrawal. And it did not urge giving the key role in sponsoring the diplomacy
required to allow this withdrawal to the U.N….  However what it did recommend
was a quantum-leap improvement over the policies still being publicly stated
by the President (and also, over what many of the congressional democrats
have been advocating.)

I consider it extremely important that this document, endorsed unanimously by
this high-level, bipartisan group, came out openly and made statements as
forthright (and true) as the following:

“The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. There is no
path that can guarantee success… Violence [in Iraq] is increasing in scope
and lethality.”(xiii)

“If current trends continue, the potential consequences are severe” (ix)

 “If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences could
be severe. A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq’s government
and a humanitarian catastrophe. Neighboring countries could intervene. Sunni-Shia
clashes could spread. Al Qaeda could win a propaganda victory and expand its
base of operations.” (xiv)

“Given the ability of Iran and Syria to influence events within Iraq and
their interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq, the United States should try to
engage them constructively.”(xv)

“The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it
deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability. There
must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive
Arab- Israeli peace on all fronts.”(xv)

“Current U.S. policy is not working, as the level of violence in Iraq is
rising and the government is not advancing national reconciliation. Making
no changes in policy would simply delay the day of reckoning at a high cost.”(p.38)

The ISG report is not perfect.  But in understanding its imperfections
(as well as its achievements) it’s important to understand what it is, and
what it is not.  What it is, is primarily a very high-level and serious
intervention inside US politics.  From that point of view, it
is barely “about” Iraq at all.  It is much more “about” this group of
senior statespeople trying to grab hold of the wheel of the ship of (the American)
state and slowly drag this lumbering great vessel away from a course that
has been– and still is, to this day– most evidently headed towards a disaster.
 A disaster for all the parties concerned: Americans, Iraqis,
the neighbors of Iraq…  And though I completely understand that it
has always been the Iraqis who have suffered the most from the terrible consequences
of the actions undertaken inside their country by the US military, still, at
this point it is the US government that has the greatest capability to affect
the course of events inside Iraq; so if we want to stop the terrible bloodletting
there the first thing we (US citizens and others) need to do is do
everything in our capacity to change the policies that have until been blindly
pursued by the Bush administration.

Of course, if we had anything like a robust parliamentary system here in
the US, or at the very least a functioning multi-party system, then we could
have expected the kinds of recommendation now being made by the ISG to have
been advocated very forcefully throughout the past 18 months or more by
the opposition party.  But we don’t.  We have had– and still,
until the inauguration of the new Congress will continue to have– a completely
sclerotic and dysfunctional one-party system.  And what’s more,
even once the Democrats come in as the majority party in both Houses of Congress
on January 1, we can know that they won’t be much better than the Republicans
on such key aspects of the policy towards Iraq as the need for diplomacy with powers like Iran and Syria; the need for urgent,  even-handed
engagement in Israeli-Arab peacemaking; or even on troop levels, etc…  So
this is what we have had instead: a high-level, “senior statespeoples’ group” convened
back in March at the initiative of a generally quiet Republican Conghressman
from Northern Virginia called Frank Wolf, who had been shocked by what he
saw in Iraq when he made his third post-invasion visit to the country in September
2005.

For my part, of course I’m disappointed that the ISG didn’t go that important
bit further and endorse both a much stronger role for the UN, and the announcement
of a fixed timetable for the US troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Interestingly,
this
report in today’s WaPo tells us that the most serious threat to the unanimity
that marked the group’s final position came precisely over the deadline issue.
 The WaPo reporters cite unnamed “insiders” as saying that ISG member
Bill Perry– a Clinton-era Defense Secretary– had threatened not to sign off on the final
document unless it specified such a deadline.  But–

Former secretary of state James A. Baker III resisted a firm
date, wanting to leave that to the president.

“I’m not going to sign anything that is going to paper over the problem,”
Perry said.

“Well, if that’s the case, that’s the case,” Baker replied.

In the end, though, Baker and Perry walked off together to settle their
differences rather than let them split the commission. With suggestions from
other members, they crafted careful language that they both could support,
a recommendation to pull out nearly all U.S. combat units by early 2008 —
a goal, not a timetable, but a date nonetheless.

So yes, I’m a bit disappointed.  But the much larger point here is
that the ISG has spelled out clearly that there is no possibility of a military
“victory” in Iraq, and that the US’s continued engagement there is inflicting
serious, continuing damage on our citizenry’s interests. (This is, of course,
the classic definition of a “quagmire”.)  Therefore, they rightly conclude
that the administration has to find a way to get the US troops out of the
quagmire that Iraq has become.  And as cool realists capable of
reading and understanding maps (which perhaps our president is not), they all
understand quite fully that no such withdrawal can be contemplated without also having a plan to win the approval of major Iraqi neighbors as Iran, Turkey, Syria,
and Saudi Arabia to the withdrawal plan.

Hence the need for negotiations…

The word “negotiate” is crucial there, and it frames the entire way this
report is constructed.  Namely, that being the (Clausewitz-informed)
realists that most of these people are, they recognize that you have to
get the broad political approach defined first; and only subsequently,
within the parameters established through the necessary political negotiations
at both the regional and the intra-Iraqi levels, can you even start to define
things like the military “mission”, orthe strategies or tactics to be pursued
by the US forces.

Part I of the report presents the group’s “Assessment”, most of which covers
the situation inside Iraq.  Part II then presents “The Way Forward–
A New Approach”, and at this point the emphasis shifts significantly.  Here,
the first subsection is the one on  “The External Approach: Building
an International Consensus”, and only after that  is there a subsection
on “The Internal Approach: Helpiong Iraqis Help Themselves”.  

The no fewer than 79 policy recommendations that are incorporated into Part II are also presented
in that same order… And helpfully so, in my view. Starting right here:

RECOMMENDATION 1: The United States, working with the Iraqi
government, should launch the comprehensive New Diplomatic Offensive to deal
with the problems of Iraq and of the region. This new diplomatic
offensive should be launched before December 31, 2006.

RECOMMENDATION 2: The goals of the diplomatic offensive as it
relates to regional players should be to:

i. Support the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq.
ii. Stop destabilizing interventions and actions by Iraq’s neighbors.
iii. Secure Iraq’s borders, including the use of joint patrols
with neighboring countries.
iv. Prevent the expansion of the instability and conflict beyond
Iraq’s borders…

Note the extremely speedy timeline urged there.  I suppose that is
neither accidental nor merely hortatory.  I imagine that this upcoming
December 31 was chosen– and indeed, that the ISG worked so quickly to get
its report out so soon after the November elections– precisely because there
are things it is urging the administration to do that its members know
will be a lot harder to do once there is a functioning (and Democratic-led)
Congress at work in the country… Such as, open up negotiations on the
Iraq issue with both Iran and Syria, and activate a speedy and serious, land-for-peace-based
Israeli-Arab peace negotiation.

Here are the relevant Recommendations:

RECOMMENDATION 4: As an instrument of the New Diplomatic
Offensive, an Iraq International Support Group should be organized immediately
following the launch of the New Diplomatic Offensive.

RECOMMENDATION 5: The Support Group should consist of Iraq
and all the states bordering Iraq, including Iran and Syria; the key regional
states, including Egypt and the Gulf States; the five permanent members of
the United Nations Security Council; the European Union; and, of course, Iraq
itself. Other countries—for instance, Germany, Japan and South Korea—that
might be willing to contribute to resolving political, diplomatic, and security
problems affecting Iraq could also become members.

RECOMMENDATION 6: The New Diplomatic Offensive and the work
of the Support Group should be carried out with urgency, and should be
conducted by and organized at the level of foreign minister or above. The
Secretary of State, if not the President, should lead the U.S. effort.
That effort should be both bilateral and multilateral, as circumstances
require.

…

RECOMMENDATION 9: Under the aegis of the New Diplomatic Offensive and
the Support Group, the United States should engage directly with Iran and
Syria in order to try to obtain their commitment to constructive policies
toward Iraq and other regional issues. In engaging Syria and Iran, the United
States should consider incentives, as well as disincentives, in seeking constructive
results.

RECOMMENDATION 10: The issue of Iran’s nuclear programs should continue
to be dealt with by the United Nations Security Council and its five permanent
members … plus Germany.

The speedy timing the report recommends for this ground-breaking overture
to Iran recalls the high-level intiative George Shultz undertook on the PLO-recognition
front, when he was Secretary of State in President Reagan’s completely lame-duck
administration in Novermber-December 1988.  Shultz executed a bit of
very rapid and fancy deiplomacy in that post-election period, with the goal
basically of doing what everyone recognized the US needed to do– that is,
open up some form of explicit diplomatic channel with the PLO, then in Tunis–
but which everyone also knew would be difficult to do once a Congress made
up of people weighed down with campaign promises made to well-muscled pro-Israel
donors had come into session…

And then, we have this (p.54-56) on Israeli-Arab peacemaking:

The United States will not be able to achieve its goals
in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli
conflict…

The United States does its ally Israel no favors in avoiding direct involvement
to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. For several reasons, we should act boldly:

• There is no military solution to this conflict.
• The vast majority of the Israeli body politic is tired of being a nation
perpetually at war.
• No American administration—Democratic or Republican—will ever abandon
Israel.
• Political engagement and dialogue are essential in the Arab-Israeli dispute
because it is an axiom that when the political process breaks down there will
be violence on the ground.
• The only basis on which peace can be achieved is that set forth in UN
Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and in the principle of “land for
peace.”
• The only lasting and secure peace will be a negotiated peace such as
Israel has achieved with Egypt and Jordan.

This effort would strongly support moderate Arab governments in the region,
especially the democratically elected government of Lebanon, and the Palestinian
Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas.

RECOMMENDATION 13: There must be a renewed and sustained commitment
by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts:
Lebanon and Syria, and President Bush’s June 2002 commitment to a two-state
solution for Israel and Palestine.

RECOMMENDATION 14: This effort should include—as soon as possible—the
unconditional calling and holding of meetings, under the auspices of
the United States or the Quartet (i.e., the United States, Russia, European
Union, and the United Nations), between Israel and Lebanon and Syria on the
one hand, and Israel and Palestinians (who acknowledge Israel’s right to exist)
on the other. The purpose of these meetings would be to negotiate peace as
was done at the Madrid Conference in 1991, and on two separate tracks—one
Syrian/Lebanese, and the other Palestinian.

Only after undertaking this regionwide tour d’horizon— and also making
a quick side-visit to Afghanistan–does the recommendations list start getting
into some issues more directly connected with Iraq:

RECOMMENDATION 19: The President and the leadership
of his national security team should remain in close and frequent
contact with the Iraqi leadership. These contacts must convey a clear message:
there must be action by the Iraqi government to make substantial progress
toward the achievement of milestones…

…

RECOMMENDATION 21: If the Iraqi government does not make
substantial progress toward the achievement of milestones on national reconciliation,
security, and governance, the United States should reduce its political,
military, or economic support for the Iraqi government.

RECOMMENDATION 22: The President should state that the
United States does not seek permanent military bases in Iraq. If the
Iraqi government were to request a temporary base or bases, then the U.S.
government could consider that request as it would in the case of any other
government.

RECOMMENDATION 23: The President should restate that
the United States does not seek to control Iraq’s oil.
 
RECOMMENDATION 24: The contemplated completion
dates of the end of 2006 or early 2007 for some milestones may not be
realistic. These should be completed by the first quarter of 2007.

RECOMMENDATION 25: These milestones are a good start.
The United States should consult closely with the Iraqi government and
develop additional milestones in three areas: national reconciliation,
security, and improving government services affecting the daily lives of
Iraqis. As with the current milestones, these additional milestones should
be tied to calendar dates to the fullest extent possible.

(So I guess #25 was how Bill Perry’s issue of the “timetable” finally got
finessed.)

Anyway, in that clutch of Iraq-related recommendations there are some excellent
points (22 and 23) and some not so good ones– in general, the kind of hectoring
way many of them refer to the Iraqis…

Then, recommendations 26-39 deal with steps that, respectviely, the Iraqi
government and the US government need to take to enhance “national reconciliation”
inside Iraq.  All of which, as I’ve said before, I consider to be none
of the US government’s damn’ business, though I recognize that the desire
to help to do something in this regard may be very well-motivated.

And then, as I judge to be quite appropriate, it is only subsequently, on
p.70, that the report comes to considering “A Military Strategy for Iraq.”
I want to reproduce just a portion of the text from this section (pp.72-75):

… By the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected
developments in the security situation on the
ground, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be
out of Iraq. At that time, U.S. combat forces in Iraq could be deployed only
in units embedded with Iraqi forces, in rapid-reaction and special operations
teams, and in training, equipping, advising, force protection, and search
and rescue. Intelligence and support efforts would continue. Even after the
United States has moved all combat brigades out of Iraq, we would maintain
a considerable military presence in the region, with our still significant
force in Iraq and with our powerful air, ground, and naval deployments in
Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, as well as an increased presence in Afghanistan.
These forces would be sufficiently robust to permit the United States, working
with the Iraqi government, to accomplish four missions:

• Provide political reassurance to the Iraqi government in order to avoid
its collapse and the disintegration of the country.
• Fight al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Iraq using special
operations teams.
• Train, equip, and support the Iraqi security forces.
• Deter even more destructive interference in Iraq by Syria and Iran.

Because of the importance of Iraq to our regional security goals and to
our ongoing fight against al Qaeda, we considered proposals to make a substantial
increase (100,000 to 200,000) in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. We
rejected this course because we do not believe that the needed levels
are available for a sustained deployment.  Further, adding more American
troops could conceivably worsen those aspects of the security problem that
are fed by the view that the U.S. presence is intended to be a long-term
“occupation.” We could, however, support a short-term redeployment or surge
of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the training
and equipping mission, if the U.S. commander in Iraq determines that such steps
would be effective.

We also rejected the immediate withdrawal of our troops,
because we believe that so much is at stake. [HC note: I find this “reason”
to be worryingly unspecific.  The broad judgment expressed could change
under many imaginable circumstances, though given the size of the troop deployment
no withdrawal could ever be “immediate.”]

We believe that our recommended actions will give the Iraqi Army the support
it needs to have a reasonable chance to take responsibility for Iraq’s security.
Given the ongoing deterioration in the security situation, it is urgent to
move as quickly as possible to have that security role taken over by Iraqi
security forces.

The United States should not make an open-ended commitment to keep large
numbers of American troops deployed in Iraq for three compelling reasons.

First, and most importantly, the United States faces other security dangers
in the world, and a continuing Iraqi commitment of American ground forces
at present levels will leave no reserve available to meet other contingencies.
On September 7, 2006, General James Jones, our NATO commander, called for
more troops in Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO forces are fighting a resurgence
of al Qaeda and Taliban forces. The United States should respond positively
to that request, and be prepared for other security contingencies, including
those in Iran and North Korea.

Second, the long-term commitment of American ground forces to Iraq at current
levels is adversely affecting Army readiness, with less than a third of the
Army units currently at high readiness levels. The Army is unlikely to be
able to meet the next rotation of troops in Iraq without undesirable changes
in its deployment practices. The Army is now considering breaking its compact
with the National Guard and Reserves that limits the number of years that
these citizen-soldiers can be deployed. Behind this short-term strain is
the longer-term risk that the ground forces will be impaired in ways that
will take years to reverse.

And finally, an open-ended commitment of American forces would not provide
the Iraqi government the incentive it needs to take the political actions
that give Iraq the best chance of quelling sectarian violence. In the absence
of such an incentive, the Iraqi government might continue to delay taking
those difficult actions.

While it is clear that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is moderating
the violence [HC note: it is??? oh well, I suppose they have to continue
to propagate the fiction that what the US troops now in Iraq are dying for
is, in some sense, doing some good in the world…], there is little evidence
that the longterm deployment of U.S. troops by itself has led or will lead
to fundamental improvements in the security situation. It is important
to recognize that there are no risk-free alternatives available to the United
States at this time. Reducing our combat troop commitments in Iraq, whenever
that occurs, undeniably creates risks, but leaving those forces tied down
in Iraq indefinitely creates its own set of security risks.

RECOMMENDATION 40: The United States should not make an
open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of American troops deployed in
Iraq.

RECOMMENDATION 41: The United States must make it clear
to the Iraqi government that the United States could carry out its plans,
including planned redeployments [HC note: the codeword, of course, for withdrawals],
even if Iraq does not implement its planned changes. America’s other security
needs and the future of our military cannot be made hostage to the actions
or inactions of the Iraqi government.

RECOMMENDATION 42: We should seek to complete the training
and equipping mission by the first quarter of 2008, as stated by General
George Casey on October 24, 2006.

RECOMMENDATION 43: Military priorities in Iraq must change,
with the highest priority given to the training, equipping, advising, and
support mission and to counterterrorism operations.

Well, I truly don’t believe that any of the “save-face” military “missions”
that have been suggested for the US troops currently deployed in Iraq will
do any good, or make either Iraqis or the US service members themselves any
safer.  In particular, the idea of embedding additional large numbers
of US troops even more widely inside Iraq’s chronically troubled security
forces merely increases the dispersion of US troops in a dangerous way and
will put many thousands of them into an imminent risk of being fragged by
their Iraqi advisees.  I truly don’t think it’s about to happen.

(I see that Juan Cole is, for some reason, eager to
point out to us
how closely the recommendations of the ISG track with the general tenor
of the “10-point plan” that he had proposed for the US troop deployment in
Iraq back in August 2005.  
Here
was the response I made to Cole’s plan at the time.  Headline:  “Cole:
Too little, too late, too militaristic.”  In his post today, Cole
seems to think that his plan would still be a good one– though of course we are
now 16 months of terrible catastrophe inside Iraq further on at this point…
 However, where the ISG report distinguishes itself from Juan’s plan
is in the strong and quite necessary priority it gives to politics and diplomacy.)

… And then, as the ISG’s list of recommendations gets longer and longer, it gets further and further into making micromanaging suggestions as
to how Iraqis should run every aspect of their own national administration.
Toward the end, I was expecting a recommendation regarding the size of library
cards in Najaf municipal branch libraries, although I never did find one…
 I guess what I am trying to say is that I judge most of those lower-down
recommendations to be basically unrealizable dross, inserted as window-dressing
to make some attempt to show that the ISG members do indeed care about good-governance
issues inside Iraq– even though they have quite evidently given up on the Prez’s
broad “democratization” theme, and though they know, too, that neither the
US government nor the Iraqi “government” any longer has any levers of power
to implement these good-governance measures inside Iraq.  So I really
don’t take them very seriously.  (Also, I repeat: most of these matters
are no damn business of the US of A.)

The politics that are truly central to this report are not the internal
politics of Iraq, but the internal politics of the United States.  The
first big question is, of course, “Will the President adopt this whole
set of recommendations?” ISG co-chairs Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton have
tried to stress that, in their view, the recommendations come as a single package.  Some White House flacks have said
something to the effect that the Prez will “give them due consideration– along
with the recommendations coming out of the other internal reviews being made
by various bodies and groups within the administration.”  But that really
isn’t the point.  The ISG is not merely yet another internal administration
review.  It’s an attempt by this high-level group to make the national
discussion over Iraq much broader, and much deeper. And essentially, to try to get the decision-making taken out of the hands of completely incompetent and now dysfunctional administration.

The fact that former ISG member (and long-time Jim Baker ally) Bob Gates has now been confirmed as Secretary of Defense and will shortly take over at the Pentagon from Rumsfeld makes it much more likely that the ISG’s recommendations will get the most authoritative consideration possible within the cabinet.

Over on his blog on WaPo.com at noon today, Dan Froomkin
wrote the following
about the reaction to the report from the President and his friends:

CNN commentator
Jack Cafferty
found it all “kind of sad, in a way. This morning when Mr. Bush was handed
the Iraq Study Group report, he looked old and tired, the kind of old and
tired you look after carrying a heavy load for a long time. The war in Iraq
is an unmitigated disaster and everybody knows it. The Republicans know it,
the Democrats know it, our country knows it and the rest of the world knows
it.

“And for the first time this morning, it looked like President
Bush knows it, too. There he sat, surrounded by his father’s friends, looking
absolutely lost. And despite the years of experience and wisdom represented
at that table, the report contains no magic potion to get us out of, arguably,
the biggest, deadliest, costliest and potentially most dangerous mess that
this country has been in since World War II. And President Bush caused it.

“How difficult it must be to come to terms with the
fact that you were not only wrong, but that you are becoming more and more
isolated every single day. For the first time this morning, I got the
feeling President Bush knows it’s over.”

Kenneth R. Bazinet
writes in the New York Daily News: “President Bush and some of the most vocal
Capitol Hill backers of the Iraq war from both parties gathered yesterday
[afternoon] for what an insider described as a group therapy session.

“‘Or maybe it was more like an intervention,’ said the
source, reconsidering the description [and using a term used when friends
and family members confront a drunkard with their knowldge of his condition
and urge him to get treatment… ~HC]. ‘And the President was grateful and
welcoming.’

“Bush met with a grim-looking gaggle of 14 lawmakers and
several White House staffers hours after the Iraq Study Group issued its
report urging the President to order an about-face on his Iraq strategy.
. . .

“The source said Bush didn’t try to disguise his humility
and his conciliatory gestures seemed legitimate. ‘He knows there’s a new
math in town – the Democrats have Congress,’ the insider said. . . .

And to finish off here, the always scary question of ‘Plan B.’ The main reaction
that strategic analyst Tony Cordesman had to the report was to criticize
it for not having any military fallback position (‘Plan B’).  I think
he misses the point.  There really is only one Plan B at this point,
and everyone knows it.  It would be some mixture of shuttling everyone
off the US Embassy roof in helicopters and a massive and disorderly Dunkirk.
 But even if you want to organize an emergency evacuation under those
circumstances, you’d still need to be able to negotiate it with Iran.  

The President might want to check this out on a map sometime…

So rather than wait for the inevitable further deterioration to occur and
end up organizing a humiliating, chopper-borne Dunkirk under those circumstances, don’t
you think it would be better for the administration to get out front in the
planning for an orderly withdrawal of US troops from what everyone now knows
is a terrible quagmire in Iraq?  (My ‘Namibia plan for Iraq’ does still,
imho, look like far the best option.)