I’ve taken great interest in the debate that has transpired here over the past few days regarding the ISG report. I don’t pretend to have the magic answer to this fiasco. However, I’d like to simply mention a few of my thoughts in response to the recent debate.

No Cherry Picking
I think that it’s important to look at a renewed effort in the Israeli-Palestine issue as a necessary, but not sufficient condition. The same goes for talking with Syria and Iran, and many of the other recommendations of the ISG report. Hence, the argument made by the report’s authors that you can’t cherry pick recommendations. None of the recommendations are a silver bullet. Many of them have serious drawbacks and there is much to criticize. Even if we follow the recommendations of the report, a positive outcome is not guaranteed. However, I do believe that taken as a whole the recommendations have a better chance of an acceptable outcome than many of the other options out there.

Troop withdrawal
David and Chris give the impression that they are in support of a more rapid withdrawal or at least a more specific timetable. In my mind the ISG came about as close as one can come to a timetable without using those exact words. The report indictated that combat troops should leave by early 2008. I’m not sure what the correct timetable should be. However, I think that the ISG report makes a strong argument that a premature withdrawal could be disastrous. It is true that American troops on the ground both exacerbate conflict, while at the same time preventing conflict. Which of these forces wins out at different levels of US troop commitments, I’m not sure. Our goal should be to pull out in a way that ensures that a mass slaughter does not happen. There may not be a way to do this. However, I’ve yet to hear a compelling argument from those who advocate an immediate withdrawal, as to how a massive genocide would be prevented. If there’s a way to do it and withdraw quickly, I’m anxious to hear what that is. (more…)

Ben Rhodes and David Isenberg have matched wits on the ISG Report (here, here, and here), and Brian Vogt has offered some great observations as well. This debate might seem tiresome, but there are over 140,000 American servicemen and women in Iraq, plus tens of thousands more serving in other capacities (including foreign service officers and contractors). We are spending $8 billion per month, and the costs in lives lost and disrupted cannot be measured. Iraq is the defining foreign policy challenge of our time. It hangs over every other policy that we might wish to see enacted or changed. We cannot escape this debate. It cries out for bipartisanship, the very principle on which PSA is founded, and it seems appropriate that we would engage the debate right here, even at the risk of overdoing it a bit.

I would like very much to believe that the ISG has managed to do what countless other task forces, committees, and talking-head sessions have failed to do: craft a new policy toward Iraq that can reduce the costs and risks to all Americans, but especially those in Iraq. Alas, I’m generally with David: the ISG failed, and by offering what appears on the surface to be a reasonable strategy, they have dealt a serious setback to what, in my opinion, is the only policy that has a reasonable chance of protecting U.S. national security interests over the long term: a withdrawal of U.S. troops. 

Before I get to that, I want to pick up on three smaller points that David and Ben have debated.

I agree with Ben on engagement with Iran and Syria, and largely for the reasons that he lays out (Brian Vogt picked up on these as well). David implies that he is not opposed to talking to either Iran or Syria, and both men seem to agree that the current policy of NOT talking has produced nothing of value. But David is ultimately dismissive because we’ve “been there, done that.”

Actually, no, we haven’t. The key is in framing the basis for this cooperation. If we believe that the Iranians and the Syrians are likely to help us out of the goodness of their hearts, then we are going to be disappointed. On the other hand, Iran does not want to see its dominant position in the region (made possible by the removal of two of its major rivals, the Taliban to the east, and Saddam Hussein to the west) undermined by a civil war in Iraq that spills over the borders. The same applies to Syria. Both countries are perfectly willing to see the United States stuck in a quagmire in Iraq; they would be far less sanguine if they believed that we were going to extricate ourselves from the mess, and that the ensuing chaos would directly threaten them. Unfortunately, by eschewing a withdrawal strategy, the ISG removed this source of leverage.

With respect to the Kurds, it is certainly true that the Kurds have been reliable allies, as David notes, but that, in and of itself, is no reason to shape policy in Iraq in a manner that pleases them. And, lets be clear, they are not pleased. (See Masrour Barzani in yesterday’s Washington Post.) But here I also disagree with Ben: picking a fight with the Kurds over the twin issues of Kirkuk and the distribution of oil revenues is not likely to seriously increase our prospects for success in Iraq, because the Kurds are not likely to budge on either point. Put another way, it might be true that political reconciliation is more likely if the Kurds compromise, but it might be true that political reconciliation is more likely if the Shiite militias stop rounding up, torturing and killing Sunni men. It might be true that I’d be happier if I won the lottery. None of those three things are likely to happen, and we make a serious mistake if we base our policy on a set of unlikely occurrences that are entirely beyond our control.  

This leads to my third critique. Ben urges us to read the “other” recommendations, “many of which drew extremely broad support from people we talked to, and most of which need to be done urgently.” In his subsequent post, he writes “all problems in the region are interconnected — you cannot solve them by talking to your friends but not your enemies; and you cannot solve them by talking about what you want to talk about but not what others want to talk about (eg. the Arab-Israeli dispute).” But we have a big enough problem on our hands; we do not improve our prospects for extricating ourselves from Iraq if we take on a host of other tasks that, though reasonable and widely-supported on their own terms, ultimately distract us from the central mission at hand.

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Here at PSA Blog Central the powers that be have decided to encourage us bloggers to post more often to fill in the gaps, in order, so to speak, to get more bang for the buck.

So I thought it might at least be amusing, if not actually educational, to see what the establishment pundits and their guests, i.e. weekly Sunday morning talk shows are saying, since they set the news agenda for at least the next couple days.

Looking at this past weekend there is no question as to which was the most important. The winner, by a gazillion miles, was Face The Nation with Bob Schieffer. His guest was former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State Colin Powell. His topic was the Iraq Study Group report, which I wrote about last week.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, Mr. Secretary, let’s get right down to it. A lot of people are talking about and assessing the situation in Iraq. We just had the James Baker-Lee Hamilton commission say that, quote, the situation was “dire” and getting worse. What is your assessment?  (more…)

It’s safe to say that the ISG report did not make a favorable impression on David Isenberg. First, the specific assertions that were “laughable” - The “5,000 civilian contractors” reflect the number directly under the U.S. embassy. That is unclear as stated, though I don’t think it undermines the entire report. The ISG did meet extensively with Kurdish leaders. There are two recommendations that likely bother the Kurds - first, the call to delay the referendum on Kirkuk and have international mediation, and second the call to distribute future oil revenues on the basis of population. On the question of Kirkuk, the ISG heard from many sources and agreed that a referendum in the coming year would likely trigger substantial violence in and around Kirkuk between Sunni Arabs and Kurds, thus deepening and widening the sectarian strife in Iraq. On the question of oil revenues, plans to divide future revenues by region undermine the basis for a central government (since over 90% of government revenue comes from oil), and the economic place of Sunni Arabs within Iraq. In other words, the Kirkuk referendum and regionalized oil revenue distribution could plunge Iraq farther and faster into chaos, and destroy the viability of a unified Iraq. Sadly, that may happen. But the ISG did not think the U.S. should support that outcome.

On Iran and Syria, Isenberg seems to suggest that the difficulty of effectively engaging them means it is a useless recommendation. Well, is our current policy of isolating them proving to be particularly useful? What the ISG said is that all problems in the region are interconnected – you cannot solve them by talking to your friends but not your enemies; and you cannot solve them by talking about what you want to talk about but not what others want to talk about (eg. the Arab-Israeli dispute). And no, the ISG did not think that our friends had “already tried” to bring stability in Iraq. Too many have sat on the sidelines in important ways, particularly on national reconciliation.

On the “false hope” question, the word “victory” does not appear in the report. The ISG recommends a “responsible transition” out of Iraq. Isenberg wants the U.S. to “leave.”  But it is not a simple thing to immediately move over 140,000 U.S. troops and an enormous civilian and military infrastructure out of a warzone in the middle of perhaps the most important region of the world to U.S. national security interests (never mind that President Bush would never do that, and he is in charge for two more years). So the ISG recommends a whole range of steps to take to give Iraqis the best possible chance of salvaging order from chaos, chiefly – stepped up training for Iraqi forces as U.S. combat brigades withdraw; pressure on the Iraqi leadership to make political decisions that can salvage their country; a strong and sustained U.S. push for more constructive regional engagement. This won’t guarantee an end to violence in Iraq. But it offers the U.S. a responsible course to protect its interests and give Iraqis a chance at a better future as we reduce our commitment to Iraq.

Finally, the 10 ISG members were not chosen to be the 10 greatest minds on Iraq in the country – they were 10 Americans from across the political spectrum who listened to scores of experts and drew on that expetise to build a consensus. Isenberg chastises James Baker for having experience in the Middle East, and then chastices Jordan, O’Connor, Meese and Panetta for not having experience. That’s beside the point. Ultimately, it is our political leaders who must forge consensus – not our experts (and I think you’d be hard pressed to find 10 experts who could agree on what to do in Iraq – just look at any op-ed page). What the ISG did is listen to every expert they could talk to, convey in clear terms what is going on Iraq, and give American political leaders a choice: come out of your trenches and forge a consensus, or dig in and have two years of more and more polarization and a deteriorating situation in Iraq. The choice is in their hands.

In my last posting, on the day before the release of the Iraq Study Group I wrote that the report “will not offer anything useful.” I was wrong. The report, to my surprise, managed to be worse than not useful. It is, in fact, much worse than useless because, among other things, it offers false hope.

I’ll have more on that in a moment. First, let’s look at some of the more laughable assertions in the report.

Consider this assertion,” There are roughly 5,000 civilian contractors in the country.” (p. 12). A story in the Washington Post the day before the report’s release found that there are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, according to the military’s first census of the growing population of civilians there. So they were off by a factor of 20.

And for a group that was supposed to be getting and studying all sorts of reality based ground truth they managed to avoid talking to certain essential groups.  It does make you wonder exactly what they have been doing since being appointed on March 15, 2006?

In a statement released on Dec. 8 Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani said, “The report contradicts the words of Mr. James Baker, who told us by phone that the special nature of the Kurdistan Region had been taken into consideration in the report. Although we communicated the Kurdistan Regional Government’s perspective to the commission in a letter before the report was released, the commission ignored the letter and did not read it.”  

In short, his comments can be taken as confirmation that the Kurds read the report and correctly understood it to mean get screwed. Given that the Kurds are the only reliable US allies in Iraq this not exactly an example of blue ribbon thinking at its finest.

Of course, some information in the report was undeniably fascinating, in a horrific way; like being unable to take your eyes off a car wreck. For example: (more…)

I’ve spent the last nine months working for the Iraq Study Group, so I can’t offer neutral commentary on the report. In the midst of this blitz of reaction, commentary, positioning, and quick preparation of alternative reports, let me offer just a few initial thoughts that I hope don’t get lost in the shuffle:

1 – Read the “other” recommendations. The three core recommendations – shifting the primary mission of U.S. forces from combat to training and support; making support for the Iraqi government conditional on its making substantial progress toward milestones; and a new diplomatic offensive in the region – are at the center of the debate. But there are a multitude of other recommendations, many of which drew extremely broad support from people we talked to, and most of which need to be done urgently. Hamilton and Baker published an op-ed highlighting some of these other recommendations today. The New York Times had an editorial picking their favorites. I’ll be blogging about some of these in the weeks to come.

2 – Put aside those silver bullets. Too many prominent commentators have tied themselves to this silver bullet or that over the last few years. But there is no one thing that can be done in Iraq to right the situation. To take just one example, more troops (those that are available) aren’t going to stop Sunnis and Shiites from wanting to kill each other. Those who speak with bombast and clarity – who talk about the situation in Iraq like it was a football game to be won if some audible is called – are imposing a false order on to a situation with endless shades of gray.
3 – Look ahead. The ISG recommendations were not just made to address the current situation – they were made in anticipation of the dire consequences if things continue to deteriorate in Iraq. In other words, successful policy in Iraq may not make the situation “better” in a year or so – successful policy will keep the situation from getting that much worse. This is important – for instance – in looking at the diplomatic recommendations in the report. The problem is national reconciliation in Iraq. But it is also preventing wider suffering, terrorism, war, and sectarian violence across the region.

4 – You make policy in the Washington you live in, not the Washington you might hope to live in. President Bush is going to be President for the next two years. The Democrats will control Congress for the next two years. The American people are sour on the Iraq war, but they do not want to withdraw right away. If the President digs in behind some version of stay the course, he will be governing in extreme isolation. If the Democrats dig in to some version of an immediate withdrawal, they will miss an opportunity to constructively advance policy.

It is no longer contrarian to lambast those who seek bipartisan consensus or serve on commissions – indeed, the snarky takedown of bipartisanship is now even more predictable than the laudatory David Broder column. But the fact is we’re going to get nowhere on Iraq unless we can get behind some kind of consensus in this country. If it does nothing else, I hope the ISG Report provides an opportunity for people – like Gordon Smith – to come out of the trenches, to release their set of talking points on Iraq that they have been repeating like it was some kind of dogma, and to stop treating a rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq like it is nothing more than an extension of American domestic politics.

Tomorrow is the day when the fabulous Baker boys, aka The Iraq Study Group, which is supposed to be the Bush administration analogue to the group of “wise men” who advised president Johnson during the Vietnam war, officially releases their long-awaited, if not terribly useful, report and recommendations. We should not be surprised that the report will not offer anything useful. Blue-ribbon panels are one of the oldest dodges in the book. And after all, the nine men and one woman on the panel are members in good standing Washington insiders who got picked for the job because of their don’t-rock-the-boat reputations. Who knows, someday, they might want to serve on another White House commission.

The recommendations will be available online at 11 a.m. tomorrow on the sites of four organizations tied to the group: the U.S. Institute of Peace; the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University; the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and the Center for the Study of the Presidency.

Why do I write, “not terribly useful”? Because for America the war in Iraq is lost. In fact, it has been lost for quite some time. Don’t take my word for it. See what William Lind of the conservative Free Congress Foundation wrote. He starts off with this, “The war in Iraq is irredeemably lost. Neither we nor, at present, anyone else can create a new Iraqi state to replace the one our invasion destroyed.” (more…)

The Iraq Study Group’s final report isn’t out yet, but already we’ve had two big rounds of leaks and commentary about whether the report will solve all of the problems of Iraq. First, we learned that the report was likely to suggest that the U.S. talk with Iran and Syria about how to calm things down in Iraq. And then we learned today that the report would suggest a phased drawdown of American troops by the end of 2008, “predicated on the assumption that circumstances on the ground would permit it.” Even without access to the report and its reasoning, pundits leapt into action, either praising or dismissing the recommendations (for Slate‘s quick roundup on the more recent leak, click here).

Meanwhile, President Bush can’t wait for the report to influence his strategy for Iraq, either. On the one hand, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley reportedly has indicated that the U.S. strategy in Iraq will change relatively slowly, because no one is in a panic. On the other hand, President Bush dismissed talk of withdrawal after his meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: “this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever.” Sounds as if he’s trying to take options off the table — to set the agenda of the debate about the ISG report before the report gets issued.

And if the report turns out to be as equivocal as the leaks suggest, then it won’t be too hard to divert the policy reaction to the report in line with the President’s long-standing policy priorities, whether or not that’s the real intent of the report’s authors. It seems to me that President Bush has said all along that he intends to draw down the number of American combat troops in Iraq as soon as “circumstances on the ground” permit. The policy discussion needs to be about what those “permissive” conditions look like.

I don’t want to prejudge the ISG report, but it sounds as if its authors are inclined to punt on the serious questions. And they are selectively leaking to find out in advance how much outcry there will be — that is, whether they can get away with it.

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