Post #51

Subject: … on the IraqStudyGroup

Pat Buchanan, http://www.theamericancause.org/ , wrote the following on December 12, 2006. My responses and additions – in [brackets]….

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The IraqStudyGroup report is less about saving Iraq than about saving the U.S. establishment from being held responsible for the worst strategic blunder in U.S. history. In urging intensified training of the Iraqi army and an expedited withdrawal, the Baker Commission is laying down the predicate for the case that America did not lose this war, Iraqis lost their own war.

[Yes. And in a similar way, George W. Bush and his “New Way Forward” to be announced tomorrow night is just an effort to hand off responsibility for his mess to the next President. Shame on Bush for his willingness to sacrificc more American lives for his own legacy.]

The "realists" think Iraq is a lost cause, that Americans will not pay the price in blood, treasure and years to win it. And in this conviction the Baker Commission may be right.

[Uh, Iraq IS a lost cause – the reality IS it was never winnable. Bush has made a mistake. The important thing now is to manage the defeat. Adding troops is certainly not the answer.]

The neocons are also preparing their defense before the bar of history. Realizing the Baker Commission recommendations point to slow-motion defeat, they are savaging Baker and calling for tens of thousands more U.S. troops to be sent to Baghdad and a new strategy of victory, no matter how much it costs or how long it takes. If Bush fails to follow their counsel, they will then say: "It was not our fault. It was Bush’s rejection of our advice that lost the war."

[Good Lord. Just hold on for two more years, scare the Democrats into not ending this mess, then the neo-cons can have “McCain’s War” – and we can lose another four years in the War on Terror. As I said in Post #25, “The War on Terror is a race against time – we need to convince those who want to do us harm that there is a better way BEFORE they do us harm. We need to be smarter.” No more “bombs away,” neo-nuts! :p]

The Democratic establishment, which gave Bush a blank check to take us to war, "to get the issue out of the way" before the midterms in 2002, is also preparing its defense of the role it played in plunging us into Mesopotamia, the "if-only-we-had-known" defense. "If only we had known then what we know now — that there was no hard evidence of WMD, no hard evidence of al-Qaida ties to Saddam Hussein — we would never have voted for the war." "If only we had known how incompetent Rumsfeld’s Pentagon would be in managing the war, we would never have given Bush a green light." The Democrats’ defense begs these questions: Why didn’t you know? Why didn’t you find out? Why didn’t you do your constitutional duty and refuse the president the power to go to war until he had convinced you that only war could spare the republic worse horrors?

[Amen. The obvious answer: Political cowardice. That’s why I’m having a hard time wrapping my arms around Hillary’s coronation in ’08 – on the most important issue of our time, she was on the wrong side. And still is.]

What the Baker Commission is ultimately all about is providing political cover for a bipartisan retreat from Iraq.

[Amen, again. Of course, Bush’s “New Way Forward” is just about political cover for himself.]

For what was the one issue the Iraq Study Group would not and will not address? The crucial question: Was the Iraq war a blunder to begin with? The commission seeks at all costs to avoid the judgment of the nation that today’s establishment that took us into Iraq served America as badly as the Best and Brightest who marched an earlier generation into Vietnam, then cut and ran and called it "Nixon’s War."

The media are celebrating the ISG for its "bipartisanship" and the "consensus" achieved. But was it not a bipartisan consensus that produced the war: a Democratic Senate failing in its duty to ascertain the necessity of a war to be launched by a Republican president?

The people who were right about Iraq were those who rejected bipartisanship to warn that invading Iraq was an unnecessary, unwise and, yes, even an unjust war that would inflame the Arab and Islamic world against us. Unsurprisingly, this group had no representative on the Baker-Hamilton Commission.

[Unsurprising, too, still, deaf ears in Washington….]