Soccer Dad

Baker's folly

Last week I expressed my concern over the return to prominence by former Secretary of State James Baker. Using his skills as a topnotch bureaucratic infighter, Baker has been making a name for himself in the media by leaking elements of a report drafted by his Iraq Study Group. I'm not the only one who's concerned.

(Belgravia Dispatch dismisses much of the reporting about what's in the report. I don't understand his skepticism. Leaks are the way Baker accomplishes his job of getting noticed. According to this LA Times report carried in the Baltimore Sun, not all commission members were happy with Baker's extensive attention getting exercises

After the publicity blitz drew quiet grumbles from other participants, Baker canceled a breakfast with newspaper reporters and declined a request from the Los Angeles Times for an interview.

As an aside, what in the world is former Justice O'Connor doing on the panel? Does she have any recent foreign policy experience?)

Right Wing Nuthouse writes

Leaving the rest undone – training the Iraqi army and assisting the new government with some of its thornier problems having to do with militias and death squads – is almost incomprehensible. The problem, as the elites see it, is that Iraq has stressed the army, complicated our relations with our friends in the Middle East, roiled domestic consensus at home to fight the War on Terror, and been a general distraction from what they believe should be our goal – getting to the “root causes” of terrorism and solving problems like the Israeli-Palestinian question as well as the insularity and poverty of Muslim states.

But why bother with the rest if you’re not planning on finishing the job? It has been my contention for many months – spelled out most recently here - that if we are not going to attempt victory then it is immoral to ask our men and women to place themselves in harm’s way for some face saving solution. That’s the Kissinger Viet Nam formulation. I thought it stupid, wasteful and immoral at the time and still feel that way today. The only business government has in asking young men to die is in the cause of victory. Anything less is state sponsored murder. In a free society and even with an all volunteer army, national leaders should not use the lives of its young men to make geopolitical statements or “save face,” or prove how much suffering we can endure (as the Nixon-Kissinger logic went after they decided we couldn’t win).

The Sundries Shack (before making his own suggestions) scores the report on the ISG as abject surrender

Yep. Surrender to Iran and Syria, two nations who have been directly responsible for killing American soldiers in Iraq from very nearly the first days our soldiers were there. Iran has been not only supplying terrorists in Iraq with IEDs, but has also been training terrorists in how to use them. This is not merely the opinion of the administration, it is a fact. Iran has not exactly been shy about it. The Iraqi government has been saying so for a couple years now.

And we’re going to let them decide what sort of shape we leave Iraq in when we leave it.

What a sorry waste of thousands and thousands of brave American and Iraqi lives.

The problem with the plans drawn up by the ISG now being touted by the media is not just that they call for leaving the job in Iraq undone, but also because it will empower our enemies. It's hard to see how these can be considered good outcomes.

Despite these flaw, there seems to be plenty of support for Baker's ideas, or, at least, his way of thinking.

Baker's quoted as saying that sometimes we need to talk to our enemies. That reminds me of the famous quote of the late PM Yitzchak Rabin who said that you can only make peace with your enemies. We see how well empowering Arafat worked out.

One of Baker's one time deputies, Dennis Ross, recently held forth on the op-ed pages of the Washington Post on A Plan for Iraq. Other than talking to Syria and Iran it doesn't seem much different from his former boss's.

No one in Iraq seems to want us there, but everyone is afraid to have us leave. In the meantime, everyone seems willing to sit back, to avoid tackling the tough problems and to let us carry the brunt of the fighting. That has to stop.

Clearly there should be a relationship between the effort to finally produce national reconciliation and our approach to working out an agreement on the timing of withdrawal. If the Iraqis create a real national compact, the United States can be more flexible on its timetable for withdrawal. If they fail to do so, the United States must be more demanding in negotiations on the timetable. Ultimately, if Iraqis are ready to resolve their internal political differences, to adjust to reality and to make the hard choices they face, our presence can help in the transition. But if they continue to avoid reality, our presence will simply prolong both their state of denial and ours. It is time for a change in course.

Ross spent the better part of two administrations trying to bring peace to the Middle East. The results of his handiwork were apparent this past summer when Hamas and Hezbollah launched successive attacks on Israel. It's amazing that he expects that he has any credibility to pronounce on another trouble spot.

Conventional wisdom barometer, David Ignatius, also weighs in with Beyond Coup Rumours, Options for Iraq

The second opportunity is the quasi-official mission of former secretary of state James A. Baker III, who co-chairs the Iraq Study Group launched by the U.S. Institute of Peace. Baker believes in talking to everyone, and his team recently met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem and Iran's U.N. ambassador, Javad Zarif, to discuss ideas for stabilizing Iraq. Though the Washington rumor mill has Baker recommending some form of "federalism-plus" for Iraq, I suspect he'll move in another direction. The architect of the 1991 Madrid peace conference understands that the best chance for a breakthrough that could stabilize Iraq would be part of a broader settlement of Middle East issues. That's an ambitious exit strategy, but it may also be the most realistic one.

Using the Madrid Peace Conference, as an example of successful diplomacy is curious, to say the least. It's made curiouser by the fact that Ignatius believes that it's realistic that Sunni-Shi'a violence will be quelled by "...a broader settlement of Middle East issues" (i.e. the Arab-Israeli conflict). I'm also unsure why Ignatius insists that Baker may recommend some sort of federalism for Iraq as he's been pretty emphatic about not dividing Iraq in three.

Baker is doing his best to impose his views on the Bush administration. This leads Right Wing Nuthouse to observe

Will Bush go along with anything the Baker Commission recommends? The ISG will release its report in December, after the November elections. I have no doubt that the President will find himself under enormous pressure to accept withdrawal from Iraq based on the Commission’s criteria. Although Bush has proven himself to be one of the most stubborn Presidents in recent history I doubt that he, Rumsfeld, and Cheney can hold out against the entire foreign policy and defense establishments as well as majorities in both Houses of Congress. He will have to reluctantly agree to some kind of withdrawal plan short of victory.

Baker is very respected in the media and political circles so his report will carry weight. Already newspapers are lapping up his leaks trumpeting his sensible approach to admit defeat and be reasonable with Iran and Syria. (It could be argued, though, that he helped create this mess, as it was Ambassador April Glaspie, who was serving the Baker State Department who suggested to Saddam that he could get away with making Kuwait the 19th Iraqi province.)

By leaking it, or at least the "good parts" he is already putting political pressure on the President. Of course it's possible that he's not putting pressure on the President, but providing cover for him.

If that's the case, the implications about President Bush are damning. The ISG was formed at his behest. If he uses its report in a few months time as a basis for drawing down American troops from Iraq, he won't just be undermining Iraq and American interests in Iraq. He would be pulling the rug out from all of his political allies. Baker's leaks before the election may turn out to be worse for the Republicans than the Foley scandal. Even now, in Maryland, Rep. Cardin isn't running against Lt. Gov. Steele on the basis of Steele's part in the Ehrlich administration but running against him as a proxy for the Bush administration's policy in Iraq.

Hopefully the point of the ISG wasn't to provide cover but to release pressure and show that President Bush is, at least, looking at other options. If so Baker is simply returning to his much relished role of revered foreign policy wise man. I hope the ISG's report is no more than that.

Technorati tags: Iraq Study Group, James A. Baker.

Posted by SoccerDad at October 17, 2006 6:08 AM