Studying Iraq

The Iraq Study Group is supposed to issue a report by the end of the year, just in time for the new congress controlled by the Democrats. Nobody expects anything new in the report, just maybe a more realistic assessment of the current situation than the Bush administration is willing to give. Actually the Group includes several Bush administration people, but they are from the days of Bush the Elder. Once again, Daddy Bush has to bail out errant son.

Going into Iraq was a mistake. Many who did not initially see the error now do so with better hindsight. We don’t know for sure what Daddy Bush thought at the time his son decided to launch shock and awe, but we know he thought it was a bad idea at the time of the first Gulf War, and so did his Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney [you can listen to what Cheney said back then on the second link above]. What supposedly changed according to the son’s people was the resurrection of the Iraq WMD program, Iraq involvement with 9/11 and Saddam’s brutality. But the resurrection was a fantasy, the involvement was a lie and the brutality was the same as ever. What really changed was the Bush administration became insecure about controlling Iraqi oil and the Supreme Court gave us a juvenile President who wanted to play cowboy pilot and create a legacy as spreader of Democracy to overcome Islam.

Oil control has been achieved and a brutal dictator overthrown. Young George got to play cowboy, and after an early thrill learned that it is not as easy a game as he thought. Democracy in Iraq is an artificial American creation that seems to be deteriorating and may not survive. Physical insecurity is rampant in Iraq and the US troops are not able to quell the crime, insurgency, terror, militia power plays and religious warfare. In fact, the presence of US troops provokes much of the insecurity.

Defining victory and success in Iraq is now immaterial. The goal should be just to enable the Iraqi government to provide enough security for their people, in the eyes of Iraq and the world community, to allow American troops to withdraw. The way to do that is to require the Iraqi government to assume full responsibility for training their own troops and police on their own schedule and with the resources they need, financed by America. Let them figure it out with an Iraq Study Group made up of Iraqis who will present the program publicly to America for agreement and to the UN for consensus. If the time line is too long, America should publicly counter with a shorter time and the public negotiations to finalize the time should be submitted to the UN for consensus agreement. The agreement should include times at which Iraq would tell America to remove certain numbers of troops, not to be later replaced or increased.

Whether America will keep some troops on bases in Iraq is a long term issue. Bush had huge bases built for that purpose, but it would be best to turn those bases over to Iraq and withdraw American troops out of Iraq, some to remain in the middle east a while and most to come home. Security of Iraq against attack by a foreign nation should be provided by the UN and other multi-national entities, not by America or an American dominated token coalition.