IRAQ STUDY GROUP REPORT:
MEET THE NEW BOSS, SAME AS THE OLD BOSS

From the American Prospect courtesy of Eschaton:

No Middle Ground

The trouble is that the Iraq Study Group is ultimately providing false hope for an extended war. Its assessment is appropriately bleak. For example, "Key Shia and Kurdish leaders," the commission finds, "have little commitment to national reconciliation." Now, given that these leaders comprise the Iraqi government, one might think that would lead to the conclusion that Iraq is doomed to an intensifying sectarian conflict, and unless one believes it is in the United States' interest to pick a side in someone else's civil war, that means it's time to go home. Instead, the commission, despite its own better judgment in its report, is gearing up for what Hamilton called "one last chance at making Iraq work." It's hard to see what's responsible about this.

And

But take a closer look. First, the commission isn't actually calling for withdrawal; it's calling for a reorientation of military effort -- troops won't conduct combat missions, they'll just be helping Iraqi forces conduct them. This is new lipstick on a very old pig. Despite what the commissioners said at today's press conference, it's just a marginal tinkering with the years-old strategy of "putting an Iraqi face" on security operations.

Second, the commissioners say that we "must not make an open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of American troops deployed in Iraq." But that's exactly what the commission's recommendation entails. I asked the Iraq Study Group how many troops the training mission would require, and for how long. Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese gave the vaguest of answers, but he did say that it would necessitate "a considerable force" for logistics, training, force protection, and special operations. "We don't say specifically how long it will last," but it will require a "sustained period of time." There's a reason why the Pentagon is calling this the "Go Long" option.

Finally, it's unrealistic to suggest that with such a U.S. force in Iraq for such an indefinite timeframe, forces won't respond to insurgent or death-squad attacks if either directly fired upon or if their Iraqi counterparts aren't up to the challenge. Indeed, if U.S. troops are in a combat situation but are not positioned to respond as such, the Iraq Study Group's wishful thinking -- and the Pentagon's -- will put them in the worst of all possible situations.

Click here for the rest.

So, after trying to digest these ISG recommendations for the last couple of days, my own take is that this pretty much amounts to the Washington political establishment trying to head off some serious civil unrest over the war here in the US, more of a change in rhetoric than any actual change in policy, all for the purpose of making American voters calm down a bit over the endless killing and dying. The bottom line is that, if their suggestions are adopted, American soldiers are still in harm's way and still propping up a corrupt puppet government which does more to cause sectarian fighting than to end it: apparently, the "bipartisan" elder statesman consensus is that the US must dominate Iraq in the long run. It's like I keep saying. We'll never leave--the ability to influence oil markets, and therefore the global economy, by sitting right smack dab in the middle of petroleum central is just too much to give up on, and both Democrats and Republicans understand this.

You know, the notion that the extraordinarily weak Iraqi government is ever going to have the ability to take control of the desert nation is laughable at best, which is why it's pretty damned stupid to take seriously what these grey-headed fools have to say. Unfortunately, that seems to be exactly what both the mainstream media and politicians are doing, taking the ISG report seriously. So the whole Iraq fiasco has some cover for maybe a year or two while we wait to see if the Iraqi government can get it together. But I can tell you right now that it won't.

I suppose by then we'll have to convene another panel of grey-headed elder statesmen to cobble together some new rhetorical bullshit to keep us there for a few more years. Man, this shit sickens me.

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