Iraq Study Group: Success Through Failure

The first thing I noticed about the Iraq Study Group's report was the title of its policy prescriptions: The Way Forward. I couldn't help but smile when I saw it. "The way forward?" I thought. "Come on, what we're looking for is a way out!"

I know, I know, that makes me a "surrender monkey," too. Look, probably the heart of the matter here is that there are people who continue to believe Iraq is still salvageable, and that it is within US power to salvage it, on the one hand; and people -- like me -- who believe Iraq is past saving and that we therefore need to change our objectives to damage control. A shame the debate can't be conducted in a way that's respectful of the other side's motives -- except here on HOTM, of course... ;-)

Okay, substance. The meat of the report is in its diplomacy prescriptions: engage Iran and Syria and create something called the Iraq International Support Group, which would "include all countries that border
Iraq as well as other key countries in the region and the world."

My first reaction to all this was, are you kidding? Ain't gonna happen. Too many competing interests, too many countervailing motives. And even if you could put something like this together, what good would it do? Iran probably has some influence over various Iraqi Shiite factions, but the insurgency itself is still primarily Sunni. And even if Iran was restraining Iraqi Shiites from retaliating for Sunni provocations, it seems to have lost that capacity after the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra last February. And even if Iran had the continued capacity to tamp down Shiite violence in a material way, what could we offer the mullahs that would give them incentive to do so?

Now Syria. Suppose we really could "flip" Assad from the Iranian embrace and get him to back our goals in Iraq. How much impact would Syrian cooperation have? You'd have to believe that a significant amount of financial and material support for Iraqi violence is coming from Syria. That is, but for Syrian misbehavior, things in Iraq would be markedly better. I might be wrong, but that's not my read.

But wait, there's still more: The ISG also wants a reenergized Israeli/Palestinian peace process. At this point I was thinking, what do Israel and Palestine have to do with Sunnis and Shiites killing each other in Iraq? And if we can't get out of Iraq until the Israelis and Palestinians are at peace, we're going to be there for a very long time. I was tempted to dismiss the Report as a fantasy.

But then I looked at it on another level. And I think I see what the ISG is really up to.

My guess is, they're "enlarging the problem," as it's known in some policy circles. By engaging other countries on the solution for Iraq, we make them part of the problem of Iraq. Then, when the problem turns out to be unsolvable, we are no longer solely to blame. The narrative then becomes, "The whole middle east -- in the form of the Iraq International Support Group -- tried to fix Iraq, to no avail. It's not working, and we don't want to participate in this larger process anymore. So we're leaving -- not so much leaving Iraq, as leaving this useless regional forum. The failure was everyone's, and it's your problem now."

Remember, the Report also calls for substantial US troop reductions by 2008. Why 2008? Well, there's this presidential election then... and two years is about enough for all that aggressive regional diplomacy to prove itself useless so we can use it as cover to leave.

The ISG has also built in some solid CYA provisions. The Report's recommendations have to be enacted in toto, Baker and Hamilton have argued, otherwise none of it will work. They know no commission report in the history of the Republic has been accepted in toto, and that this one won't be, either. When Iraq disintegrates, therefore, they can say, "Not our fault. We told the president the only chance he had was if he adopted the whole report -- and he didn't."

Bottom line: Taken at face value, the Report's policy recommendations are useless -- practically irrelevant -- for quelling Iraqi violence. But quelling Iraqi violence was never what the ISG set out to do. Despite the silly "way forward" rhetoric, the real purpose of the ISG was to find us a way out -- and a year or two of the failed diplomacy it recommends has as good a chance of that as anything.