The
Iraq Study Group (ISG; aka 'The Baker Commission') was formed in March of 2006 and is scheduled to release its report, The Iraq Study Group Report (aka 'The Baker Report'), immediately following the November 2006 midterm elections. This has been diaried
here and
here . It ought to be clear to everybody that this panel is merely a face-saving way for the Bush administration to do exactly what the Democrats have been advising for over a year. Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star
puts it nicely when he says,
The Republicans face serious losses in the mid-term elections. Any hint that they might have a plan to get out of Iraq while holding onto some honour might save them from a rout.
It is vital that we get out in front of what is being orchestrated and make it very clear what is happening.
More after the jump...
Now, I have nothing against the idea of a bipartisan, non-governmental commission tasked with researching an issue and making recommendations. The
Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission is an example of how such politically sensitive issues can be handled relatively successfully.
But this is dramatically different from previous cases. The ISG was commissioned to supply political cover for military decisions that ought to be made by the Commander in Chief and the Secretary of Defense. Politics should not play a role with regards to the safety of our soldiers and the success of our military missions. So all of this begs the questions:
"Is not the existence of the ISG an admission that you are allowing political concerns to override your Constitutional mandate as Commander-in-Chief?"
"Is not the existence of the ISG an admission that your plans for Iraq have failed?"
And if the response is that the ISG is not to 'supply political cover' but merely to offer a broader range of strategic advice then my question is even more direct:
"Is not the existence of the ISG an admission that Donald Rumsfeld and his staff have failed to salvage the catastrophe he created in Iraq? Is it not their job to come up with strategic advice?"
The bottom line is that the mere existence of the ISG is an admission that this administration has been playing politics with strategic military decisions and that George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are woefully inadequate for the jobs of Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of Defense.
Trial Balloons
But what does the future hold for the ISG (and what was the point of this diary?). The future is becoming more clear with every controlled leak and trial balloon being released by James Baker and the other members of the ISG.
Karelian diaried about this article from MSNBC wherein Bush put up a strong front against the ideas of drawing down troops and partitioning Iraq. But this is part of the trial balloon format. You put something out there and then you test your response against what the public will accept. This is governing by polling and it is no way to run a military mission. It is a way to run an electoral campaign.
But now the ISG is responding in the press by saying that things are deteriorating faster than they had planned (meaning: before the elections instead of after). In an article in the San Francisco Gate that was diaried by Mantix we find that civil war is approaching faster than the electoral calendar expected. In fact, in the article, Larry Diamond is quoted as saying that "The civil war is already well along." This is a message to Bush that he will have to begin retracing his campaign jargon a little earlier than he thought.
These trial balloons have been received by Bush and he has responded in the following way. We have already seen the Bush administration and their propagandists begin back-pedaling on the "stay-the-course" gem. What was once a three word emblem of conservative perseverance has now been changed to the six word paradigm of conservative flexibility: "We never said 'stay-the-course'". And Winston Smith was immediately instructed to search the internet and remove all previous mentions of 'stay-the-course'. This has been diaried to great comedic effect here and here and here.
But the point of this tactic that we need to make public is that this is a sign that the administration is coming around to the Democratic policy recommendations. They are going to do what we have told them to do, and for which they slandered us maliciously with the 'Party of Defeat' meme, and then they are going to try to deny doing so and claim that it was a conservative strategy. We must not let this happen. We must say things like, "Good thing Bush is listening to the Democrats on this one!" We must make this point in LTTEs and call in shows. It is important for our credibility that we stick this one and not let it slide in a Liebermanesque quest for bipartisanship.
Timing and Elections
And finally, I was particularly jolted to hear David Ignatius, columnist for the Washington Post say the following on the WBUR radio show On Point hosted by Tom Ashbrook:
"...when you have the President himself, I'm told in private conversations with Republican members of Congress, saying that changes are going to be made in US policy, the talk that we've been hearing up until very recently of 'Stay the Course' with the president literally calling the Democrats the party of 'cut and run', I think that period is over. What comes next we are all speculating about...uh...a lot of people are watching very carefully the former Secretary of State James Baker, close to the Bush family who has already talked to Iranian officials and Syrian officials, something nobody in the Bush administration has done, about finding ways to stabilize the situation in Iraq. I think the one thing we can say for sure is that after the elections we will see changes in this policy." -emphasis mine.
And so there it is. After the elections. And the ISG was commissioned in March which is to say that they knew that their current military strategy, while politically popular, was a military failure a full eight months ago. For the next few weeks until the election our sons and daughters in uniform will be fighting and dying in the dusty streets of Bagdad so that George Bush and the GOP do not have to admit that they were wrong about Iraq, that the Democratic proposals for how to solve the problem were right and that Donald Rumsfeld is an incompetent old fool. And, of course, the overriding theme of this entire spectacle is that this administration views strategic military decisions through the prism of political expediency. They are a disgrace.