WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 — A draft report on strategies for Iraq, which will be debated here by a bipartisan commission beginning Monday, urges an aggressive regional diplomatic initiative that includes direct talks with Iran and Syria but sets no timetables for a military withdrawal, according to officials who have seen all or parts of the document.
While the diplomatic strategy appears likely to be accepted, with some amendments, by the 10-member Iraq Study Group, members of the commission and outsiders involved in its work said they expected a potentially divisive debate about timetables for beginning an American withdrawal.
In interviews, several officials said announcing a major withdrawal was the only way to persuade the government of Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to focus on creating an effective Iraqi military force.
Several commission members, including some Democrats, are discussing proposals that call for a declaration that within a specified period of time, perhaps as short as a year, a significant number of American troops should be withdrawn, regardless of whether the Iraqi government’s forces are declared ready to defend the country.
Among the ideas are embedding far more American training teams into Iraqi military units in a last-ditch improvement effort. While numbers are still approximate, phased withdrawal of combat troops over the next year would leave 70,000 to 80,000 American troops in the country, compared with about 150,000 now.
Now there are some interesting details here regarding the Iraq Study Group's report. The big news here is that the study group is recommending a combination of negotiations with Syria and Iran--possibly to help reduce the level of ethnic violence raging in Iraq--along with a phased withdrawal of American troops while handing over greater security responsibilities to the Iraqi government, whether they are ready or not. In one sense, this does sound like the old Vietnamization strategy, or Nixon Doctrine, which was adopted by the Nixon administration as a means to end the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. And this doesn't surprise me. If Vietnamization worked in pulling American troops out of Vietnam, then why not adopt the strategy to pull American troops out of Iraq?
But now look at this initial response by the Bush White House on the Iraq Study Group's report:
President Bush is not bound by the commission’s recommendations, and during a trip to Southeast Asia that ended just before Thanksgiving, he made it clear that he would also give considerable weight to studies under way by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his own National Security Council.
Last Monday in Bogor, Indonesia, he said he planned to make no decisions on troop increases or decreases “until I hear from a variety of sources, including our own United States military.”
But privately, administration officials seem deeply concerned about the weight of the findings of the Baker-Hamilton commission.
“I think there is fear that anything they say will seem like they are etched in stone tablets,” said a senior American diplomat. “It’s going to be hard for the president to argue that a group this distinguished, and this bipartisan, has got it wrong.”
[....]
Mr. Bush spent 90 minutes with commission members in a closed session at the White House two weeks ago “essentially arguing why we should embrace what amounts to a ‘stay the course’ strategy,” said one commission official who was present.
Officials said that the draft of the section on diplomatic strategy, which was heavily influenced by Mr. Baker, seemed to reflect his public criticism of the administration for its unwillingness to talk with nations like Iran and Syria.
But senior administration officials, including Stephen J. Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, have expressed skepticism that either of those nations would go along, especially while Iran is locked in a confrontation with the United States over its nuclear program. “Talking isn’t a strategy,” he said in an interview in October.
There is controversy brewing over this report. First, President Bush is not bound by the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group's report--he can basically shove the report in the trash if he doesn't like it. And there are some major differences between the Bush administration and the Iraq Study Group. The real big one is U.S. negotiations with Syria and Iran. Jim Baker wants the U.S. to negotiate with Syria and Iran. The Bush administration--as expressed in the Times story by National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley--is pretty much refusing to engage in such talks. You could say that there is a serious philosophical difference with Jim Baker's real politik's approach clashing with the Bush administration's neoconservativism. Any U.S. negotiations with Syria and Iran would rip to shreds the Bush administration's arguments that both Syria and Iran have been aiding terrorists--including Iraqi insurgents. The Iraq Study Group's recommendation for the U.S. to negotiate with Syria and Iraq would also discredit and destroy the PNAC neocon's ambitions for U.S. military imperialism in the Middle East, since both Syria and Iran would certainly demand the removal of U.S. troops out of Iraq--say goodbye to those permanent U.S. bases that have already been constructed there.
The real danger for the Bush administration here is that the Iraq Study Group's recommendations could become "etched in stone tablets," thus forcing the administration to accept policy changes that are unacceptable to the neocons, but may have support from the American public. Thus, we have the president arguing with the Iraq Study Group for 90 minutes about how the U.S. should continue his "stay the course" strategy. In fact, to further complicate the messy debate going on in Washington, President Bush has also initiated study groups on the Iraq problem by both the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council. You can bet that the National Security Council will adopt the Bush White House talking points on Iraq, when they release their study group findings. The Joint Chiefs study group might take a more muddled approach of maintaining the status quo while increasing the training of Iraqi security forces. Both of these reports could take away the initiative that the Iraq Study Group may have in influencing a change of U.S. policy towards Iraq.
Then there is this second New York Times story, titled In Need of New Moves, but in Which Direction:
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 — President Bush leaves for Europe on Monday uncertain of the Washington he will return to, or even his place in it.
Certainly the pressure is on for Mr. Bush to right a presidency mired in low poll ratings, beset by an unpopular war and claiming few domestic accomplishments in his second term. And the moment would seem to call for something drastic.
But official Washington remains unsure of which way he may go in trying to salvage his legacy. Will he continue on as if nothing has changed, pursuing conservative policies he believes history will smile upon later, even if it means getting nothing past a Democratic Congress here and now? Or will he move to the political center and seek deals with Democrats that will sour conservatives but leave him with a longer list of accomplishments?
As his top aides meet to plan their first moves of the new year with a new Congress — focusing acutely on his State of the Union address — Mr. Bush seems to be hemmed in from both sides.
For all of their talk about bipartisanship, the newly elected Democrats still have fresh memories of six years of presidential attacks painting them as “wrong on taxes” and “weak on defense.” Already they are talking about investigations into the administration’s domestic wiretapping and terrorist detainee programs and the vice president’s consultations with energy officials, among other things.
The president’s own party remains angry with him for his handling of the war, the delayed ouster of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the low presidential approval ratings that contributed to this fall’s Republican wipeout.
Senior Republican staff members in Congress have voiced the fear that Mr. Bush will now put his legacy over the party’s immediate future, and take his cues from President Bill Clinton by “triangulating” when opportunity strikes — that is, making deals with Democrats, over Republican objections, on immigration, health care or Social Security.
“While the White House is trying to define their legacy, they’ll try to triangulate us,” said one senior Republican leadership aide who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “There is no sense of wanting to defend the Bush administration right now.”
What we have here is a president who has suddenly become concerned with "his legacy," with two years left in his term. President Bush has angered the Democrats with his shoving an extreme conservative agenda down the castrated Democrats throats for the past six years while attacking them with some of the harshest language ever. The Republicans are certainly angry with President Bush regarding his mis-handling of the Iraq war and the ouster of Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld. And now the Republicans in Congress fear that President Bush will start putting his own "legacy" interests above that of the Republican Party by cutting deals with the Democrats on policy issues.
So what does this story have to do with the Iraq Study Group? The dominating issue right now is the war in Iraq. The problem for President Bush here is that he has no room for negotiation regarding Iraq. Over the past month, the war has deteriorated so badly that Great Britain will start reducing its troops over the next year. Poland and Italy will also withdrawal their remaining troops as well. Sectarian violence has been exploding throughout Iraq as Sunnis and Shiites battle each other in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. Both MSNBC News and the Los Angeles Times are labeling Iraq as a "civil war." In fact, the events taking place in Iraq right now may have rendered the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group obsolete. The fast moving events of violence and anarchy that are taking place in Iraq have paralyzed this Bush administration almost to the point of helplessness. That is scary, because if President Bush is so constrained by the events of Iraq, there is a possibility that he may just impulsively lash out--against the Democrats, the Iranians, the Syrians, Jim Baker, the "liberal media," or whomever else. There certainly could be something drastic in the works.
But also in this story, the Republican Party has sealed its fate with President Bush in supporting the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Now that the Bush administration has found itself sunk into the disaster of Iraq, so has the Republican Party--and no talk of triangulation or Bush cutting deals with the Democrats on minimum wage or immigration is going to save the Republicans from Iraq. Iraq is the issue that will dominate the American political scene for the next two years, just as it will dominate George Bush's legacy as president. The problem here is that Iraq requires extreme, drastic changes for both President Bush and the Republicans in Congress. These are changes that perhaps both the president and the Republicans do not have the willingness to accept. The big question for the Republicans will be if they are willing to use the findings in the Iraq Study Group to force President Bush to change his Iraq policy so that the United States can extricate itself out of Iraq, or are the Republicans willing to "stay the course" and risk a major White House defeat in 2008?
No comments:
Post a Comment