Uthman: Why McCain likes the Iraq war

McCain's Mutiny

Why "Mr. Integrity" wants the war to drag on

By Allan Uthman

"I understand the polls show only 18 percent of the American people support my position. But I have to do what's right... In war, my dear friends, there's no such thing as compromise. You either win or you lose." - Senator. John McCain

Same thing with elections.

So John McCain has joined Bush in throwing a shit fit over the Iraq Study Group's recommendations. What's bothering him? Well, it's certainly not the fact that no one who participated in the ISG had the foresight to oppose the war in the first place. McCain yelled at Baker and Hamilton last week because they didn't like his proposal to increase troop strength in Iraq by a number somewhere between 20 and 40 thousand (about 100,000 short of anywhere near enough to establish a semblance of security there). But the real bone in McCain's increasingly freakish craw? If the ISG recommendations are followed—an unlikely event considering Bush's classic "whatever" dismissal—US combat troops will be out of Iraq before McCain has a chance to get his election on.

While McCain's insistence on "re-invading" Iraq and holding out for a miracle has been assailed as unrealistic except by diehard hawks and Bush loyalists, it has also been absurdly misinterpreted as the brave, bold stance of a man who puts the welfare of his nation above his own presidential aspirations. The common take is that McCain is "jeopardizing" his electability by continuing to support an unpopular war. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said McCain is "swimming against the tide." CNN's Wolf Blitzer gushed that it was "a Profiles in Courage kind of statement." Even the UK press got in on the act, with the Times of London's Bronwen Maddox arguing the report "damages" McCain, making him look "like the nation's maverick, not the next president." Anatol Lieven wrote on the Guardian's website that McCain "seems to have committed himself to a course which could very well cost him the presidency in 2008."

These opinioneers are either lying or stupid. Mainstream journalists are loath to engage in "straight talk" about McCain in deference to his heroic legend. In the simplistic, shorthand narrative of American political coverage, McCain's flashcard has the word "integrity" on it in big red letters. It's as if a few years of torture and imprisonment renders one immune to ambition, vanity or dishonesty for a lifetime. That may sound callous, but the truth is that McCain has time and again proven willing to change his tune on issues of conscience for maximum convenience, and has even admitted as much. In May, McCain told Fox News' Chris Wallace all about it:

"I've found in my life that when I do what I think is right… it always turns out in the end OK. When I do things for political expediency, which I have from time to time, it's always turned out poorly."

Asked for an example, McCain elaborated: "I went down to South Carolina and said that the flag that was flying over the state capitol, which was a Confederate flag, was—that I shouldn't be involved in it, it was a state issue. It was an act of cowardice," he said, admitting he had done it to help his chances in the South Carolina primary and seeming only to regret the act because he "lost anyway."

Early indicators of the depths to which McCain will stoop to win include his freshly appointed campaign manager, professional scumbag Terry Nelson. Nelson, Bush's national political director for his 2004 reelection campaign and an unindicted coconspirator named in Tom Delay's money-laundering indictment, is responsible for the infamous below-the-belt white bimbo ad which helped sink Harold Ford, Jr.'s senatorial campaign this year by exciting the powerful anti-miscegenation Neanderthal demographic in Tennessee. The appallingly racist ad drew so much heat that Nelson was fired by Wal-Mart, but McCain apparently has lower standards.

Further examples of McCain's shamelessness come in the form of flip-flopping: On abortion, from "I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations" in 1999 to "I do believe that it's very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should — could overturn Roe v. Wade, which would then return these decisions to the states, which I support" last month. On the gay marriage amendment, from "antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans" in 2004 to "reconfirming" his support for the same amendment to Baptist gasbag Jerry Falwell and doing two commercials for an Arizona ban. On Falwell himself, who McCain called an "agent of intolerance" only two years ago, only to eat shit at Falwell's Liberty University this year and now supporting teaching the idiot theory of Intelligent Design in schools. McCain opposed Bush's tax cuts, but has since voted to make them permanent.

The list goes on and on, making it incredibly clear to any knowledgeable observer that John McCain is just another go-along-to-get-along bullshit artist—in other words, a senator. But reporters and pundits don't just avoid the subject; they deny it with an irrational certitude. The Washington Post's Harold Meyerson personified press fealty to McCain in an Op-Ed on the 13th: "McCain's position, at least, is sincerely held, as befits a candidate whose calling card is his integrity."

That's cute, isn't it? Meyerson offers no explanation or argument as to how he determined McCain's sincerity—there is none—he just says it is so, and you're supposed to buy it. "Integrity" is the long-established meme attached to McCain, and intellectually lazy mainstream journos aren't particularly interested in breaking new rhetorical ground there.

Some more sophisticated analysts acknowledge McCain's tradition of bullshittery, suggesting that McCain's call for more troops is a savvy feint, considering the unfeasibility of such a plan in the face of depleted troop reserves. Cokie Roberts called it "a somewhat convenient position, because he can always say, 'No one tried to win the war the way that I suggested to win it.' " But I don't think so. McCain seemed genuinely pissed that the ISG didn't consider his proposal, and I think I know why.

The reality is this: John McCain is running for president. Just like any other serious candidate, everything McCain says and does for the next (and the last) two years is calculated to help him win in 2008. If McCain thought calling for an immediate withdrawal would help his chances, he'd do that. Hell, if he thought doing a choreographed dance number on the senate floor to the tune of "Love Machine" would help his poll numbers, he'd be working out the steps with Paula Abdul right now. If McCain wants the war to intensify, you can bet he thinks it's a good long-term strategy to win—the election.

The idea that the war hurts McCain is just plain dumb. Americans may regret the war, but most Republicans still hate the idea of admitting defeat. McCain's hawkishness will help him secure the GOP nomination, perhaps the most difficult obstacle between him and the White House—and the reason for all the fundamentalist footsy with Falwell. And a still-roiling quagmire in Iraq would be huge boon for McCain in a run against soft-on-slaughter Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, his most likely opponent.

McCain isn't any more responsible for the war in Iraq than Hillary, for one, so the idea of voters punishing him for supporting it makes no sense. And who do you think voters will trust to guide the country to an acceptable solution in an ever-worsening war, the celebrated 'Nam POW or the smarty-pants feminist? Hillary has and will continue to talk tough about the war, but she just can't win a bloodthirstiness contest against McCain.

By contrast, in the improbable event the Iraq mess is largely over by November 2008, McCain seems old and irrelevant rather than strong and reassuring. What issue does McCain really have without the war? Gay marriage? The ISG recommendation to pull out the troops by 2008 completely FUBARs McCain's program, and that's why he pulled the Popeye routine on Baker and Hamilton. McCain wants this stupid, pointless, sucker's war to drag on, maybe even get worse. He needs something to rescue us from. He can't win without it. And hey, what's a few thousand more corpses if it means he gets to be president?

Taibbi: Baker-Hamilton Omission Report

Iraq study group aims to change perception, not reality

Matt Taibbi

In private, some members of the Iraq Study Group have expressed concern that they could find themselves in not-quite-open confrontation with Mr. Bush. “He’s a true believer,” one participant in the group’s debates said. “Finessing the differences is not going to be easy.”

—David Sanger, The New York Times, “Idea of Rapid Withdrawal From Iraq Seems to Fade,” Dec. 1.

What a fiasco this whole Baker-Hamilton episode is, with all its attendant leaks and media manipulations — a veritable symphony of Typical Washington Bullshit. It has all the hallmarks of the pusillanimous, cover-your-ass mentality that rules our nation’s capital, where all problems are political problems and actual real emergencies never make it to the desk of anyone who matters.

The Baker-Hamilton commission, also known as the Iraq Study Group, released its long-awaited recommendations last Wednesday, but the overall gist of the panel’s labors was obvious way back in March, when President Bush first appointed the panel. Baker-Hamilton from the very start was a classic bullshit-cloud in the proud tradition of those damnable congressional “studies” we hear about from time to time, in which “bipartisan panels” are convened to much fanfare and packed off to the wilds of suburban Virginia for years of intellectually masturbatory activity — the usual solution, whenever House or Senate leaders are faced with a genuinely thorny political issue that offers no easy or obvious solutions, i.e. a problem that can’t be simply blamed on one or the other political party, but which needs actual fixing.

Whenever one of those issues pops up, Washington politicians generally find themselves at a loss. They don’t know what to do. For the vast majority of these buffoons, their expertise lies elsewhere. These guys know how to spread their legs for campaign contributors, raid the budget for redundant public works projects and worm their way onto the six o’clock news wearing a hardhat or a Cubs cap — but the average elected official knows very little about actually solving real political problems, because in most cases that’s not what got him elected.

The successful politician today is the one who can best convert the agendas of his campaign contributors into politically saleable policies. That’s the business of government today; both the legislative and the executive branch are mainly engaged in searching out and finding the acceptable mean between voter sentiment and financial interest. It’s sort of an ongoing math problem — figuring out how many voters you can afford to fuck every four years, or how much money you should be extracting, and from which sponsors, for each rape of your constituents.

That kind of negotiation, Washingtonians are great at. But there’s no upside to taking on difficult problems for most politicians, who a) usually don’t give a shit anyway, since there are few problems outside of anthrax-infected envelopes that actually affect a Washington politician’s life, and b) have few institutional remedies for effectively addressing problems even if they were so inclined, since so many backs need to be scratched en route to taking action.

And so, when faced with an unsolvable or seemingly unsolvable political conundrum, most politicians feel there’s only one thing to do. You appear onstage with your rival party’s leader, embrace him, announce that you’re going to find a “bipartisan” solution together, and then nominate a panel of rotting political corpses who will spend 18 months, a few dozen million dollars, many thousands of taxpayer-funded air miles, and about 130,000 pages of impossibly verbose text finding a way for both parties to successfully take the fork in the road and blow off the entire issue, whatever it was.

It’s important, when you nominate your panel, to dig up the oldest, saggiest, rubberiest, most used-up political whores on the Eastern seaboard to take up your cause. That way, you can be sure that the panel will know its place and not address any extraneous issues in its inquiry — like, for instance, whose fault a certain war is, or whether the whole idea of a “War on Terrorism” needs to be rethought, or whether the idea of preemptive defense as a general strategy is viable at all, or whether previously unthinkable solutions may now have to be countenanced, or whether there is anyone currently in a position of responsibility who perhaps should immediately be removed from office and hung by his balls. Your panel should contain people who are not experts or interested parties in the relevant field (since experts or interested parties might be tempted to come up with real, i.e. politically dangerous solutions), but it should contain people who are recognizable political celebrities whose names will lend weight to your whole enterprise, although not for any logical reason.

Baker-Hamilton was a classic whore-panel in every sense. None were Middle East experts. None had logged serious time in Iraq, before or after the invasion. All of them had influential friends on both sides of the aisle all over Washington, parties in the future they wanted to keep getting invites to, ambitions yet to be realized. You could assign Jim Baker, Lee Hamilton, Sandra Day O’Connor and Vernon Jordan, Jr. to take on virtually any problem and feel very confident that between the four of them, they would find a way to avoid the ugly heart of any serious political dilemma. If the missiles were on the way, and nuclear Armageddon was just seconds off, those four fossils would find a way to issue a recommendation whose headline talking points would be something like “heightened caution,” dialogue with Sweden, and a 14 percent increase in future funding for the Air Force.

Hence the conclusions of the Baker-Hamilton report were predetermined virtually from the start. We could all have expected that the group’s only unequivocal conclusions would restate the obvious — that we need an eventual withdrawal of troops, that there needs to be more “robust regional diplomacy,” that Iraqi forces need to assume more of the security burden, and that there will be no hope of a political solution without some cooperation from Syria and Iran. Duh! Because the really thorny questions are the specifics: when do we leave, and, more importantly, what do we offer Iran and Syria in return for their cooperation, what horrifying inevitable humiliation will we be prepared to suffer at their hands, and what form will talks with those gloating countries take?

Baker-Hamilton blew off those questions, and it’s no wonder, because no one in Washington wants to deal with them. The Republicans don’t want to agree to a withdrawal timetable because it’s an admission of defeat and policy failure, while the Democrats don’t want to be the first to call for a withdrawal because they’re afraid of being pilloried in the next election season for a lack of toughness. Both sides are afraid of being responsible for a civil war bloodbath if the U.S. troops pull out, and neither side wants to be the first to suggest taking the humiliating step of inviting Syria or Iran to the negotiating table with anything like equal status.

Baker-Hamilton takes all of this into account, offering no concrete or controversial suggestions that would bind either party to unpopular action in the near future. In essence, all Baker-Hamilton accomplished was a very vague admission that Bush’s Iraq adventure is somehow irrevocably fucked and that we have to get our troops out of that country as soon as possible, a conclusion that was obvious to the entire world two long years ago. But even this pathetically timid intellectual assertion was deemed too controversial to risk unveiling before the 2006 midterm elections, and it’s obvious now that both parties have decided to wait until 2008 to deal with the more important questions of “when” and “how.”

In the midst of all of the recent fanfare about Baker-Hamilton, some of the actual actors in the Iraq disaster have been using the media to similarly absolve themselves of any responsibility to act. We started to see this happening on November 15, when Michael Gordon of The New York Times (who seems to be spending a lot of time fellating intelligence officials lately) ran a ponderous “news analysis” suggesting that a rapid withdrawal might not be the best idea (“Get Out Now? Not So Fast, Some Experts Say,” Nov. 15). In this piece, a host of military and intelligence officials argued vociferously that America’s problems in Iraq stemmed from not having enough troops, and that an early withdrawal would accelerate the country’s decline into civil war. Among the voices quoted in Gordon’s piece is former CIA analyst Ken Pollack, who as Jeff Cohen noted was one of the chief pom-pom wavers for the war before the invasion and one of the many experts who insisted that Iraq possessed WMDs. Gordon conveniently left Pollack’s record on that score out of the article.

Pollack and other officials like former Central Command head Anthony Zinni furthermore argue in the Gordon piece that what is needed now is an increase in troops in the next six months to “regain momentum” as part of a broader effort to stabilize Iraq.

A few weeks later, Gordon ran another piece (“Bush Adviser’s Memo Cites Doubts About Iraqi Leader,” Nov. 29) which contained a leak of a memo by National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley which basically expressed doubts that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is capable of doing much of anything to control sectarian violence in Iraq.

The gist of both of these Gordon pieces is obvious: the military wants it known that it isn’t responsible for any of America’s problems in Iraq, and that the real problem is that Bush failed to set up an effective political context for the military to work within.

With the military inundating the newspapers with leaks that basically pass the buck for the Iraq disaster to the diplomats and the politicians, the Bush administration still refusing to publicly face reality, and the politicians outside the administration hiding behind a Baker-Hamilton report that shelves any meaningful decisions until some undetermined date far into the future (while being careful to avoid “not-so-open” confrontations with the president), the Iraq catastrophe can now be safely perpetuated ad nauseum — and the only people who will suffer for it will be people who don’t matter in Washington, i.e. the soldiers and the Iraqi people.

We may soon have to face this fact: With the midterm elections over, and George Bush already a lame duck, the Iraq war is no longer an urgent problem to anyone on the Hill who matters. The Democrats are in no hurry to end things because it will benefit them if Iraq is still a mess in ‘08; just as they did this fall, they’ll bitch about the war without explicitly promising to end it at any particular time. George Bush has already run his last campaign and he’s not about to voluntarily fuck up his legacy with a premature surrender or a humiliating concession to Syria or Iran. At least publicly, John McCain is going to head into ‘08 siding with those in the military who believe the problem is a lack of troops.

For the Iraq disaster to end, someone among these actors is going to have to make a difficult decision — admit defeat, invite a bloody civil war, lose face before a pair of rogue terror-supporting states — and it’s obvious that none of them is ever going to do that, not until there’s absolutely no choice.

The Baker-Hamilton report is being praised for its cautious, sensible, bipartisan approach to the Iraq problem (Time magazine even called it “genius”) but actually all it is a tacit recognition of this pass-the-buck dynamic in Washington. Because there is currently no way to even think about ending the actual problem without someone in Washington having to eat a very big bucket of shit, both sides have agreed, in the spirit of so-called bipartisan cooperation, to avoid thinking about ending the problem in the immediate future. Instead, the official policy in the meantime, bet on it, will end up being some version of a three-pronged strategy that involves 1) staying the course or even increasing the amount of troops temporarily 2) seeing what happens in ‘08, and 3) revisiting the issue after we see who wins the White House two years from now.

Baker-Hamilton wasn’t about finding solutions to the Iraq problem. It was about finding viable political solutions to the Iraq problem. Since there are none, it punted the problem to the next administration. Maybe the war will be real to those folks and they’ll actually do something. Don’t hold your breath.

http://www.buffalobeast.com/112/baker_hamilton_omission_report.htm

ISG: National savior, or Big Gov't. delay tactic?

Originally written Nov. 26, 2006.

As TIME's James Carney said, there are no "secret" proposals to solve the Iraq mess. So, anything that Jim Baker's secretive Iraq Study Group (ISG) comes up with will have already been discussed by experts and the media for months. If we already know what the choices are in Iraq, then what is the ISG's real purpose? First, to delay. Baker already achieved this first goal, by delaying any decision by the panel until after the November congressional elections. If possible, Baker and Bush want to delay even further, giving 'stay the course' as much time to continue (failing) before 'change the course' takes effect. After all, miracles can happen.

And, more importantly, if the bureaucratic delay is long enough, we're already one year from now, into the meat of the '08 Presidential campaign, and the Iraq war will have been essentially taken off the table, since the ISG's 'bi-partisan' recommendations will be just in the beginning stages of implementation. Both Dems and Republicans will then be able to say, "I support the bi-partisan recommendations of the ISG, and I think we should give them time to work." Then they can get back to arguing about more important, familiar issues like God, guns, and gays. 

Second, as alluded to already, the ISG will give a 'change-the-course' decision the image (veneer) of bipartisanship and balance among neocons, traditional realists, and foreign policy liberals. This leads to purpose #3... ... Third and finally, the ISG's main purpose is to help Bush save political face while 'changing the course,' thereby improving the GOP's electoral chances in 2008 among the GOP base and undecided voters.

Bush has never once admitted he's wrong. He's not about to start by admitting the failure of a policy which defines his presidency, the Iraq occupation. Bush is not capable of saving himself by personally plotting a new course. He's talked himself into a corner. He needs help. Cheney and Rove don't think the policy needs changing. Rummy's fired. Gates (Baker's inside yes-man) is too new. Wolfy's at the World Bank. And Condi's, well... she's useless. That's why Daddy sent Jim Baker to the rescue -- to the GOP's rescue. Despite the supposedly bi-partisan makeup of the ISG, whatever Jim Baker recommends will have a reliable GOP pedigree attached to it. The GOP base will buy it. The GOP base can be convinced to 'change the course' because it will be packaged as not antithetical to 'stay the course.' That's all the ISG is really about. Incidentally, the ISG helps the Dems, who are not united on what to do about Iraq, in the same way the ISG helps Bush: by helping saving face with a ready-made, bi-partisan 'solution' to the Iraq mess, which can be gift-wrapped and presented to the voters. No thinking or strenuous debate required.

The dark horse in this process is Cheney. Bush is still commander-in-chief. He doesn't have to accept the ISG's recommendations, although he probably will. Who knows what Cheney, a real neocon at heart, is whispering in W's ear? ... "Are you gonna let everybody think Daddy bailed you out of trouble again ?" That might be enough to make The Decider decide to tell Baker to kiss off. Pride is the root of sin!

Finally, I would be very surprised if Baker's ISG recommended total withdrawal. What Bush needs, and the voters want, is light at the end of the tunnel. Voters aren't demanding immediate and total withdrawal... yet. With enough pomp and to-do, the ISG's recommendations can be packaged and sold as HOPE, even if the actual policy is just a cosmetic adjustment to 'stay the course.' Public perception is key. In the short-term, the public will give any policy with bi-partisan support a chance to work. But their patience will be short, and they'll be watching closely to see the results.

The key question is: Will the ISG's recommendations have had time to fail, demonstrably, before the '08 elections??


Iraq Group a Study In Secrecy, Centrism
Outside Participants Describe Process

By Robin Wright
November 26, 2006 | Washington Post

In the history of U.S. foreign policy, there's been nothing like it: a panel outside government trying to bail the United States out of a prolonged and messy war.
The innocuously titled Iraq Study Group, which has evolved into a parallel policy establishment over the past eight months, is also unique in the way it operates. For one thing, it's even more secretive than the Bush administration.

Forty experts -- on warfare, the Middle East, reconstruction and Islamic militancy -- were asked to craft options for the commission but have nary a clue what proposals will come out of the 10-member panel, led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.).

"It doesn't have to take any of our recommendations," said Clifford D. May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "They can come up with something entirely different. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what they do."

Interviews with a dozen participants offer insights into the process and the possible outcome of the bipartisan commission, which was organized jointly by four think tanks, was funded with $1 million by Congress and is run by the United States Institute of Peace. It was at times an intellectual free-for-all, participants said.

"I was fascinated by how the big names just let the discussion develop among the experts," said Frederick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It was anything but a congressional hearing. They really just said, 'Let us know what you think.' "

During a meeting between experts and the panel, participants said they were struck by former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor's thoughtful questions. "At the first open meeting, it was very moving, as she was the only one who spoke to daily reality. She wanted to know what could be done to help the lives of Iraqis at a time when everything was slipping into killing and decay," said Judith S. Yaphe of National Defense University.

Others recalled how another panel member, Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), a former senator and a former Marine, probed the ethnic divide in the Iraqi army.

All the experts wanted to make sure Baker, who is still closely connected to the Bush family, was in the room when they spoke. Several noted his telltale body language, which could dismiss a comment with as little as a raised eyebrow.
"We were all reading his face. If someone was expounding on something, Baker would get a distant look. He made clear he was not willing to go down that road," said an expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the final report has not been released. "He doesn't tolerate fools."

Some participants said the Iraq Study Group should be a model of how to bring the nation's wise men and women together to inject fresh perspective in solving the country's biggest problems. But others said that it, too, had serious flaws.

Despite Iraq's steady deterioration since the panel began its work in April, it moved at a deliberate pace -- too slow, in the view of some participants. The panel spent months analyzing U.S. policy and Iraq's situation. Experts, who were divided into four subgroups, met among themselves to answer a list of questions from the 10 commissioners -- five Republicans and five Democrats.
The panel will reconvene early this week to begin final deliberations. Its report is still weeks away.

Some experts were disgruntled that their ideas did not make it out of the working groups. Brookings Institution fellow Michael E. O'Hanlon advocates the "soft partition" of Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities with land swaps and help with housing and jobs, so people could relocate to places where they are less threatened. He said he wishes he had testified before the panel so that his suggestion was not filtered out. "Some good ideas were killed in the cradle," he said.

Besides the experts, the commission also heard from others, including President Bush, former president Bill Clinton, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem and Javad Zarif, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations.

The panel was deliberately skewed toward a centrist course for Iraq, participants said. Organizers avoided experts with extreme views on either side of the Iraq war debate.

Neoconservatives, who supported and crafted much of the original Iraq strategy, say the panel was stacked against them. Michael Rubin, political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, resigned because he said he was a token.

"Many appointees appeared to be selected less for expertise than for their hostility to President Bush's war on terrorism and emphasis on democracy," Rubin wrote in the Weekly Standard. Baker and Hamilton "gerrymandered" the experts only "to ratify predetermined recommendations," he wrote. "Rather than prime the debate they sought to stifle it."

Only two of the 40 experts -- May and former CIA analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht -- are neoconservatives. [What does this tell us? Baker is skewing the ISG's recommendations away from the status quo of 'stay the course.' -- J]

"My frustration was that there was often a feeling in the [experts'] room that President Bush should have asked them for their advice much earlier but didn't, so now they were all going to say, 'I told you so,' " May said. "I said, 'If you're going to say that this mission can't succeed and will face defeat, let's not have a failure of imagination.' "

In an interview, Gerecht said the goal of consensus among 10 Republicans and Democrats means that there will be no dramatic recommendations. In an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, he wrote: "Its recommendations will probably be the least helpful of all the blue-ribbon commissions in Washington since World War II because it cannot escape from an unavoidable reality: We either declare defeat and withdraw completely tout de suite, or we surge troops into Baghdad and fight."

Although the experts have had their last meeting, the debate continues in what one participant described as "catty chatting" in a Web chat room. The panel also gets copies of those discussions.

"Unfortunately, our deliberations have been degenerating lately into petty squabbling over picayune issues of tactics, and I'm afraid I show that I have lost my patience a little bit here," wrote former CIA analyst Ray Close in an e-mail about the experts' deliberations. "Some of our most obstinate neocon diehards are still trying to fashion a strategy that is no more than an ersatz version of 'stay the course until victory.' They have been wasting our time, in my view."

The only hint of a possible outcome came during an ad hoc vote. On Sept. 18, experts assembled to present two options to the panel: "Stability First," to stabilize Baghdad and make intense reconciliation efforts with insurgents, and "Redeploy and Contain," to gradually withdraw troops while containing terrorist threats.

The chairmen then called for a quick vote by the experts. Accounts vary, though most agree that the "Stability First" option won -- by a large margin, some said.

In a reflection of shifting U.S. sentiments on the war, the chairmen called for a second vote at their last meeting with the experts in October. This time, participants said, the vote was almost evenly divided between stability and gradual withdrawal. Sticking around to stabilize Iraq won by only a tiny margin.

Gingrich Op-Ed: 'Victory or Death' in Iraq

My critique (from Nov. 27) of Gingrich's op-ed was not entirely serious, but then, his essay was so awfully ridiculous that it didn't merit serious thought, only laughter. Read and enjoy!

Searching for Victory in Iraq: Why the Baker-Hamilton Commission Ought to Visit Mount Vernon

by Newt Gingrich

Posted Nov 27, 2006

The Sunday before Thanksgiving, Callista and I took some friends to Mount Vernon to see the new education center. It is an amazing tribute to George Washington and the creation of America.

We watched a movie about George Washington's crossing the Delaware on Christmas Eve and surprising the Hessians (German mercenaries) on Christmas Day in Trenton. As I watched, I was struck by the amazing difference between the attitude of the Father of our Country and the current attitudes in the city that bears his name.

Gen. Washington had a long and painful summer and autumn of defeat in 1776. His American Army had been defeated across New York -- in Brooklyn, Manhattan and White Plains -- and then driven across New Jersey and forced to flee across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.

Washington's Night Crossing: 'Victory or Death'

Washington's forces had dwindled until he had only about 4,000 effective soldiers left. There were another 6,000 men present, but they were so sick they were unable to go into battle.

Faced with declining morale, rising desertions, the collapse of political will in the country at large and a sense of despair, Washington decided to gamble everything on a surprise attack. It would require a night crossing of an icy river against a formidable professional opponent.

But the most telling sign of Washington's mood as he embarked on the mission was his choice of a password. His men said "victory or death" to identify themselves.

What if There Had Been a Baker-Hamilton Commission Advising Gen. Washington?

That night crossing, immortalized in paintings of Washington's standing in the boat as Marblehead Fishermen rowed him across the ice-strewn river, led to an amazing victory on Christmas Day. That victory led to a surge in American morale and a doubling in the size of the American forces under Washington within two weeks. And that gave Washington the strength to win a second surprise victory at Princeton.

In two weeks, Washington had gone from defeated, hopeless bungler to victorious American hero and personification of the American Cause.

Imagine there had been a Baker-Hamilton Commission -- the group charged with assessing our options in Iraq -- advising Washington that cold Christmas Eve. What "practical, realistic" advice would they have given him?

Eleven Key Tests for the Baker-Hamilton Report

Will the Baker-Hamilton Commission make a real contribution in helping us win the war against the Fanatic wing of Islam? [What's the name of Baker's commission? That's right: "The Iraq Study Group." It's not the "Fanatic Islam Study Group," or the "Islamofascism Study Group," or the "Let's Go to War With Everybody Just to Feel Safe Group." It's about the war we're physically involved in in Iraq. Gingrich is already trying to blur the lines; he's actively promoting 'mission creep.' Don't be fooled! -- J] Or will it be simply one more establishment effort to hide defeat so the American political system can resume its comfortable insider games without having to solve real problems in the larger world? Here are 11 key things to look for in the commission's report:

1. Does the Commission Have a Vision for Success in the Larger War Against the Dictatorships and Fanatics Who Want to Destroy Us?

If Iraq were only a one-step process, the answer might be to leave. But the reality is that Iraq is a single campaign within a much bigger war and within a power struggle over both the evolution of Islam and the rise of dictatorships seeking nuclear and biological weapons to enable them to destroy America and her allies. [No, no, and no. Iraq is an easily accessible battleground against us for al Qaeda only because we were stupid enough to park ourselves there as sitting ducks. If we leave, we take the bullseyes on our backs with us. -- J] If the Baker-Hamilton Commission does not take this into account, it is a dangerously misleading report.

2. Does the Commission Recognize That the Second Campaign in Iraq Has Been a Failure?

This is the hardest thing for Washington-centric bureaucracies to accept. [Hilarious! Who in the world is he talking about here? Is Bush some kind of big gubument bureaucrat now? Or, could Gingrich possibly be criticizing the Pentagon, whose big gubument budget never, ever gets cut by a good conservative? -- J] There was a very successful 23-day campaign to drive Saddam out of power. It used America's strengths, and it worked. The second campaign has been an abject failure. We and our Iraqi allies do not have control of Iraq. We cannot guarantee security. There is not enough economic activity to keep young males employed. If the Baker-Hamilton Commission cannot bring itself to recognize a defeat as a defeat, then it cannot recommend the scale of change that is needed to develop a potentially successful third campaign.

3. Does the Commission Recognize the Scale of Change We Will Need to Adopt to Be Effective in a World of Enemies Willing to Kill Themselves in Order to Kill Us?

We need fundamental change in our military doctrine, training and structures, our intelligence capabilities and our integration of civilian and military activities. The instruments of American power simply do not work at the speed and detail needed to defeat the kind of enemies we are encountering. The American bureaucracies would rather claim the problem is too hard and leave, because being forced to change this deeply will be very painful and very controversial. Yet we have to learn to win.

Learning to win requires much more than changes in the military. It requires changes in how our intelligence, diplomatic, information and economic institutions work. It requires the development of an integrated approach in which all aspects of American power can be brought to bear to achieve victory. Furthermore, this strategy for victory has to be doubly powerful. For three years, we have failed to build an effective Iraqi government, and we now have a shattered local system with many players using violence in desperate bids to maximize their positions. The plan has to be powerful enough to succeed despite Iraqi weaknesses and not by relying on a clearly uncertain and unstable Iraqi political system. [Care to share the details of your brilliant military reform plan, Newt? -- J]

4. Does the Commission Describe the Consequences of Defeat in Iraq?

What would the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq look like? Frederick Kagan [infamous neocon -- J] of the American Enterprise Institute recently offered this chilling picture:

"The pullback of U.S. forces to their bases will not reduce the sectarian conflict, which their presence did not generate -- it will increase it. Death squads on both sides will become more active. Large-scale ethnic and sectarian cleansing will begin as each side attempts to establish homogeneous enclaves where there are now mixed communities. Atrocities will mount, as they always do in ethnic cleansing operations. Iraqis who have cooperated with the Americans will be targeted by radicals on both sides. Some of them will try to flee with the American units. American troops will watch helplessly as death squads execute women and children. Pictures of this will play constantly on Al Jazeera. Prominent 'collaborators,' with whom our soldiers and leaders worked, will be publicly executed. Crowds of refugees could overwhelm not merely Iraq's neighbors but also the [Forward Operating Bases] themselves. Soldiers will have to hold off fearful, tearful, and dangerous mobs."

[This may be a real possibility, but again, Gingrich (quoting neocon Kagan) is blurring his mission objectives. Is the point of the Iraq occupation to protect Iraqis, or to promote U.S. interests and safety? If it's all about the former, then I would suggest that U.S. troops would save more lives by going to Darfur to stop the ethnic cleansing there. No, I'm not changing the subject. I'm asking, "What are acceptable reasons to deploy U.S. troops?" Neither Bush nor Gingrich chooses to answer that question. They want every excuse in the book available to them to put our troops in harm's way, and the freedom to keep changing excuses. But only if we let 'em! -- J]

5. Does the Commission Understand the Importance of Victory?

Winning is key. We are in a power struggle on a worldwide basis with dictators who want to defeat us (Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea) and with fanatic organizations that want to kill us (al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc) [Gingrich has just described the makings of the biggest, longest, most scatterbrained goddamn war in human history. He is literally insane. Think about what he just wrote. We'd have to start drafting grandparents to fight such a war. It's insane. -- J] In a struggle like this, the goal has to be to win. Anything less than victory is very dangerous, because it allows our enemies to gather more capabilities and prepare for more dangerous campaigns. Time is not on our side. Time is on the side of those seeking nuclear and biological weapons to use against the civilized world.

6. Does the Commission Define What It Means to Win, or Simply Find a Face-Saving Way to Lose?

Winning is very definable. Can we protect our friends [Israel, Israel and, um, Israel -- J] and hurt our enemies [everybody else -- J] ? Are they more afraid of us, or are we more afraid of them? [Are we talking about American foreign policy, or a Don Knotts movie?! -- J] The recent Syrian assassination of a Lebanese Christian leader who was pro-Western is a signal that they are not afraid of us. [Here's a crazy thought: Maybe they weren't thinking about us at all! But that's just too depressing to consider. I mean, hating us is one thing, we're used to that; but ignoring us would be intolerable. -- J] The North Korean decisions to launch seven missiles on our Independence Day and to set off a nuclear weapon were signs they have contempt for our warnings. The statements of Ahmadinejad (the Iranian dictator) [who was democratically elected] and Hugo Chavez (the Venezuelan dictator) [also elected] indicate how confident they are.

Today, the enemy [Remind me who they all are again? Maybe we can catch them all in their secret hideout, like in a James Bond movie, and blow them up all at once, then we wouldn't have to invade and occupy their countries! Whaddya think, Newt? -- J] thinks they are winning, and our elites seem to be seeking face-saving cover behind which to accept defeat. Does the Baker-Hamilton Commission have a proposal for victory or a proposal for accepting defeat gracefully? Will it offer a diplomatic deal allowing us to pretend we are okay while our enemies gather strength? [Wait, now I'm confused. Are we fighting an "enemy" or several "enemies," and how exactly do they all get together and make their decisions? I guess it must really be like S.P.E.C.T.R.E. from the Bond films. Quick, do satellite imaging scans of every remote, scary-looking anthropomorphic volcano, that's where SPECTRE always hides! -- J]

7. Does the Commission Acknowledge That Winning Requires Thinking Regionally and Even Globally?

In Afghanistan, we are engaged in an Afghanistan-Waziristan war in which our enemies retreat into Waziristan in Northwest Pakistan and re-arm, re-equip, retrain and rest before coming back into Afghanistan. We will never win that war by engaging only in Afghanistan. [Finish your thought, Newt! Ooh, stop teasing us! Where else should we engage? Whom else should we kill? What else should we f- up? Just tell us, oh Newt, and we shall obey! ... That's what kills me about these neocons: outside their think tanks and their obscure treatises which nobody reads, they're scared to say what they really want, i.e. kill everybody. -- J] In Iraq, the problems may require much more direct confrontation with Iran and Syria. [Mission creep again, watch out! -- J] In Lebanon, it is impossible to create a stable democratic government and disarm Hezbollah as long as Syria and Iran are deeply involved in killing Lebanese leaders and supplying Hezbollah.

8. Any Proposal to Ask Iran and Syria to Help Is a Sign of Defeat. Does the Commission Suggest This?

Iran and Syria are the wolves in the region. They are the primary trouble makers. You don't invite wolves into the kitchen to help with dinner or you become dinner. The State Department Report on Terrorism in April 2006 said: "Iran and Syria routinely provide unique safe haven, substantial resources and guidance to terrorist organizations." It went on to say: "Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism." It noted that in Iraq the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (an arm of the Iranian dictatorship) "was increasingly involved in supplying lethal assistance to Iraqi militant groups which destabilize Iraq."

How can the Baker Hamilton Commission seriously suggest that two dictatorships described like this are going to be "helpers" in achieving American goals in the Middle East? [Because Iran and Syria have more influence in the region than we do, that's why! Uncomfortable truths kind of stick in your craw, don't they, Newt? -- J]

9. Does the Commission Believe We Can 'Do a Deal' With Iran?

The clear effort by the Iranians to acquire nuclear weapons and Ahmadinejad's assertion that it is easy to imagine a time in the near future when the United States and Israel have both disappeared should be adequate proof that the Iranian dictatorship is the active enemy of America. [Newt, I heard some kid sprayed anti-American graffitti on an overpass in Venezeula. Should we nuke his village, or just torture his parents? ... Sticks and stones, sticks and stones! -- J] Couple that with the fact that the Iranians lied to the International Atomic Energy Agency for 18 years while trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Either this is a dangerous regime we need to fundamentally change, or it is a reasonable regime with which we can deal. [He forgot option C: a potentially dangerous regime that we can contain, together with our allies. India and Pakistan both have nukes, and I'd say are more likely to use them than Iran, but we don't seem to care about 'bygones.' -- J]

Presidential speeches and State Department documents clearly indicate it is a dangerous regime, yet there is a permanent Washington establishment desire to avoid conflict and confrontation by "doing a deal." In the 1930s, that model was called appeasement, not realism, and it led to a disaster. [It's appeasement when you coddle or ignore a regime with expansionist aims. There's zero indication that Iran is planning to invade or conquer anybody. Big difference. -- J] We need a Churchill not a Chamberlain policy for the Middle East.

10. Does the Commission Believe We Are More Clever Than Our Enemies?

The al-Assad family has run Syria since 1971. [Not as long as the Saudi royal family (70+ years consecutive), the Jordanian royal family (50+ years), or Egypt's dictator Mubarak (25 years) -- all of them supposed U.S. allies! -- J] Hafiz Assad arranged for his son Bashar to succeed him. This family and its Alewite supporters represent a small minority of the Syrian people, but they maintain a relentlessly tough internal dictatorship that keeps power in their hands. In some ways, there are parallels between Bashar Assad and Kim Jong Il -- they both maintain family dictatorships with the support of a brutal system of internal controls. After 35 years of defying the United States, there is no reason to believe our diplomats are more clever than their ruthlessly survivor-oriented systems. Negotiating with them is an invitation to be taken to the cleaners and to extend the power, prestige and influence of our mortal enemies in the region.

Recent talk of reaching out to Syria has been met by the assassination of a Lebanese Minister and the intensifying of the Hezbollah blackmail tactics in Lebanon. Weakness from America leads to greater aggression from our enemies. The Baker-Hamilton Commission should focus on how to contain or defeat Syria, not on how to rely on them for help.

11. Does the Commission Recognize the Importance of Working With the Democratic Majorities on a Strategy for Victory?

The Democratic victory in the 2006 election should not be used as an excuse to do the wrong thing. The Democrats are now confronting the responsibility and burden of power. Given the right information about Iran, Syria and Iraq, there is every reason to believe a bipartisan majority can be formed in both the House and Senate for a rational strategy for victory. Opposition to continuing the failed second campaign should not be translated into opposition to an American victory.

The Bush Administration should reach out to moderate Democrats and forge a bipartisan agenda for victory and, by March 2007, pass a bipartisan resolution for victory in Iraq and for stopping Iranian efforts to get nuclear weapons. That will set the basis for appropriations to continue the effort. The passage of a solid bipartisan bill in March would send a signal to the world that Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of defeating terrorism and defending America. That will dramatically lower the morale and confidence of our enemies.

These 11 steps would be a powerful basis on which to move forward in Iraq and in the world. What's more, they reflect the spirit of Gen. Washington when he chose "victory or death" as the motto of the campaign that led to the founding of America despite overwhelming odds.

Your friend,

Newt Gingrich

P.S. - I will be in the "Live Free of Die" state of New Hampshire today and tomorrow talking about, among other things, my new book, Rediscovering God in America. At a time when the speech of terrorists and fanatics threatens our very survival, our national elites [who are?... Bill Gates?... -- J] are most concerned with suppressing our religious expression. My book shows how our history and traditions put God at the center of our freedom. It's a powerful set of talking points to countermand the secular left's unending effort to remove God from the public square.

ISG recommends renewing "white [American] man's burden"

On the one hand, the ISG came to a perfectly logical conclusion: to increase U.S. chances of success in future Iraq-like endeavors, all manner of U.S. domestic civil servants should bring their knowledge and experience to bear.

On the other hand, it's the makings (or re-making) of an imperial civil service. The British Empire already perfected this.

The point is, we should avoid complex and daunting nation-building adventures in the first place! America is not willing to do all of the brutal, nasty tasks required of an Empire, which go hand-in-hand with all the "altruistic" aims of bringing civilization to backwards and underdeveloped nations, which never invited our "help" in the first place.

To implement this part of the ISG recommendations would require overwhelming U.S. force (which would be impossible for us to muster) to take control of the security situation, and install an interim U.S. friendly government -- of course unelected.

What bothers me is that colonial powers have already tried this. It can work, but it requires lots of killing and political repression to keep the native population under control.

Before we head down this road, we should ask ourselves: who were really trying to help, them or us? at what cost? and is this really what America is all about?

I fear that George Bush has set the tone and terms of the debate for so long, that people are losing sight of the big picture. We could conquer Iraq and lose ourselves in the process.

Are we returning to the notion of the "white man's burden"?

Bipartisan panel urges agencies to order civilians to Iraq

By Tom Shoop
tshoop@govexec.com

With the situation in Iraq "grave and deteriorating," the United States must begin the process of shifting troops out of the country, members of a bipartisan panel said Wednesday. But at the same time, the group recommended, the Bush administration must make sure that it has sufficient civilian personnel in Iraq -- if necessary, by ordering some employees to serve there.
"The nature of the mission in Iraq is unfamiliar and dangerous, and the United States has had great difficulty filling civilian assignments in Iraq with sufficient numbers of properly trained personnel at the appropriate rank," wrote members of the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James A. Baker II and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., in their report. For example, panel members said, the United States still has "far too few Arab language-proficient" officials in the country.
To address the problem, the group recommended that the secretaries of State and Defense and the Director of National Intelligence put the "highest possible priority" on language and cultural training for military personnel and civilian employees about to be assigned to Iraq. And, the report said, if not enough of the latter group volunteer to go to the country, "civilian agencies must fill those positions with directed assignments."
If agencies do so, the panel recommended, the federal government should take steps to address employees' financial hardships resulting from service in Iraq, such as providing the same tax breaks military personnel stationed in the country receive.
The Iraq Study Group, launched earlier this year under the auspices of the United States Institute of Peace, also recommended that the Defense, Justice, State and Treasury departments, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development, begin to conduct cross-agency training efforts to prepare for complex operations such as those in Iraq. Those efforts, the group said, should be modeled on the joint training exercises conducted by the military services since the passage of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act.
In a separate recommendation, the panel said the State Department should create a Foreign Service Reserve Corps with personnel who could provide "surge capacity" to deal with future stability operations. Other departments, such as Agriculture, Justice and Treasury, should develop similar capacities, panel members said.

This document is located at http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1206/120606ts2.htm