The Iraq Study Report could hardly be more damning. It spells out the total failure of the Bush administration’s military and diplomatic policy in the Middle East. The invasion was launched on a pack of lies. It clearly had been planned before 9/11. Yet, astonishingly, no serious thought had been given to planning what to do after Saddam fell.
That fatal lack of forethought meant that Washington lost the initiative within days of the collapse of Saddam’s dictatorship. From then on Bush was driven always by events. Every time he drew a line in the sand to halt an oncoming debacle, the crisis had already moved past it.
Virtually every conclusion of the Baker-Hamilton report echoes the warnings that were being given Bush from the outset by America’s friends and allies in the region. Yet at the time not only was the Bush administration unprepared to listen, but virtually the entire US political establishment (and the media, as well as much of the public that was unable or unwilling to make a distinction between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein) was behind the White House. Washington was utterly oblivious to the urgent advice coming out of the region, from people who knew and understood the threats and dangers at first hand.
This high-and-mighty US administration has been humbled and defeated by its own ignorance and stupidity. Unfortunately, it seems to be only shamed US pride that is informing the protests and condemnation of the president’s critics, who have suddenly appeared now after years of involvement in a war with ill-defined justifications or goals. Iraq Study Group report is almost parochial; the fate of millions of Iraqis continues to take second place to America’s problems that emerged when it invaded and occupied the country.
At best the Iraq Study Group’s advice revolves around why and when America needs to escape from the Iraq quagmire it created by ousting Saddam. Originally it was suspected that Bush had established the Iraq Study Group to give him a respectable way to retreat from Iraq without having established that Western-style liberal democracy, which may have always been a utopian vision for an unstable region. Now, however, it seems that the president may be bridling at an analysis that amounts to an almost complete condemnation of his Middle East policies. He may be planning a counterattack, not against Iraqi insurgents, but against the Beltway insurgents in DC.
White House aides might possibly spot a major hole in the report. No serious consideration is given to the consequences of what in neoconservative parlance is referred to as “cutting and running.” Nor is there any analysis of the likely long-term impact of US withdrawal on its regional influence and relations.
Meanwhile, as Washington wonks and politicians spin and analyze the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations from the peace of their safe and secure surroundings, the people on the ground in Iraq continue to bear the bloody brunt of America’s mistakes.
