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The rationale for the Iraq Study Group

Jonathan Steele

Given the reasons for its creation, no wonder the Iraq Study Group failed to properly consider the one way to end this war.

— PHOTO: AFP

Iraq Study Group co-chairmen, the former U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker (left), and the former Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Lee Hamilton, conduct a news conference on Capitol Hill, Washington DC, on Wednesday.

JAMES BAKER is a lawyer, a fixer, a Republican, a friend of the Bush family, and a deeply political animal. He is not an independent radical or a man known for original thinking. So the question in the wake of his Iraq Study Group's predictably uncontroversial report is why it was ever set up.

The first purpose was to provide an alibi for the President ahead of November's congressional elections. Critics of his disastrous strategy in Iraq could be told that George W. Bush was listening to the American people and understood their concerns. That was why he had set up a blue-ribbon panel to evaluate all options. Nothing was taboo. The tactic did not work, and President Bush and his Republican Party took a heavy beating. It was not Mr. Baker's fault so much as a sign that voters felt they had to send a message to Mr. Baker as well as Mr. Bush. A majority of Americans, as well as Iraqis, want U.S. troops to leave.

The second purpose of the study group was to co-opt the Democrats, to get them behind Mr. Bush's war. Having a bipartisan panel with an equal number of members from both parties was intended to make it hard for Democrats to reject its report. Mr. Baker, after all, was the man who masterminded the manoeuvrings in 2000 over whether Florida should have a full recount. His job was to get Al Gore and the rest of the Democrats to swallow their anger and fall into line behind the argument that there was no time and that the better strategy was to take the dispute to the Supreme Court, where Mr. Bush's side had a clear judicial majority.

Now the plan is to lock the Democrats into agreeing with the main thrust of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy over the next two years, with the aim of preventing it from provoking a major divide during the 2008 campaign for the White House. It is not a difficult task. The main Democratic contenders, starting with Hillary Clinton, are weak fence-sitters who show no desire to challenge Mr. Bush directly. None is as clear-sighted as John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Congressman who started calling for a U.S. troop withdrawal a year ago. Nor, unless he or she is yet to emerge, is there a Eugene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy figure with the authority to rally voters against a failed President, as there was when Lyndon Johnson was mired in Vietnam.

The third purpose in appointing Mr. Baker's panel is the most extraordinary. The country's political elite wants to ignore the American people's doubts and build a new consensus behind a strategy of staying in Iraq on an open-ended basis, with no exit in sight. "Success depends on unity of the American people at a time of political polarisation ... Foreign policy is doomed to failure, as is any action in Iraq, if not supported by broad, sustained consensus," say Mr. Baker and his Democratic co-chair, Lee Hamilton, in their introduction. In other words, if things go wrong, it will be the American people's fault for not trusting in the wisdom of their leaders.

The Baker panel recognises, as does Mr. Bush, that the central plank in U.S. policy in Iraq over the next two years has to be a dramatic reduction in U.S. casualties. At the present rate, in only a few days more Americans will have died in Iraq than on 9/11; if you add the U.S. death toll in Afghanistan, that point has already been reached. Mr. Bush's "war on terror" has killed more Americans than Osama bin Laden's terror.

A continuation

What Mr. Baker proposes is essentially a continuation of what Mr. Bush is already doing, trying to reduce U.S. deaths by moving troops out of the frontline while avoiding any commitment to a full U.S. withdrawal. Mr. Baker fails to consider an early withdrawal objectively, describing that option as "precipitate" and "premature." He admits a timetable is necessary as part of national reconciliation among Iraqis, but says the conciliation has to be agreed before a timetable can be discussed rather than vice versa. Benchmarks will be outlined for when to let the Iraqi army take the lead role in Baghdad and other provinces, but this is all fiction. The Iraqis will still be able to call on U.S. artillery, air strikes and, as a last resort, ground troops. It smells exactly like the Vietnamisation strategy of the 1970s, which was similarly designed to lessen U.S. opposition to an unpopular war.

Mr. Bush rejects the Vietnam analogy. He is correct on one point. In Vietnam there was a clearly defined enemy, a disciplined army and an established government with whom Henry Kissinger could negotiate an American troop withdrawal. In Iraq, the insurgency has no central structure and no recognised leader. But Mr. Bush should not duck the strategy for want of a partner.

He will have to announce a timetable for pulling out U.S. troops, not just from combat duties but from Iraq. Keeping them in bases without any pledge of a final withdrawal will not only keep the nationalist insurgency alive; it will allow Iraq's political leadership to shelter under Washington's wing and pursue their sectarian rivalries indefinitely.

Mr. Baker is right to suggest a regional conference to promote stability in Iraq, but its precondition has to be an early end date for the last U.S. soldier to leave, no later than December 2007. Otherwise the conference will fail. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey will attend whatever happens. Syria and Iran will not, and they are the key players. Without a clear, rapid timetable for the U.S. to go, they would risk looking like collaborators in the occupation, a role they reject.

Mr. Baker argues that a U.S. withdrawal would leave Iraq in chaos, leading to a terrorist enclave in the largely Sunni western provinces or a civil war for control of Baghdad. Equating change with catastrophe is the oldest trick. In spite of the ferocious inter-communal clashes of recent months, the Sunni-Shia split is still under potential political control.

The Iraqi Parliament adopted a national reconciliation plan this summer to which most parties at least paid lip service. The Americans have been talking directly and through intermediaries with former Ba'athists and other insurgent leaders.

These are hopeful signs. The earlier U.S. effort to detach Sunni politicians from the resistance has not worked. What is unclear is how far-reaching an amnesty the U.S. and the Shia politicians will offer.

With the prospect that it could appoint a genuine unity government committed to peace, this internal conference is the right way to go. But, as with the regional conference, the precondition for its success has to be a clear commitment from Washington that it is leaving Iraq. Fudging the end date or hoping it need never be promised will not end the war. Mr. Baker is not suggesting anything as radical as this, of course. No one should ever have thought he might. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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