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As a service to you, my beloved Townhall.com audience, I returned from Florida, got myself settled in Boston and read the entire Iraq Study Group report. Talk about taking one for the team! If it weren’t for the moral obtuseness of the entire exercise and the damage that that it may potentially do, the report would be hilarious. I’m talking laugh out loud funny – more side-splitting than Borat.
The entire report exists in some kind of striped-pants-set fantasy world where all actors are rational and behave only in good faith. As a consequence, the report repeatedly offers idiotic banalities like, “No country in the region wants a chaotic Iraq,” in spite of previously acknowledging that one of Iraq’s most murderous militias, the Badr brigade, is a client of Iran.
Aaah, Iran. For a real indication of this report’s terminal lack of seriousness, check out the Group’s blithe ignorance regarding Iran’s malevolent intentions. “It is clear to the Iraq Study Group members that all of Iraq’s neighbors are anxious about the situation in Iraq,” opines the commission. “They favor a unified Iraq that is strong enough to maintain its territorial integrity, but not so powerful as to threaten its neighbors.”
Gosh, when did Iran become so altruistic and so unconcerned with its own interests? Last I heard, the mad Mullahs and their certifiable front-man were hell-bent on establishing a regional caliphate to be quickly followed by global domination. And yet now the Baker Commission informs us that Iran really has Iraq’s best interests at heart. Phew! What a relief.
But don’t worry. It’s not like the hardened realists who make up the Study Group were squishy in the face of the Iranian nuclear menace. For this, they prescribed some serious medicine, taking the bother of underscoring the import of the matter by devoting one of their 79 specific recommendations exclusively to the issue: “RECOMMENDATION 10: The issue of Iran’s nuclear programs should continue to be dealt with by the United Nations Security Council.”
Of course, the Study Group had some pretty solid plans on how to deal with those nettlesome militias who have benefited from the support of Iran and Syria. “Solving the problem of militias requires national reconciliation. Dealing with Iraq’s militias will require long-term attention, and substantial funding will be needed to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate militia members into civilian society.” That’s pretty tough stuff. I’m sure Patton and Sherman would be proud to call such a “damn-the-torpedoes” policy their own. It’s bound to work, unless the members of the militias don’t share the desire for a benevolent, free and democratic Iraq that is so pronounced amongst the country’s neighbors (at least in the Commission’s fantasies).
The Group also seeks to reward Syria for its recent malfeasance. In addition to getting the full American diplomatic monty that its partner in mayhem Iran will receive, the Study Group also insists that a key to lasting peace in the Middle East is Israel giving up the Golan Heights.
THE MOST FITTING WORD FOR THIS ENTIRE exercise is silly. Everything that Baker, Hamilton and company say rests on the assumption that our malefactors have legitimate grievances and good faith goals. In other words, not only can our enemies be trusted, their agendas are not to be questioned. (And Baker and his ilk have the audacity to style themselves realists.)
Here’s a novel concept – Iran wants to win in Iraq. It wants Iraq to become part of its planned caliphate. Iran is not content with having the United States bogged down in Iraq, as the report says on several occasions. Iran is not afflicted by the same murky agenda that plagues the American policy establishment. Iran is in it to win it.
And the militias aren’t latter day Madisonian factions willing to make nice with everyone they have differences with. They are largely composed of murderous psychotics who have to be dealt with as such.
What’s most frustrating about this report is that it never deals with the serious issues. For instance, we have some 120,000 troops in Iraq. The report estimates Moqtada al-Sadr has 60,000 “fighters.” Should our troops engage those “fighters”? And by engage, I’m using a euphemism for “kill” that perhaps the striped-pants set would be comfortable with. Of course, we know the Study Group’s feeling on the militias – they should be reintegrated into Iraqi society. On how this miracle should occur, the commission is predictably silent.
Most hilariously, the Study Group recommends the formation of an “Iraq International Support Group” composed of us and all of Iraq’s concerned neighbors who only wish the struggling Iraqis the best. You know, countries like Iran and Syria.
This report is an embarrassment to its authors and a complete waste of time for anyone who was involved in its preparation. I haven’t heard or read anything about it since I’ve gotten home, so for all I know it’s being hailed as a triumphant piece of diplomacy by both Republicans and Democrats who are eager for a roadmap to achieve “peace in our time.” I hope that’s not the case, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were.
The report is frivolous. If anyone tasked with making policy is so foolish as to use it as anything other than a door-jamb, it will then become dangerous as well.
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