Posted on 12/3/2006, 5:19:10 PM by FairOpinion
THE White House is resisting efforts by an advisory commission on Iraq strategy to force the pace on troop withdrawals and negotiations with Iran and Syria. At the Pentagon, the joint chiefs of staff are also determined not to be pushed into "managing defeat" after the Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker, the former secretary of state, and former Democrat congressman Lee Hamilton, reports this week.
A backlash from the Right against the long-awaited report is gathering force. The neo-conservative journal, The Weekly Standard, has derided the Baker group's work as "a fancy way of justifying surrender".
The Men's Vogue Study Group, as the 10-member commission was soon renamed, is long on puffery and short on military expertise, other critics point out. "They are a lot of greybeards with little knowledge of military operations," said Dan Goure, a defence analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
comments@whitehouse.gov
(that's the contact e-mail address listed at the WH website, I don't know whether president@whitehouse.gov still works or not)
vice_president@whitehouse.gov
Also highly recommend reading Mark Steyn's editorial on the subject:
Iraq Is Just Test Of Will For America (Mark Steyn Slams Baker Study Group "Realism" Alert), posted by goldstategop.
"The central issue is America's credibility and will to prevail.''
An ''exit strategy'' on those terms is the path out not just from Iraq but from a lot of other places, too -- including Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela, Russia, China, the South Sandwich Islands. For America would be revealed to the world as a fraud: a hyperpower that's all hype and no power -- or, at any rate, no will. According to the New York Sun, ''An expert adviser to the Baker-Hamilton commission expects the 10-person panel to recommend that the Bush administration pressure Israel to make concessions in a gambit to entice Syria and Iran to a regional conference . . .
A bipartisan sellout -- the Republicans cut and the Democrats run -- would be an awesome self-humiliation of the United States. And once the rest of the world figures it out, it'll be America that's the Green Zone.''
I mentioned your Steyn thread.
A Perfect Failure. The Iraq Study Group has reached a consensus. by Robert Kagan & William Kristol.
"Although its recommendations will have no effect on American policy going forward, they have already had a very damaging effect throughout the world, and especially in the Middle East and in Iraq. For the Iraq Study Group, aided by supportive American media, has successfully conveyed the impression to everyone at home and abroad that the United States is about to withdraw from Iraq.
This has weakened American allies and strengthened American enemies. It has exacerbated the problems in Iraq, as all the various factions in that country begin to prepare for the "inevitable" American retreat. Now it will require enormous efforts by the president and his advisers to dispel the disastrous impression that the Baker commission has quite deliberately created and will continue to foster in the weeks ahead. At home and abroad, people have been led to believe that Jim Baker and not the president was going to call the shots in Iraq from now on."
I'm sure they'll be yelling, "Don't throw me in the brier patch" the whole way there.
Surrender as 'Realism. Retreat would win us no friends and lose us no adversaries.
"So let's add up the "realist" proposals: We must retreat from Iraq, and thus abandon all those Iraqis--Shiite, Sunni, Kurd, and others--who have depended on the United States for safety and the promise of a better future. We must abandon our allies in Lebanon and the very idea of an independent Lebanon in order to win Syria's support for our retreat from Iraq. We must abandon our opposition to Iran's nuclear program in order to convince Iran to help us abandon Iraq. And we must pressure our ally, Israel, to accommodate a violent Hamas in order to gain radical Arab support for our retreat from Iraq.
This is what passes for realism these days. But of course this is not realism. It is capitulation. Were the United States to adopt this approach every time we faced a difficult set of problems, were we to attempt to satisfy our adversaries' every whim in order to win their acquiescence, we would rapidly cease to play any significant role in the world. We would be neither feared nor respected--nor, of course, would we be any better liked. Our retreat would win us no friends and lose us no adversaries.
What our adversaries in the Middle East want from us is very simple: They want us out. Unless we are prepared to withdraw, not just from Iraq but from the entire region, and from elsewhere as well, we had better start figuring out how to pursue effectively--realistically--our interests and goals. This is true American realism. All the rest is a fancy way of justifying surrender."
Are you suggesting that the President will do something contrary to what he has been saying since the beginning of this phase of the Iraq war and what he has just forcefully reiterated in the past week? Are you suggesting that the Commander in Chief does not want victory in Iraq as he has consistently stated and will do what this commission suggests?
Again.........please clarify your comment. And your reasons for believing he will do other than what he says he will do.
The president should be standing up and telling the public that all the left wants is to surrender and turn their backs on Iraq- he should be forcefully making this case in the areana of public opinion- that is the one fault I find with Pres. Bush- he NEVER makes it clear to hte public! http://sacredscoop.com
It's not an either/or proposition. President Bush is trying to get to a state where Iraq is considered a success within 2 years, where a successor could turn it into a real defeat. He's currently painted in a corner, and the ISG is offering him a way out.
There's more than one way to skin a cat. The President is shrewdly putting himself in the position where he can bipartisanly compromise his way out of 140,000 troops in Iraq, down to a lower, more effective number, without having to explain why Iraq isn't stabilized yet. I don't say that as a bad thing at all. Iraq has a better chance of stabilizing if we untangle ourselves from it.
We can't add more troops, for a number of reasons. We can't pull them out, because it will be called 'cut and run before the job is done'. We can't stay where we are, because it's not getting us closer to victory. We're in a bind, and the President will be looking for a way out.
Enter the Iraq Study Group. They're going to biparisanly come up with a plan to slice down the troop levels to a point where they won't be sitting targets, and move them elsewhere. "Slice and move" isn't "cut and run", you see. It will look the same, but it has two things going for it over "cut and run". It has bipartisan political cover. We need to do it to be more effective.
The President will play hard to get, but will find himself overcome with the spirit of bipartisanship, and give it a chance. Troop levels will go down, Iraqi security forces will step up. Once the U.S. body counts drops off to nothing, and Iraq stabilizes, the U.S. public will forget all about the 'cut and run' fixation, and be pleased with the progress. That's as close to victory as President Bush is going to get in 2 years, and it's not a bad one. Maybe not as cathartic as getting a declaration of surrender signed on the deck of the Missouri, but it'll be good enough.
I'm 62 years old, and I've been in gunfights. But I'll tell ya'll what: I don't know what to do anymore, except sit here in my house, make nice little wooden things in my shop, care for my garden, and wait for the world to finish tearing itself apart. Not much I can do until somebody who means me harm walks up the driveway. Then I can shoot them.
Interesting read from the article. This has been repeated dozens and dozens of times. Everybody knows the ramifications of withdrawal. What none of these pundits ever offer is a solution. What does the guy suggest we do now?
I'll give you mine. I don't believe the President's vision is far-sighted enough. This isn't about winning in Iraq. Iraq is simply one battlefield in a larger war. If the President is even considering- even a teensy-weensy bit- calling a halt to the overall war before it's half way won then he has dropped the ball in a big way.
The leaked Rumsfeld memo made me angry. Not because a 'classified document' was leaked to the NYT but because Rumsfeld (who the media decry as a big time Hawk) did not mention going after Iran and Syria. This told me everything I needed to know. They viewed Iraq as an end in itself when it isn't and never was.
I am no longer confident in the President's will to prosecute this war (and remember- I'm not talking about Iraq but the larger one). He has two years remaining but the way it looks now he is going to spend the rest of his term trying to sort out the way he looks in the history books (which will be written by some liberal with an axe to grind anyway).
Iran is a much bigger threat than Saddam and his mystery WMD ever was. He needs to get hot on doing something about Iraq's neighbor to the east before we all pay the price.
I'm with ya on this one Gunny- I myself am dissabled & can't do much but get the word out about the sad situation developing in America- but like you- all we can really do is sit, wait for it to come, decide to 'cross the line' so to speak by taking the war to those who would oppress us here in our own country, and wait for them to come & start shooting- The problem is to know when exactly to cross the line & break the law by defending ourselves? Will there be militias cropping up all over America? Will they dare buck the government? Anyone shooting a Muslim who is threatening them WILL be immediately thrown in prison in this PC country. The decision to arm and defend ourselves will certainly be a hard one to make! http://sacredscoop.com
Steel Wolf that plan could work only if the US managed to destory the Madhi Army and seriously cripple al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The size of the Madhi Army according to US intel has increased 11 fold this year alone thanks to the al-Qaeda attacks on the Shia.
The militias must be disarmed, al-Qaeda in Anbar must be very strongly weakened, and the Madhi Army must be put out to pasure if we draw down.
Otherwise it will end up being no different then when the Pentagon tried to force our troops below 100,000 in spring of 2004 and the situation exploded and more had to be sent in or the situation in 2006 when we were drawing down our forces and then the situation exploded and we had to send more.
Ping
CottShop, at least the right to use lethal force to ourselves and our property - including the surrounding land that I own - has not yet been taken away in this State. As for jail time as a result - that won't happen. I'll die on this 50 acres first. I'm already armed, as are all of my neighbors and relatives, and the decision to defend me and mine was made long ago. 250 years ago in fact.
Back that up with quotes and links, please. I've never heard him say anything remotely similar to this.........in fact, he frequently says the opposite.
We can't add more troops, for a number of reasons.
It is my understanding we ARE adding troops.
As for the rest of your fanciful hypothesis, you seem to be ignoring two things..........the President's words, and his character. He will not compromise anything based on "bi-partisanship" when it comes to Iraq. He will do what he believes is right, and continue doing what he has been doing all along.........allowing the Generals on the ground to determine troop levels and tactics, adjusting to the tactics of the enemy's actions.
Your theory may make sense to you, but you've made the whole thing up out of whole cloth.
That's a really interesting criticism, considering that his vision is for a permanent change in the ME...........something that he has been mocked for by leftists and isolationists alike. How do you get more 'far-sighted' than permanent?
As for your lack of 'confidence' in the President's willingness to prosecute the war, it seems that you aren't very well informed about what he does every day, and how this is the focal point of his entire administration. Where are you getting your information to the contrary? The MSM? Certainly not from anything he has said.
And just because he isn't doing what you want him to do to the letter don't think that he isn't serious about Iran and Syria.
Are you one of those we're-not-serious-about-terrorism-if-we-don't-kill-all-Muslims types?
Pukes.
But he's said as much many times, that the left's policies would be a disaster in the War on Terror (I heard him say it personally this summer).
Actually he came down hard on isolationists as well...........but they have the same view of Iraq. Run and hide. Just for different reasons.
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