Al
ISG bombshell a verdict on Bush’s foreign
policy
By Max J. Castro
The Iraq Study Group (ISG)
report exploded like a bombshell at a hardliners’ ball in Washington last week.
The message conveyed by everything, from the need for such a group to exist in
the first place, to the tone, words, and ideas of the report, was clear. George
W. Bush, his allies and enablers, have made such a fine mess that even the
wisest men and women in the nation, called in to clean things up, had a hard
time finding a formula to fix it. Instead of pretending to offer a nonexistent
prescription for certain victory, the ISG delivered a set of suggestions that it
hopes would at least avert disaster. To quote the report: “There is no path that
can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved.”
This is sobering stuff, yet
fantasies of omnipotence die hard in George W. Bush’s capital. Frustrated by
decades of diplomacy and détente with the Soviet bloc, angry about defeat in
Cuba and Vietnam, the Vulcans, that coterie of neoconservatives, militarists,
nationalists, and hawkish realists that came to define the Bush presidency, saw
the Iraq war as a dream come true. At last the United States, unfettered by dint
of the extinction of the competing superpower, with an administration
unconcerned by the exigencies of international law and unimpressed by the
opinions of others, even close allies, and with a panicked population easily
persuaded to support war through the manipulation of fear, could unleash its
power.
That this dream has become a
nightmare for the country and for the American and Iraqi people is clear from
the report of the ISG, a top level bipartisan commission composed of nine men
and one woman, chaired by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and
former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton.
The Baker-Hamilton report
begins by stating the obvious: “The situation in Iraq is grave and
deteriorating.” To reverse the descent into a deeper disaster, it recommends a
set of policies that strike at the heart of Bush’s foreign policy.
The policies recommended by
the ISG include the progressive transfer of combat duties from the U.S. military
to Iraqi forces and the conditioning of American support for the Iraqi
government on specific policy and performance criteria. More importantly -- and
even more unpalatable to hardcore Vulcans -- the report recommends a broad
diplomatic approach to the Middle East problem, including dialogue with Syria
and Iran. Most disturbing of all, not only to the Vulcans but to many in both
political parties, the ISG report recognizes the centrality of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the wider Middle East situation and reflects a
more evenhanded approach to the Israeli-Arab dispute than has been the case
under the current administration.
Thus, in sum, the ISG report
is nothing short of a verdict, rendered by a committee of the tribe’s elders, on
the disaster that George W. Bush and his band of hardliners has wrought and set
of recommendations for changing not only in the tactics used in Iraq but the
whole mindset and strategy of U.S. foreign policy in the region.
The Vulcans had called for
rolling back “rogue states” and promoting regime change in unfriendly and
undemocratic countries. Baker-Hamilton portends a different kind of rollback,
that of the neoconservative takeover of U.S. foreign policy.
The Vulcans, a virtual War
Party within the U.S. political system, were outraged. The War Party was angry;
the War Party was indignant. It vented. It went ballistic. Rightists of all
stripes from militarist hawks like Senator John McCain to rant radio demagogues
like Rush Limbaugh and the editors of the Wall Street Journal fired back.
They called the recommendations unrealistic and unworkable. They said it was a
formula for defeat, a ‘white flag’ alternative. The President himself played a
double game, praising the ISG report and signaling he would ignore or gut most
of its recommendations.
The Vulcans’ concern is not
paranoia. The ISG report, while hardly a progressive blueprint for U.S. foreign
policy, reflects an approach that departs sharply from the Vulcan mentality and
the Bush-Cheney-Rice school. On top of the debacle in Iraq, the increasing
unraveling of Afghanistan, and the stinging Republican electoral defeat, the
Baker-Hamilton report sounds like the death knell for the era of Vulcan
ascendancy.
The Vulcans see the world in
Manichean categories of absolute good and evil, of light against darkness, of us
against them. They sought to substitute military might, bullying, and
demonization for diplomacy. Preemptive war and an almost total identification
with and virtually unconditional support for Israel are hallmarks of the Vulcan
outlook.
The ISG report implicitly
perceives the world in a more complex, morally nuanced way, an arena in which
national actors try to advance competing but not necessarily irreconcilable
agendas and where diplomacy and negotiations are not synonymous with a series of
threats but involve real bargaining and compromises. The Baker-Hamilton report
is, in other words, as close to the antithesis of the Bush doctrine as one can
imagine being produced by a former Republican Secretary of State.
The end of Republican control
of the legislative branch, the demise of Rumsfeld and Bolton, and public
approval of the President’s handling of Iraq at 27 percent all seem to signal
the end of the cowboy moment in U.S. foreign policy. The ISG report may be seen
in retrospect as the funeral for the Vulcans.
But Bush still has two more
years and the War Party continues to hang on and to launch desperate attacks
against its ideological adversaries. This is not the time for newly-empowered
Democrats to let down their guard or get carried away by bipartisanship
rhetoric. Instead, this is the time to drive a stake through the heart of the
beast by exposing in every detail the awful record of this administration and
the shameful legacy of the twelve years of the Republican contract against
America.
|
