Bringing Bush the Bad News on Iraq

The American public has been promised many a "turning point" in Iraq, only for its hopes to be dashed: The transfer of authority to an appointed Iraqi government, then to an elected one; the constitutional referendum and then a second election; meetings between the President and Iraqi leaders, security sweeps by combined U.S.-Iraqi forces, and more — none have delivered on the promise of transforming a slow moving catastrophe into a triumph. And it may be precisely that history of disappointments that prompted the Iraq Study Group to carefully manage public expectations, to the point that the American public is well aware that the proposals it will present to President Bush on Wednesday will offer no quick fix to the crisis the U.S. faces in Iraq.

Indeed, the composition and process of the group led by former Secretary of State James Baker and — as Baker always hastens to point out, lest its bipartisan character be overlooked — former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton suggests that its primary purpose is to achieve in Washington that which remains elusive in Baghdad: a national consensus on the way forward. And it was that point that President Bush chose to emphasize in his own response, stressing that it provides a basis for seeking "common ground."

The group's findings reflect a realization that the the goals with which the U.S. invaded Iraq — to replace Saddam Hussein's regime with a stable U.S.-allied democracy, that would serve as a model of transformation for a new Middle East — may be beyond reach for the foreseeable future. Iraq is far from stable, or likely to be any time soon, and its democratically elected government remains closer to Iran than it is to the U.S. Nor is the problem simply quantitative: Accelerating the training of Iraqi forces is all very well, but it's far from clear that those forces are being deployed with the political will to complete the national reconciliation process. Plainly, measures taken until now have failed to move that process forward, and the ISG reportedly proposes a flexible timetable for withdrawing troops, and a move to transfer responsibility for day-to-day combat to Iraqi forces within a year. It warns against allowing Iraqi leaders to expect an open-ended commitment of U.S. troops, in the hope that the prospect of their departure will scare the Iraqis into making compromises with one another. Then again, the sorts of compromises the U.S is envisaging may be more than the Iraqis who matter are prepared to countenance.

Still, while the U.S. Congress and electorate begin to bridle under the burden of the open-ended mission in Iraq — and public debate in Washington goes back and forth over whether the best way to bring the troops home is to temporarily "surge" their numbers or to begin drawing down — the elder statesmen of the ISG will be all too aware of the geopolitical stakes. Just as the U.S. is unlikely to win in Iraq, it also can't afford to simply give up and go home because the strategic consequences would be far more extensive than simply the blood, treasure and prestige squandered on a failed investment in regime-change. Iraq has become a battlefield on which all the major actors in the region are playing out their power struggles, and a precipitous U.S. departure would imperil a wide range of U.S. interests and allies in a region that remains the epicenter of global energy supplies. Although the ISG recommends has the U.S. put in place the infrastructure that would allow a near-term withdrawal: The security forces it has been building are primarily oriented towards maintaining internal stability; a national military equipped with the armor, artillery, missile capability and air force required to credibly defend Iraq's borders from external threats does not currently exist.

The ISG reiterates the view that the region's multiple crises are connected, and that the prospects for salvaging the Iraq outcome would be substantially improved by seeking a new regional consensus with actors such as Iran or Syria that cannot simply be wished or swept away. It also states what has long been blindingly obvious to all but the most ideologically committed: that U.S. prospects everywhere in the Arab world depend substantially on Washington's willingness to force a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — a key benchmark by which U.S. bona fides are judged in the region. Those recommendations may be the hardest to sell to an Administration that has thus far refrained from pressuring Israel to make peace with the Palestinians and has rejected talking to Iran and Syria.

But the group's conclusions are necessarily broad, aimed at setting a general strategic direction and asking more realistic questions of Iraq policy rather than at providing definitive answers. Indeed, the Baker group's appointment mirrored the practice of large corporations that bring in management consultants to recommend major overhauls of their organization and strategy. The premise is that the client — the corporate behemoth or the Bush Administration — is unable, in the course of its day-to-day struggles, to fully comprehend the forest for the trees, and needs to hear from objective voices outside of the bureaucratic feedback loop. But that puts the CEO under no obligation to heed the advice of the consultants, and President Bush has already made clear that he will treat the ISG's findings as but one of many inputs he'll seek. That's hardly surprising, because if Operation Iraqi Freedom defines the presidency of George W. Bush, then accepting anything less than victory will be a bitter pill for its commander-in-chief.