Has any report in recent memory delivered so little after being anticipated so much?
A commission on the war in Iraq recommended new and enhanced diplomacy Wednesday so the United States can "begin to move its combat forces" out of the country responsibly.
The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating," the commission warned after an eight-month review of a conflict that has killed more than 2,800 U.S. troops and grown increasingly unpopular at home.
Gee, do you think? "Grave and deteriorating"? Really? The report doesn't say, "Send in enough troops to get the job done." It doesn't say, "End this mess right now." Both those would be defensible options. It just says, "Well, let's get Iraqis ready to handle things so we can come home." Just muddle through the way we are now, in other words, but do it better. These people are foreign-policy experts?
"Getting out of the country responsibly," by the way, is just a way of saying "peace with honor" with less eloquence, so the results are easy to anticipate.
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In a way, one could conclude the report says a great deal, in that we have become so used to liberals trashing every detail of the war for partisan purposes that it is reassuring to affirm that our administration was not out of touch with the reality on the ground despite their wild political antics.
Yes it's rough, yes the generals on the ground have been mostly accurate in their assessment, and no, we can't just yank our troops out today -- as so many career peaceniks swore on their mothers was the "intellectually correct" course.
This report clashes with every conclusion about leftist criticism but one: Those who claimed the intellectually correct action was to pull out were wrong on both counts: "Intellectual," and "correct." Their incessant criticism has been neither -- apparently.
Personally, I feel SO much better knowing the panel was comprised of such military luminaries as Vernon Jordan and Leon Panetta. Thank goodness we were able to assemble such a qualified panel of military strategists.
Never ceases to amaze, eh?
But Tim, do you really think a panel of any make-up could have reached conclusions much different than these? Did anybody think an immediate pull-out was really possible?
Did anybody believe that there was a realistic option to exodus from Iraq Vietnam-style, loading helicopters from the rooftops of embassies, thereby forfeiting America's best effort to help countless good Iraqi citizens?
If the panel was stacked with partisans, I'll join you in your protest gladly. I would think real partisans would have given Bush's tactics a better review, but never mind that.
What do we do now, that is responsible and humane, in the face of a percolating civil war, that does not involve simply running away and taking America's irreplaceable resources with us?
If neutralizing Iraq as a power in the mid-East was the goal, sure, then we can pull out, let civil war finish the job and call our military action a success (which it frankly is anyway more or less, in terms of lancing the boil in the mid-East, and draining the swamp). In that case, conservatives and liberals are on the same page in a way. Both will be content to pull out, and both will feel like political winners. I think that outcome would be an unintended consequence for a lot of Americans who hoped we'd leave Iraq a little better than we found it, of course.
If liberals succeed in just cutting and running in a matter of months and leaving Iraq to its fate, they play into the hands of just about everybody else on the planet. If that's okay with them, well, who am I to argue...
Steve, my point was simply how absurd the entire excercise was. We didn't need eight months and a panel of non-experts (and god knows how many tax dollars) to tell us what we were already well aware of,
I.E. we need to freakin' win...quickly.... increase troop levels and move from east to west blowing the bejesus out of mosques harboring Al Sadr sympathizers is a great place to start.
Tim --
You and I do not disagree. The unfortunate part of it is that a lot of people apparently DID need the exercise of eight months and another commission to underscore the fact that what we already knew was not administration hype but basically the truth.
Thank some fringe liberals for casting doubt on the obvious -- and causing the waste of money to debunk their alarmist disinformation campaigns.
I wonder how much money has been spent over the ages undoing the damage wrought by the propaganda of frustrated radicals.
Merry Christmas and that goes all around.
I guess there had to be an actual report to say that Bush's "stay the course" attitude is wrong. We obviously can't just leave. It's a mess. We need to pressure their "government" to get a plan to bring things under control and set a timeline for when we will leave. We can't stay over there forever. There is so much corruption even with their officials and police that it would be difficult to make anything out of the mess in their country until the people get more involved. If Bush had replaced Rumsfield a LONG time ago, someone may have come up with a solution by now.