In all the mess I have been dealing with today, I almost missed this. The Washington Post is NOT on board the Iraq Study Group's recommendations – not by a long shot.
THE IRAQ Study Group's recommendations for shifting U.S. military tactics in the war are specific, focused and aimed at incremental improvement over the next few months; they are also close to what the Pentagon and Iraqi government already were hoping to achieve. By contrast, the group's diplomatic strategy is sweeping — and untethered to reality. The Bush administration could and should adopt some version of the military plan, though it would be right to ignore the unrealistic timetable attached to it. But to embrace the group's proposed "New Diplomatic Offensive" would be to suppose a Middle East very different from what's on the ground.
Start with the supposition that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is somehow central to ending the chaos in Iraq. In fact, even if the two-state solution sought by the Bush administration were achieved, it's difficult to imagine how or why that would cause Sunnis and Shiites to cease their sectarian war in Baghdad or the Baathist-al Qaeda insurgency to stand down. It's no doubt true, as study group chairmen James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton have said, that every Arab leader they met told them that an Israeli-Arab settlement must be the first priority. But the princes and dictators of Riyadh, Cairo and Amman have been delivering that tired line to American envoys for decades: It is their favorite excuse for failing to support U.S. initiatives and for refusing to reform their own moribund autocracies. In fact, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Iraqi neighbors have vital interests in the ongoing Iraqi power struggle. They can and should be moved to help stop the slide toward anarchy on their borders whether or not peace breaks out in Jerusalem.
Mr. Baker, who pursued a Mideast diplomatic strategy 15 years ago focused in large part on Syria, also conjectures that its regime can be "flipped," so that it abandons its current alliance with Iran and support for extremist movements in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. The problem with his theory is that since 1991 Syria has acquired a new leader: Bashar al-Assad is very different from his father, Hafez, with whom Mr. Baker negotiated. Bashar al-Assad, along with several senior members of his retinue, has been personally implicated in a United Nations investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. Judging from its recent actions,….
What Baker appears to be more than willing to do is to sell Lebanon – cheap. He's done it before, why not now? The problem is – as it was in the past – that Baker's ideas here amount to nothing more than pushing the problem off to the future generations to deal with. Well, if he gets his way here, even though he was not elected in any way shape or form to make these decisions, then one has to hope – vehemently – that he is not around to "solve" the problem when payment comes due from this round.
And it will come due.
