WASHINGTON: Gordon Smith stood up on the Senate floor, his voice slow and serious. The Republican Senator from Oregon had been an ultra-loyal supporter of the Iraq war and President Bush. Until last week.
Now he had changed his mind. Smith labelled US policy in Iraq absurd and 'maybe even criminal'. He had been spurred to speak, he said, by White House reaction to last week's Iraq Study Group (ISG) report. 'Let's cut and run, or cut and walk ... because we have fought this war in a very lamentable way,' Smith told colleagues.
It was an astonishing speech made all the more so by Smith's previously spotless Republican pro-war credentials. But then it has been a remarkable week in Washington. The ISG report spelt out the sheer scale of the disaster in Iraq. Many experts saw it as a devastating indictment of Bush's policies. But the panel, headed by Bush family friend James Baker and former Democrat congressman Lee Hamilton, also laid out a blueprint for success. Its 79 recommendations envisioned a gradual withdrawal of US combat troops by 2008 and a diplomatic offensive to engage Iran and Syria to bring stability to the country.
Many expected Bush and his coterie of top officials to accept the report. Or at least be chastened by it. In fact, neither happened. Just as the report exposed the divisions in Iraq, it also revealed the chasms in American attitudes to the conflict. Bush's reaction revealed a White House still determined to go its own way. Far from looking for a way out, he is still looking for a way to win the war. 'Some people believe the central challenge is how the US can leave Iraq. He believes the central challenge is how to make it work. He wants victory,' said Larry Haas, a political commentator and former Clinton White House official.For those who hoped Baker and his bipartisan committee would at last offer a way out of Iraq and an end to the war, last week turned into a deep disappointment. Only one thing became clear: the US military presence in Iraq is not going anywhere soon.Before the end of the year, most likely before Christmas, Bush will appear on prime time television. He will outline what his officials are dubbing 'The New Way Forward' for Iraq. The specifics of that policy are not yet known. But they are unlikely to be a full implementation of the ISG report.
Three other reviews of Iraq policy are currently being carried out. One by the military, another by the National Security Council and a third by the State Department. All will be presented to Bush over the next week or so. Only then will the White House begin crafting its own policy. What will emerge - despite all the media huffing and puffing - is likely to be little different from the current policy of standing down US troops only when Iraqi forces are capable of independent action. “I don't expect any major lurches in our policy,” said a senior diplomatic source.
Perhaps the most important report Bush will receive will be from a military panel headed by General Peter Pace. That report is likely to suggest a range of options dubbed 'Go Strong, Go Long or Go Home'. It could recommend increasing troop numbers in a short-term 'surge' to bring stability to Baghdad and then settling in for the long haul while trying to bring the Iraqi army up to speed.
That is also the thinking behind the National Security Council's research, headed by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. In a leaked memo Hadley has described bringing additional US combat troops into Baghdad. These reports, unlike the ISG, were commissioned by the White House and are likely to be received more warmly by Bush. “The Baker report was embraced only by the media. A lot of people on the right see it as defeatist and naive,” Haas said.
Bush's New Way Forward is likely to disappoint many critics, especially in European diplomatic circles. He is most likely to start increasing short-term troop number, not withdrawing them. Just two days before he resigned, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Bush in a memo that he believed US troops should be 'drawn down' to encourage Iraqis to stand up for themselves. The new Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, will in fact pursue the opposite of that policy by ordering an increase in troops in the new year, numbering perhaps 30,000 in order to secure the capital.
Though Baker has warned that the White House should not treat his report 'like a fruit salad' and only choose bits of it, that is exactly what is set to happen. Bush has already shown himself sceptical of its two key suggestions: no US combat brigades in Iraq within 15 months and direct talks with Iran and Syria. The clearest signal of Bush's thinking was provided at his White House press conference with Tony Blair. “History will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know what happened,” he said. “How come free nations did not act to preserve the peace?”
There is an element of that 'big picture' attitude in British policy-making circles too. Though there has been much talk of a British handover of Basra in the spring, that is far from a withdrawal. “The idea that we are going to pack our bags and scoot early won't happen if there is any chance that we have to go back again,” said one senior British defence source.
There is also a brutal political reality at work. The ISG report is entirely non-binding. The only decisions that really matter are made in the White House. The same goes for the rivalry last week between Baker, who was Secretary of State under the elder George Bush, and the current office holder Condoleezza Rice. Baker may have first known Rice when she was just a Soviet analyst during the Cold War, but she calls the shots now. While last week Baker was conducting high-profile interviews against her diplomatic strategy and urging talks with Iran and Syria, Rice, a known advocate of isolating Syria and Iran diplomatically, remained silent. By the end of last week Baker seemed to have given up. He told one interviewer he would take part in today's morning political talkshows but after that he would stop speaking out. “I'm finished,” he said.
But reality has a way of penetrating even the bubble surrounding the White House. The ISG report, even if ignored, spelled out the facts on the ground in Iraq and signalled the end of the neo-conservative dream of reshaping the Middle East. “It shows that everybody has finally recognised the reality of the situation in Iraq,” said Larry Johnson, a counter-terrorism expert formerly in the State Department and the CIA.
The ISG report has given the Democrats a vital political boost and allows them to solve their problem of having no unified policy on Iraq. Because the panel was bipartisan it lets the party embrace a firm strategy on the war without appearing unpatriotic. At the same time it splits the Republican party between the White House and its members in Congress. While the White House can cling to ideas of staying the course, they do so in the knowledge that no one in the administration will have to face another election campaign. That is not true for Republican politicians smarting from their defeat in the midterm elections or White House hopefuls with an eye on the 2008 presidential campaign.
Thus the ISG report does represent the end of a brand of neo-con philosophy whereby democracy could be exported to the Middle East on the back of a successful invasion of Iraq. “Even the most ardent supporters of the war accept that that has changed,” said Haas. —Dawn/The Observer News Service
