[Dialogue] The Sunshine Boys

[FacilitationFla at aol.com]

The  Sunshine Boys Can’t Save Iraq 
By  _FRANK RICH_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/frankrich/index.html?inline=nyt-per)  
In  America we like quick fixes, closure  and an uplifting show. Such were 
the high hopes for the Iraq Study Group, and on  one of the three it delivered. 
_The report_ 
(http://www.usip.org/isg/iraq_study_group_report/report/1206/index.html)  of the 10  Washington elders was rolled out like a  heartwarming 
Hollywood holiday release. There  was a feel-good title, “The Way Forward,” 
unfortunately chosen as well by Ford  Motor to promote its _last-ditch plan to 
stave off bankruptcy_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/28/business/28ford.html) .  
There was a months-long buildup, with _titillating sneak previews_ 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/world/middleeast/30policy.html)  to whip up  
anticipation. There was the gala publicity tour on opening day, starting with a  
_President Bush cameo_ 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061206.html)  timed  for morning television and building to a “Sunshine Boys” _curtain 
call by James Baker and Lee  Hamilton on “Larry King Live._ 
(http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0612/06/lkl.01.html) ”  
The  wizard behind it all was the public relations giant Edelman, which has 
lately  been _recruited by Wal-Mart_ 
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116546004468643061.html)  to  put down the populist insurgency threatening its bottom 
line. Edelman’s vice  chairman is Michael Deaver, the imagineer extraordinaire 
of the Reagan  presidency, and “The Way Forward” had a nostalgic dash of that 
old  Morning-in-America vibe. In The Washington Post, David Broder _gushingly 
quoted_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/05/AR2006120501127.html)  one  member of the group, Alan Simpson, musing that “
immigration, Social Security and  all those other things that have been hung up for 
so long” might benefit from  similar ex-officio bipartisanship. Only in Washing
ton could an unelected panel of  retirees pass for public-policy Viagra.  
Mr.  Simpson notwithstanding, the former senator who most comes to mind is 
Daniel  Patrick Moynihan of New  York. In the early 1990’s he famously coined 
the phrase  “defining deviancy down” to describe the erosion of civic standards 
for what  constitutes criminal behavior. In 2006, our governmental ailment is 
defining  reality down. “The Way Forward” is its apotheosis.  
This  syndrome begins at the top, with the president, who has cut and run 
from reality  in Iraq for nearly four years. His case  is extreme but hardly 
unique. Take Robert Gates, the next defense secretary, who  was hailed as a 
paragon of realism by Washington last week simply for _agreeing with his Senate  
questioners_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/05/AR2006120500152.html)  that we’re “not winning” in Iraq. While that may be a  
step closer to candor than Mr. Bush’s “_absolutely, we’re winning_ 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061025.html) ”  of late October, it’s 
hardly the whole truth and nothing but. The actual reality  is that we have 
lost in Iraq.  
That’s  what Donald Rumsfeld at long last acknowledged, between the lines, as 
he fled  the Pentagon to make way for Mr. Gates. The most revealing passage 
in his _parting memo_ 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/middleeast/03mtext.html)  listing possible options for  the war was his suggestion that public 
expectations for success be downsized so  we would “therefore not ‘lose.’ ” 
By putting the word lose in quotes, Mr.  Rumsfeld revealed his hand: the 
administration must not utter that L word even  though lose is exactly what we’ve 
done. The illusion of not losing must be  preserved no matter what the price 
in blood.  
The  Iraq Study Group takes a similarly disingenuous tack. Its account of how 
the  country Mr. Bush called a “_grave and gathering  danger_ 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020912-1.html) ” in September 2002 has 
devolved into a “grave and  deteriorating” catastrophe today is unsparing and 
accurate. But everyone except  the president knew this already, and that patina 
of realism evaporates once the  report moves from diagnosis to prescription.  
Its  recommendations are bogus because the few that have any teeth are 
completely  unattainable. Of course, it would be fantastic if additional Iraqi 
troops would  stand up en masse after an infusion of new American military 
advisers. And if  reconciliation among the country’s warring ethnicities could be 
mandated on a  tight schedule. And if the Bush White House could be persuaded to 
persuade  Iran and Syria to “influence events” for  America’s benefit. It 
would also be  nice if we could all break the bank in Vegas. 
The  group’s coulda-woulda recommendations are either nonstarters, 
equivocations (it  endorses withdrawal of combat troops by 2008 but is averse to 
timelines) or  contradictions of its own findings of fact. To take just one example: 
Even if we  could wave a magic wand and quickly create thousands more military 
advisers (and  Arabic-speaking ones at that), there’s no reason to believe 
they could build a  crack Iraqi army and police force where all those who came 
before have failed.  As the report points out, the loyalties and capabilities 
of the existing units  are suspect as it is.  
By  prescribing such placebos, the Iraq Study Group isn’t plotting a way 
forward but  delaying the recognition of our defeat. Its real aim is to enact a 
charade of  progress to pacify the public while Washington waits, no doubt in 
vain, for Mr.  Bush to return to the real world. The tip-off to the cynical game 
can be found  in a single sentence: “We agree with the goal of U.S. policy in 
Iraq, as stated by the president: ‘an  Iraq that can govern itself, sustain  
itself, and defend itself.’ ” This studious group knows that even that modest 
 goal, a radical devaluation of the administration’s ambition to spread 
democracy  throughout the Middle East, has long been proven a mirage. The Iraqi  
government’s ability to defend anything is so inoperative that the group’s  
members visited the country but once, with just one (Chuck Robb) _daring to leave 
the Green Zone_ 
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/world/middleeast/09baker.html) . The _Bush-Maliki rendezvous_ 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/11/20061130-1.html)  10  days ago was at the Four Seasons hotel in Amman.  
The  only recommendations that might alter that reality, however 
evanescently, come  not from “The Way Forward” but from its critics on the right who want 
 significantly more troops and no withdrawal timetables whatsoever. But a  
Pentagon review leaked to The Washington Post three weeks ago estimates that a  
true counterinsurgency campaign would “_require several hundred thousand  
additional U.S. and Iraqi soldiers as well as heavily armed Iraqi  police,_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/19/AR2006111901249.html
) ” not the 20,000 or so envisioned as a short-term booster shot  by John 
McCain.  
Since  these troops don’t exist and there is no public support in either  
America or  Iraq for mobilizing them, the  president can’t satisfy the hawks even 
if he chooses to do so. Since he’s also  dead set against a prompt 
withdrawal, we already know what his policy will be,  no matter how many “reviews” he 
conducts. He will stay the course, with various  fake-outs along the way to 
keep us from thinking we’ve “lost,” until the whole  mess is deposited in the 
lap of the next president. 
But  _as Chuck Hagel said last  week_ 
(http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec06/congress_12-06.html) , “The impending disaster in Iraq is  
unwinding at a rate that we can’t quite calibrate.” It is yet another, even more 
 reckless flight from reality to suppose that the world will stand still 
while we  dally. The Iraq Study Group’s insistence on dragging out its 
deliberations until  after Election Day for the sake of domestic politics mocked and 
undermined the  urgency of its own mission. Meanwhile the violence metastasized. 
_Eleven more of our  soldiers_ 
(http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-12-07-casualties_x.htm)  were killed on the day the group finally put on its 
show.  The antagonists in Iraq are not about to take a recess  while we celebrate 
Christmas. The mass exodus of Iraqis, some 100,000 per month,  was labeled “
_the fastest-growing refugee crisis in  the world_ 
(http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/9679) ” by Refugees International last week 
and might soon rival  Darfur’s. 
THE  Iraq-Vietnam parallels at this juncture are striking. In January 1968, 
L.B.J.  replaced his arrogant failed defense secretary, Robert McNamara, with a 
 practiced Washington hand, Clark Clifford. The war’s  violence boiled over 
soon after (Tet), prompting a downturn in American public  opinion. Allies in 
our coalition of the willing — Thailand, the Philippines, Australia — had  
balked at tossing in new troops. Clifford commissioned a re-evaluation of  
American policy that churned up such ideas as a troop pullback, increased  training 
of South Vietnamese forces and a warning to the South Vietnamese  government 
that American assistance would depend on its performance. In March, a  
bipartisan group of wise men (from Dean Acheson to Omar Bradley) was summoned to  the 
White House, where it seconded the notion of  disengagement. 
But  there the stories of Vietnam  and Iraq diverge. Those wise men, unlike  
the Iraq Study Group, were clear in their verdict. And that Texan president,  
unlike ours, paid more than lip service to changing course. He abruptly  
announced he would abjure re-election, restrict American bombing and entertain  the 
idea of peace talks. But as Stanley Karnow recounts in “Vietnam: A  History,”
 it was already too late, after some 20,000 casualties and three years  of 
all-out war, for an easy escape: “The frustrating talks were to drag on for  
another five years. More Americans would be killed in Vietnam than had  died 
there previously. And the United States itself would be torn  apart by the worst 
internal upheavals in a century.” 
The  lesson in that is clear and sobering: As bad as things may seem now, 
they can  yet become worse, and not just in Iraq. The longer we pretend that we  
have not lost there, the more we risk losing other wars we still may salvage,  
starting with Afghanistan. 
The  members of the Iraq Study Group are all good Americans of proven service 
to  their country. But to the extent that their report forestalls reality and 
 promotes pipe dreams of _one last chance_ 
(http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2006/12/post_2197.html#014729)  for  success in this fiasco, it will be 
remembered as just one more delusional  milestone in the tragedy of our age.
 
Cynthia N.  Vance
Strategics International Inc.
8245 SW 116 Terrace
Miami, Florida,  33156
305-378-1327; fax 305-378-9178
_http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla_ 
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