First: admiration for two of the best -- if not the very best -- reporters from Iraq. One is Ann Garrels. The other is her colleague, Jamie Tarabay. Both of them are consummate pros. They are (judging from the background noise in their reports) where the action is. They stay cool (if occasionally sounding exhausted and depressed by the slaughter). They are succinct and clear. They work in the hard light of reality and they don't spare themselves or us.
Next: admiration for someone with whom I don't always agree but who's always original and interesting. And talk about sometimes sounding depressed!.... Andrew Bacevich teaches at BU, is knowledgeable about military operations and policies. You've probably read or heard him speak dozens of times. He's been quoted in this blog any number of times and writes frequently for TomDispatch.
Today Bacevich warns in the Christian Science Monitor that the Iraq Study Group is nothing more than a damage control outfit. What will we get out of it? The Washington political establishment which is responsible for the mess will still be in place, unscathed, not called to account.
The ISG is antidemocratic. Its implicit message to Americans is this: We'll handle things - now go back to holiday shopping.
It contains no one who could be even remotely described as entertaining unorthodox opinions or maverick tendencies. Instead, it consists of Beltway luminaries such as retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and lobbyist Vernon Jordan. No member is now an elected official. Neither do its ranks include any Iraq war veterans, family members of soldiers killed in Iraq, or anyone identified with the antiwar movement. None possesses specialized knowledge of Islam or the Middle East.
The ISG is definitely not a truth commission, much as we'd like it to be. Members of the ISG are simply the couturiers of the emperor's latest outfit. The US may squiggle out of Iraq with its reputation in tatters but no fault for a costly failure will be assigned, nothing will be erected to stand in the way of our making the same mistakes, at ever greater cost, over and over again.
The ISG will provide cover for the Bush administration to shift course in Iraq. It will pave the way for the Democratic Congress to endorse that shift in a great show of bipartisanship. But it will hold no one responsible. Above all, it will leave intact the assumptions, arrangements, and institutions that gave rise to Iraq in the first place. In doing so, it will ensure that the formulation of foreign policy remains the preserve of political mahatmas like Baker and Hamilton, with the American people left to pick up the tab. In this way, the ISG will make possible - even likely - a repetition of some disaster akin to Iraq at a future date.
