The Irrelevant Study Group

By now it's pretty clear that the worst President ever (hey, I didn't say it, blame the historian dude at the link) will ignore anything but the most tangential of recommendations from the Iraq Study Group. Sure, he'll probably like the one where the group demands the privatization of the Iraqi oil industry (by the way, it looks like the Iraqi Parliament is already out in front on that recommendation). But on anything other than a change in tactics, the Administration will resist and reject.

Talks with Iran and Syria? Na ga happen, even though the Iranian Foreign Minister is making overtures and offers of help.

Eventual withdrawal? Leaving equals losing, you can forget that.

Recognition of mistakes? No way, this guy's Harry Frickin' Truman:

Bush began his talk by comparing himself to President Harry S Truman, who launched the Truman Doctrine to fight communism, got bogged down in the Korean War and left office unpopular.

Bush said that "in years to come they realized he was right and then his doctrine became the standard for America," recalled Senate Majority Whip-elect Richard Durbin, D-Ill. "He's trying to position himself in history and to justify those who continue to stand by him, saying sometimes if you're right you're unpopular, and be prepared for criticism."

Durbin said he challenged Bush's analogy, reminding him that Truman had the NATO alliance behind him and negotiated with his enemies at the United Nations. Durbin said that's what the Iraq Study Group is recommending that Bush do now - work more with allies and negotiate with adversaries on Iraq.

Bush, Durbin said, "reacted very strongly. He got very animated in his response" and emphasized that he is "the commander in chief."

All of this was quite obvious from the moment that this Study Group was chaired. The President is still controlled by the group of magical thinkers that still believe if they wish upon a star they'll find the magic bullet for winning the war. The ISG disgracefully punted the question of withdrawal down the field a year and gave the President a convenient out. Meanwhile the magical thinkers and their media allies pounced on the report as advocating surrender, giving the President the leeway to say "well, there's a lot of controversy and difference of opinion, so I'll just do what I think's right." This is happening even though a tiny minority of the public agree with the dead-enders who want more American kids to die.

What the White House is trying to do is make it look like they're taking the report seriously without taking any of it seriously at all:

"We have a classic case of circling the wagons," says a former adviser to Bush the elder. "If President Bush changes his policy in Iraq in a fundamental way, it undermines the whole premise of his presidency. I just don't believe he will ever do that."

White House advisers say Bush won't react in detail to the ISG report for several weeks, while he assesses it and awaits various internal government reports on the situation from his own advisers. Bush tells aides he doesn't want to "outsource" his role as commander in chief. Some Bush allies say this is a way to buy some time as the president tries to decide how to deal with rising pressure to alter his strategy in Iraq and hopes the critical media focus on the Iraq war will soften.

He's trying to ride the wave and hope all the criticism blows over. I'm sure military families are real thrilled with such a tactic. Instead of any kind of strategy to get their sons and daughters out of harm's way, the President is literally hiding behind a tree stump. And he's actually happy the ISG didn't come up with a solution:

Dan Senor, a former administration spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, said that in conversations with administration officials, they had dismissed many of the report’s recommendations as “not terribly realistic from an operational standpoint.”

He said former colleagues had told him they felt comforted by the recognition that there were no good options, because despite all of the intellect brought to the endeavor, the members of the panel had failed to make the leap from strategy to implementation. “It’s easy to suggest these steps in theory, but we haven’t been able to figure out the how,” Mr. Senor said. “Now, neither have these 10 wise men and woman.”

Good thing there are no good options, right? Wouldn't want anything like a good option or a positive outcome to intrude on this lovely little war. If there were good options, the war might have to end! And what good could come of that?

Meanwhile, as revelations slowly trickle out of the report, like the fact that US intelligence sources in Iraq still have no clue about "the Iraq insurgency, the role of militias or the level of violence in that country," or that the Iraqi police don't have the legal authority to conduct criminal investigations, you get an even clearer picture of this unfolding disaster. That's the only thing this report did accomplish; it told the truth about Iraq in very stark terms, despite letting everybody off the hook as to how to manage it. But telling the truth, as Orwell said, is a revolutionary act. It led the milquetoast Juan Williams to lose his shit today:

WILLIAMS: This is really — sometimes i just want to scream. You guys have been going on since this thing began. I mean, you don’t give credit to people, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Barbara Lee, people who said from the start this is a mistake. You put them down. Now it’s everybody’s a surrender monkey or impatient or squeamish or weak. Why can’t you say, hey, there’s a real problem in Iraq?

It led William Arkin to use the first half of the report to skewer the second:

The wise men have confirmed what the American public has known for some time: Iraq is finished. Our strategy, whatever it is, isn't working. It is mighty disappointing, but not surprising, though that the Study Group couldn't see that there is nothing left that the United States can do to really influence what will happen there. What is more, what it actually is proposing in its two fundamental points isn't necessarily going to make any difference [...]

Here's how I see Iraq playing out in the short term: The president makes an announcement within a month about his "new" plan. Washington is ever so pleased with a new approach. But the a la carte plan is seen by the Iraqis for what it is; it is not a U.S. timetable for withdrawal. It is not an unequivocal pledge not to establish permanent bases. It is sovereignty and authority in name only for Iraq with continued American control behind the scenes. I can't see who any of this equivocation will deflate the insurgency or stem the hatred for America that is fueled by our presence.

The "plan," in other words, is neither what the American people nor the Iraqi people want.

Over the next week there's going to be the illusion of activity. Everybody will busily brief the President, at State, at Defense, and elsewhere. Then a week from Monday there will be a speech with much pomp and circumstance. There will be talk of a new way forward, and very specific, granular bullet points accompanying it.

None of it will mean a thing. This entire effort to get President "I'm Harry Frickin' Truman!" to pay attention to reality will have been a futile one. We are at a crossroads where the sensible know Iraq is a failure but those in power don't want to accept it. The Administration would rather there be no good outcome than one that leads to redeployment, just remember that.