|
Analysis: Bush rejects Iraq Study Group
report
8.12.2006
|
|
|
|
December 8, 2006
President Bush on Thursday made it clear that he
rejected the conclusions and policy prescriptions of
the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel headed by
former Secretary of State James Baker and former
Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton.
The panel’s report presented a grim assessment of
the US position in Iraq and concluded that Bush’s
military and diplomatic policies had failed. But
less than 24 hours after it was issued, Bush
reiterated his perspective of military victory in
Iraq and rejected the panel’s call for a revamped
military strategy combined with a diplomatic
initiative to salvage the US position, including
direct talks with Syria and Iran.
Appearing at a joint press conference with British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush thanked the panel
and praised its report, calling it a “serious study”
and “very constructive,” and then proceeded to
dismiss its findings.
He signaled his rejection of the report in his
opening remarks, in which he pointedly spoke of
“victory” in Iraq. He rehashed his stock phrases
casting the US aggression in Iraq as part of a
global “ideological struggle” between the forces of
“extremism” and “hate,” on the one side, and
“democracy,” “freedom” and “civilization” on the
other.
He once again invoked 9/11, and compared the
conflict in Iraq with World War Two, citing the
December 7 Pearl Harbor anniversary to declare: “In
that war, our nation stood firm. And there were
difficult moments during that war, yet the leaders
of our two nations never lost faith in their
capacity to prevail. We will stand firm again in
this first war of the 21st century.”
The “crusade for democracy” rhetoric, recycled from
scores of previous speeches, took on added
significance in light of the Iraq Study Group’s
decision to dispense with the democratic pretenses
of the US occupation. The Iraq panel, as well as
Bush’s nominee to take over the Pentagon, Robert
Gates, made it clear that in their view the goal in
Iraq was not a made-in-the-USA “democracy,” but
rather an Iraqi client regime capable of ensuring
some modicum of security and stability.
Bush downplayed the Iraq Study Group report by
presenting it as one in a number of policy studies
currently underway, including assessments being
prepared by the Pentagon, the State Department and
the National Security Council.
In the question-and-answer period, he bluntly
rejected the Baker-Hamilton panel’s call for direct
talks with Syria and Iran as part of a diplomatic
initiative throughout the Middle East aimed at
stabilizing the Iraqi regime, and he implicitly
rejected the conclusion of the panel that a US
disaster in Iraq could be averted only through a
renewed effort to restart peace talks between Israel
and the Palestinians.
He reiterated his position that the US would not
talk to Iran until it agreed to suspend its nuclear
enrichment program. “We’ve made our choice. Iran now
has a responsibility to make its choice,” he
declared.
Similarly, he ruled out talks with Syria until it
agreed to a series of US demands concerning its role
in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority.
“We’ve made that position very clear. And the truth
of the matter is that these countries have now got
the choice to make,” he said.
While the Iraq Study Group report characterized the
situation in Iraq as “grave and deteriorating” and
warned that the US is losing influence and “time is
running out,” Bush merely conceded that he was
“disappointed with the pace of success.”
To underscore his commitment to a policy of
continued, and, if anything, intensified military
violence, he declared: “There’s an ideological clash
going on. And the question is: Will we have the
resolve and the confidence in liberty to prevail?...
it’s not going to face this government, because we
made up our mind.”
The swift rebuff delivered by the US president to
the findings of a panel headed by James Baker—who
was secretary of state in his father’s
administration and has repeatedly served as an
establishment political fixer— has intensified the
political crisis and the bitter divisions within US
ruling circles over Iraq.
Opposition to the panel’s proposals also found
expression during testimony by Baker and Hamilton
before the Senate Armed Services Committee on
Thursday.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of the leading
contenders for the 2008 Republican presidential
nomination, denounced the panel’s call for
withdrawing all US combat brigades from Iraq by
2008, terming it a “recipe that will lead to our
defeat in Iraq.” He likewise rejected its finding
that the US military is stretched too thin to
sustain a major increase in the deployment of
occupation troops in Iraq.
He rejected the proposal for opening talks with Iran
and Syria, declaring, “I don’t believe that a peace
conference with people who are dedicated to your
extinction has much short-term gain.”
McCain was joined in criticizing the panel’s report
by Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who
bluntly questioned the proposal for talks with Iran
and Syria, and Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican,
South Carolina), who also has advocated a sharp
increase in the US troop deployment in Iraq.
A leading Democrat, Senator Joseph Biden of
Delaware, the incoming chair of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, has likewise criticized the
Iraq Study Group report’s proposal for a US-led
effort to revive peace talks between Israel and the
Palestinian Authority, on the one hand, and Syria,
on the other. “The notion that an Israeli
-Palestinian peace settlement would end a civil war
in Iraq defies common sense,” said Biden, in a
speech to the Israel Policy Forum.
For his part, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on
Thursday rejected the Iraq Study Group proposals.
“The attempt to create a linkage between the Iraqi
issue and the Mideast issue—we have a different
view,” said Olmert. He added, “To the best of my
knowledge, President Bush, throughout the recent
years, also had a different view on this.”
Opposition to the panel’s recommendations found
their most hostile expression in the Thursday’s lead
editorial of the Wall Street Journal, a paper that
has consistently reflected the right-wing views
within the Bush administration.
Entitled “The Iraq Muddle Group,” the editorial
declared, “...the way to success in Iraq lies in
stronger US support for Baghdad’s Shiite-led
governing coalition, not in some bipartisan
strategic muddle ginned up for domestic political
purposes.”
The Journal noted approvingly, however, that the
report did serve at least one “useful purpose.” It
stated: “In calling for a withdrawal of most US
troops by 2008—if security conditions allow—the
report rejects any rapid withdrawal or deadline.
Likewise, it reinforces the case Mr. Bush has been
making about the ugly consequences of failure in
Iraq for American interests.” This position, the
paper added, would serve “to isolate the get-out-now
left.”
The Iraq Study Group report is by no means a
prescription for ending the US intervention in Iraq.
The concrete proposals contained in the document
envision tens of thousands of troops remaining in
Iraq for the foreseeable future, including “rapid
reaction” and “special operations” forces as well as
US airpower, along with the 20,000 embedded
“advisors.” The utilization of such a force could
prove more lethal—in terms of Iraqi and US
casualties alike—than the present troop deployment.
The findings also include specific recommendations
“to reorganize the [Iraqi] national oil industry as
a commercial enterprise;” i.e., subordinating it to
the interests of US finance capital and the major
oil conglomerates.
One significant passage buried in the
recommendations concerning “a military strategy for
Iraq” notes that, while the panel concluded that a
sustained deployment of a substantially increased
number of troops—100,000 to 200,000 more—was not
feasible, “We could, however, support a short-term
redeployment of American combat forces to stabilize
Baghdad.”
Significantly, the demand for a short-term
escalation of the US deployment has also been taken
up by a leading member of the incoming Democratic
leadership in Congress. Representative Silvestre
Reyes of Texas, who is to take the chairmanship of
the House Intelligence Committee, told Newsweek
magazine this week that he supports deploying
another 30,000 US troops to “take out the militias
and stabilize Iraq.”
Such proposals, from both sides of the aisle in
Congress, as well as within the Iraq Study Group
report itself, suggest that, in the short term,
American imperialism is preparing for a major
escalation of the bloodbath in Iraq, most likely
through the launching of simultaneous offensives
against both Sunni resistance movements and the Shia
militias in Baghdad’s teeming Sadr City.
The divisions that have surfaced over the report
concern not merely military and political tactics in
Iraq and the Middle East, but even more importantly
the political situation in the US itself.
“Continued problems in Iraq could lead to greater
polarization within the United States,” the report
warns, noting the two-thirds majority that presently
opposes the war. It suggests that the tactical
shifts proposed by the panel would enable the
administration to demand “the broad support of the
American people” and dampen antiwar sentiments.
The conflict within the American ruling elite over
US policy in Iraq has brought to a head a protracted
crisis of American democracy. One expression of this
crisis is the spectacle of Bush—in the name of
promoting democracy in the Middle East—declaring
that a national election in which the voters
repudiated the war in Iraq will have no impact on
his policy in Iraq or anywhere else.
One month after the US congressional elections, it
is increasingly clear that government policy cannot
be changed by a popular vote. Despite the disastrous
results of his policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and
elsewhere, Bush feels he can defy popular opinion
and even the views of considerable sections of the
ruling elite. There are several reasons for this.
First, for all their differences, all sections of
the ruling elite, and both of its parties, are
implicated in the illegal war in Iraq, and all are
agreed that an outright defeat would have
catastrophic consequences for US imperialism— in
Iraq, in the Middle East, and throughout the world.
It would, moreover, have socially and politically
explosive ramifications within the US.
Second, Bush and his allies represent in the most
consistent and ruthless form the global imperialist
aims of the US ruling elite as a whole.
Third, there is nothing that can seriously be called
an opposition party within the American political
establishment. Bush is confident that he cannot be
forced to change his policy in Iraq because the only
means within the US constitutional system to do so,
the initiation of impeachment proceedings, has been
rejected by the Democrats.
wsws org
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 