Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. After serving as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then 27 years as a CIA analyst, he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
President George W. Bush meets today with members of the James Baker-led Iraq Study Group against a background of chaos in Baghdad, a quisling Iraqi government demonstrably incapable of stemming the violence, and a resistance emboldened by the vote of no confidence given to the president’s Iraq policy last Tuesday.
The Iraq Study Group project was forced on a reluctant president by members of Congress last March, with Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., pushing the initiative. I had a brief conversation with Wolf in front of the House Rayburn office building in March. He had been to Iraq and echoed the party line that “We cannot withdraw our troops quickly”—but it seemed to me, without whole-hearted conviction. I had the impression that, even then, he sensed that neither could we stay.
Wolf moved mountains to set the study group in motion as a way of providing cover for the president if/when it became clear even to Bush that the approach authored by the Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal was not only amateurish but politically nonviable. In view of the upsurge in violence in Iraq and the midterm election results, the president may be able to recognize that that time has now come.
Today’s meeting with the president will be mostly White House photo-op, like the one orchestrated in early January with a dozen former secretaries of state and defense, who were given all of 10 minutes—that would be 50 seconds a piece—to “advise” the president on Iraq.
The Iraq Study Group is headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and the always eager to co-chair, co-star of the 9/11 commission whitewash , former Democrat Congressman Lee Hamilton. Other members of the Iraq Study Group are: Lawrence Eagleburger (who just replaced Robert Gates), Vernon Jordan, Edwin Meese, Sandra Day O’Connor, Leon Panetta, William Perry, Charles Robb and Alan Simpson. Also “bipartisan” are the group’s “Expert Working Groups” and “Military Senior Advisor Panel.” There sit a truly remarkable congeries of ideologues, think-tankers and captains of industry—sprinkled all too lightly with non-ideological former government officials with substantive expertise—like Larry Diamond, Chas Freeman and Wayne White.
We are told that all are sworn to secrecy on the substance of ISG discussions. But some are speaking openly about the issues at hand. Baker has said publicly he thinks it would be wise to include Syria and Iran in discussions on Iraq. And Panetta has commented on what he learned from U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic briefers when the ISG spent three days in Baghdad in early September. “We left some of those sessions shaking our heads over how bad it is in Iraq,” said Panetta, adding that private assessments are “much more grim” than what one hears from the administration in public.
One member of the “Economy and Reconstruction” sub-group, Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at Brookings, is speaking freely about what he calls the “mess” in Iraq and told ABC News that the administration will probably opt for incremental “pragmatic approaches, including involving Iran and Syria” to improve the situation in Iraq. The things being proposed, says O’Hanlon, are “a lot of second-level ideas that hopefully all together add up to something notable.”
Ret. Gen. John Keane of the “Military Senior Adviser Panel” takes a different tack. He recommends that 40,000 additional U.S. troops be sent to secure Baghdad. And Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., too, continues to press for sending more troops to Iraq as the only way to “salvage” the situation. McCain, a likely contender for president in 2008, seems to be positioning himself to avoid the blame that inevitably will be pinned on those who “lost Iraq.”
His comments echo the views of die-hard “neoconservatives” like Bill Kristol , which merit the Ralph Waldo Emerson label, “a foolish consistency.” Kristol is strongly against “staying the course,” but he presents the administration with an un-nuanced choice: “Do what is necessary to succeed or quit.” Kristol wants 50,000 more troops sent to Iraq to secure the capital and then conduct “clear and hold operations,” accompanied by “rapid steps to increase the overall size of American armed forces."
Emerson’s comment aside, don’t rule out a troop increase. That’s Vietnam deja vu , of course, but such untutored strategizing, with no adult supervision, is common among those who never took “Insurgency and Civil War: Vietnam 101.”
The contrast between the Iraq Study Group and the group of “Wise Men” who advised President Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam, after the Vietnam Tet offensive in early 1968, could hardly be starker. The Iraq group is touted as “bipartisan,” but this is the kiss of death. To be effective, such a group should be nonpartisan. Such was the group put together by presidential adviser Clark Clifford, at Johnson’s request, when Johnson could no longer avoid the conclusion that he had been badly advised by his generals and his always-up-beat inner circle.
Not only were the “Wise Men” nonpartisan, but the group was also comprised of experienced old hands—hardly an ideologue among them: Clifford, Harriman, Acheson, Generals Omar Bradley and Maxwell Taylor, McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Douglas Dillon, Rusk and Justice Abe Fortas. Equally important, they were supported not by a cast of thousands but a small group of military, diplomatic and intelligence officials dripping with expertise and courageous enough to speak truth to that powerful president.
The result? Within less than a month Johnson was persuaded the war was lost and so was his presidency. He curtailed the bombing of North Vietnam, chose the path of negotiations—yes, direct negotiations with the “insurgents”—and announced that he would not run again for president.
