*** Gates will be drawing on his experience and contacts from Bush’s father’s administration, including Baker and former security adviser Brent Scowcroft.
“Gates’ world is Brent Scowcroft and Baker and a whole bunch of people who felt the door had been slammed in their face,” one former official who has discussed Iraq at length with Gates said Thursday. “The door is about to reopen.”
Bad to worse. The problem with the "realists"--Baker, Scowcroft, Gates--is that their grip on reality seems to be tenuous. If Iraq really is a disaster, as they seem to think, why on earth would Iran and Syria help us out of it? Why would they change their policy of seeking to foment violence there? This report amplifies the "realists'" thinking somewhat:
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who plans to speak to the commission via video link on Tuesday, reportedly will urge the Bush administration to open talks with Syria and Iran and push for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a way of defusing Mideast tensions.
[Chief of Staff Josh] Bolten was asked whether the Bush administration was ready to make a new effort to get involved in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. "We'll see. The timing has to be right and it has to be something that both the Israelis and the Palestinians want," he said.
As far as I can see, the "realists" haven't had a new idea in thirty years. What does Israel have to do with the fact that Shia and Sunni Muslims want to tear each other to pieces? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'll say it again: the idea that pressuring Israel to compromise its security will somehow, magically, solve the Iraqis' problems is delusional. Maybe Baker et al., know something I don't, but the idea that Iran and Syria will cooperate to bring peace to that region appears equally far-fetched.
So, under the Baker Commission's recommendations, what will become of the 12 million Iraqis who voted for freedom and for a normal life? President Bush has said more times than I can count, in speeches spanning the last four years, that all people want to be free, and that freedom is God's gift to all mankind. If he doesn't believe that, then what does he believe?
If the Iraqis are to be sold out, at least let them be sold out by the Democrats. No one expected anything better from them.
PAUL adds: If the reported contours of this deal (and President Bush's receptiveness to it) are correct, at least I now understand why the administration waited until after the election to embrace it. If it had changed course in this fashion earlier, no one (with the possible exception of Baker himself) would have voted for Republicans
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8 comments:
AA: I share some of yourf misgivings, but I think you're being too harsh on Bush fils, especially when comparing him with Kerry. No matter how many screw-ups W made in the past couple of years (and there were myriad of those, and he's paying the price for it) it still does not even come close to comparing to the depth and breadth of damage the clarity of having a card-carrying pinko-lefty in charge of the US administration would have done. If in doubt, step back to the 70's, and compare Jerry Ford (not the brightest light in the Universe, yes), to Jimmah.
And multiply by a factor of 2. At least, in a previous incarnation, Carter had been an engineer on a nuclear sub, and had doen some honest work on a peanut farm. Kerry had denounced the GI's as a bunch of baby-killing rapists & Genghis-Khans, and has been a kept man most of his adult life. I for one, would never vote for such a man for President, under any foreseeable circumstances, short of having as an alternative Noam Chomsky or Ward Churchill.
I understand your point, AI. And, yes, Ford was far better than Carter.....but here are two factors to consider:
First, there are two years left on this second term of Bush's, and now, with no election remaining that affects his office, he we see a sudden and strong move back to the very worst of Bush41. It could be just a momentary feint to throw off the Dems, but I doubt it. In any case, please reconsider this in two years. In particular because of
Second, let's say Kerry had won Ohio in '94, and one more state, to give him the election electorally. The congress would still have been controlled by the Republicans, so unlike Carter he would have been highly constrained, particularly in foreign policy. And the mess in Iraq, which no doubt he would have matched Bush with, would have had a significant group of American politicos, maybe mostly Reps but also some Dems, baying for a stronger, more aggressively fighting, stance. In other words, his appeasement tendencies would have had a very different reaction than Bush's has [in George's case, the Left is unimpressed and the non-"Realist" Right is dismayed], and to the better.
Under Kerry, this election would have been no triumph for the Dems, and would have given room for a candidate in 2008 who could put an end to War by Indecision.
Yes, I despise Kerry as an individual as you do. But Bush as President, for this second term, may well have worse consequences for this nation than if Kerry had eked it out.....
Of course we'll never know. What we will know, if it keeps unfolding as it has, is a tragic failure to act in what was probably a unique window of opporunity...And I mean tragic in every sense
OK, maybe. But this is analysis has an elemnt of unfairness to it -- you are judging Bush, with all his foibles and warts and all, against an idealized Kerry, based on hypothetical projections of what he could have done if, whatever. But one can turn the tables on such logic, an easily set up scenarios where Kerry (and the merry band of Lefty appointees he would have surely selected at all level in the Adminstration) could have screwed up things even more, perhaps irreparably.
At any rate, this is water under the bridge. The question now is how will things work out now, with the USS ship adrift, surrounded by sharks ready to pounce (am I mixing metaphors here?) Longer term, does anyone see someone of the caliber of Reagan to rekindle the spirit of Conservatism? Or, are we done, may as well forget about it?
AI, I wondered aloud a couple weeks back: do the Repubs have any kind of candidates they are starting to groom?
The republicans definitely have better than a Bush lying around. The question is will such an individual have a chance of being nominated, and if so does he have the ability to break through "Realist" contempt and "MSM" hostility to persuade enough voters that we must act? I kind of liked JIm Webb, for instance, but as a politician he is an unkown factor right now [compare that with Reagan having years as Governor of California], and he is a Democrat. The first is overcomable, but the second means he is Kossified on a Kross of Gelding from the git go.
I don't see anyone with real stature right now. But I'll keep my eyes open, maybe someone will come up.
About four or six years ago, I remember a candidate the Republicans backed but then, for some reason, they dropped him. More research than I care to spend time on right now, but he was fluent in like 5 or 6 langauges, and had advanced degrees and all the good stuff. The unfortunate thing for one of the strong voting blocks in the Republican Party is their disdain for, well, to put it bluntly, education. Or, if it doesn't have immediate application, it can't be worth knowing. In that regard, all your math bullshit is just that, fellahs. And if I'm not studying Military History, then I'm not studying history, or anything for that matter. Oh well.
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