Turns out that the Iraq Study Group (ISG) is a colossal shell game. Most of what they recommend won’t work and therefore Bush could argue for doing whatever he comes up with – for instance, bombing Iran, a favorite tactic of his neocon friends and one consistent with his schoolyard bully persona.
I was struck by Baker and Hamilton’s inability in their TV interviews to mention that this particular “Iraq problem” exists only because Bush created it. And what of the Orwellian idea that we need to punish those incompetent Iraqis who do not seem able to fix what we created and totally screwed up? So therefore we pick up our game pieces and go home? But not right away because we need a bipartisan solution – that is, one in which no one in America need take responsibility for what has turned out to be perhaps the most destructive American foreign policy blunder in the country’s history.
And the ISG can’t come out and say any of that because the president might get pissed off and do something truly nutty just to show everyone who is in charge: mucho macho presidento.
There was a time in the not so distant past when bipartisan support of foreign policy was a centerpiece of American political life and it worked fairly well. Bush has destroyed that for now and perhaps forever. He lied the country into this fiasco, the members of Congress lay down and let him run over them, and Bush has refused to discuss options for over three years while Iraq burned and American soldiers died. And he is psychologically unprepared to take responsibility for this massive foreign policy failure. We have not had a truly bipartisan foreign policy since the late 80s and are in desperate need of strong, intelligent leadership.
Anyone watching today’s press conference of Bush and Blair has to wonder whether the President is beginning to spin off this planet into a universe all his own. It was not pretty. Look for it on C-Span.