James Baker's Iraq Study Group

Politics and religion
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The growing doubts among GOP lawmakers about the administration’s Iraq strategy, coupled with the prospect of Democratic wins in next month’s midterm elections, will soon force the Bush administration to abandon its open-ended commitment to the war, according to lawmakers in both parties, foreign policy experts and others involved in policymaking.

Senior figures in both parties are coming to the conclusion that the Bush administration will be unable to achieve its goal of a stable, democratic Iraq within a politically feasible time frame. Agitation is growing in Congress for alternatives to the administration’s strategy of keeping Iraq in one piece and getting its security forces up and running while 140,000 U.S. troops try to keep a lid on rapidly spreading sectarian violence.

On the campaign trail, Democratic candidates are hammering Republican candidates for backing a failed Iraq policy, and GOP defense of the war is growing muted. A new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll released this week showed that voters are more confident in Democrats’ ability to handle the Iraq war than the Republicans’ – a reversal from the last election.

Few officials in either party are talking about an immediate pullout of U.S. combat troops. But interest appears to be growing in several broad ideas. One would be some kind of effort to divide the country along regional lines. Another, favored by many Democrats, is a gradual withdrawal of troops over a set period of time. A third would be a dramatic scaling-back of U.S. ambitions in Iraq, giving up on democracy and focusing only on stability.

Many Senate Republicans are waiting for the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel co-chaired by former secretary of state James A. Baker III, a Republican, and former Indiana congressman Lee H. Hamilton, a Democrat. Both Baker and Hamilton have made it clear that they do not see the administration’s current Iraq policy as working – though they do not plan to issue recommendations until well after the midterm elections, probably in early January.

Many foreign policy experts believe that the commission could sway President Bush more than most such study groups because of Baker’s close ties to the Bush family.

In an interview this week, Hamilton said there is no “silver bullet” to turning the situation around in Iraq but noted that frustration is clearly rising over the current course. “I can’t walk out the door without someone handing me a recommendation,” he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/19/AR2006101901907.html

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The White House said that while Bush might change tactics in Iraq, he would not change his overall strategy despite growing opposition and Republican anxiety that his policy could cost the GOP control of the House or the Senate _ or both.

“He’s not somebody who gets jumpy at polls,” presidential spokesman Tony Snow said.

“The president is not going to alter his approach based on political considerations, but instead on the business of trying and moving toward having an Iraq that can sustain, govern and defend itself,” Bush’s spokesman said.

With the war in its fourth year and the U.S. death toll above 2,780, Bush faces intense political pressure to change what critics say is a failed Iraq policy. An independent commission led by former secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana is exploring options for a new Iraq strategy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102000512.html

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Sounds familiar…

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While members of the Iraq Strategy Group are cagey about the recommendations they are drafting, several say that Mr. Baker — who is in regular contact with Mr. Bush — is seeking to move away from Mr. Bush’s strategy of withdrawing Americans when the Iraqis are ready to replace them and toward one that sets a schedule.

“Jim’s problem is that he wants a way to make clear to Maliki that we’re leaving, but without signaling to the Shia and the Sunni that if they bide their time, they can battle it out for Iraq,” said one longtime national security expert who recently testified in front of the study group. “How do you do that? Got me.”

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After meeting with President Bush tomorrow, a panel of prestigious Americans will begin deliberations to chart a new course on Iraq, with the goal of stabilizing the country with a different U.S. strategy and possibly the withdrawal of troops.

Tuesday’s dramatic election results, widely seen as a repudiation of the Bush Iraq policy, has thrust the 10-member, bipartisan Iraq Study Group into the kind of special role played by the Sept. 11 commission. This panel, led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Indiana congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D), might play a decisive role in reshaping the U.S. position in Iraq, according to lawmakers and administration officials.

Those familiar with the panel’s work predict that the ultimate recommendations will not appear novel and that there are few, if any, good options left facing the country. Many of the ideas reportedly being considered – more aggressive regional diplomacy with Syria and Iran, greater emphasis on training Iraqi troops, or focusing on a new political deal between warring Shiites and Sunni – have either been tried or have limited chances of success, in the view of many experts on Iraq. Baker is also exploring whether a broader U.S. initiative in tackling the Arab-Israeli conflict is needed to help stabilize the region.

Given the grave predicament the group faces, its focus is now as much on finding a political solution for the United States as on a plan that would bring peace to Iraq. With Republicans and Democrats so bitterly divided over the war, Baker and Hamilton believe that it is key that their group produce a consensus plan, according to those who have spoken with them.

That could appeal to both parties. Democrats would have something to support after a campaign in which they criticized Bush’s Iraq policy without offering many specifics of their own. And with support for its Iraq policy fast evaporating even within its own party, the White House might find in the group’s plan either a politically acceptable exit strategy or a cover for a continued effort to prop up the new democratically-elected government in Baghdad.

“Baker’s objectives for the Iraq Study Group are grounded in his conviction that Iraq is the central foreign policy issue confronting the United States, and that the only way to address that issue successfully is to first build a bipartisan consensus,” said Arnold Kanter, who served as undersecretary of state under Baker during George H.W. Bush’s administration.

But the midterm elections may have made the job even tougher by emboldening panel Democrats, said people familiar with the panel’s deliberations. The elections “sent a huge signal,” said one of these sources, who added that the panel is trying to come to grips with whether Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government has the capacity to solve the country’s problems.

While Baker has been testing the waters for some time to determine how much change in Iraq policy will be tolerated by the White House, Hamilton perhaps faces the now even-more-difficult challenge of cajoling Democrats such as former Clinton administration chief of staff Leon E. Panetta and power broker Vernon E. Jordan Jr. to sign on to a plan that falls short of a phased troop withdrawal, the position of many congressional Democrats.

In a brief interview, Hamilton conceded the obstacles ahead and emphasized that no decisions have been made. “We need to get [the report] drafted, number one,” Hamilton said. “We need to reach agreement, and that may not be possible.”

When it was formed in the spring by Congress, the Iraq Study Group was little known beyond the elite circles of the U.S. foreign policy world. Now its work has become perhaps the most eagerly awaited Washington report in many years – recommendations are expected in early December – with many lawmakers of both parties saying they are looking for answers to the troubled U.S. mission in Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/11/AR2006111100996.html?nav=hcmodule

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In a conference room filled with commemorative shotguns in his Houston offices last Wednesday, the father settled in to watch his son’s post-election press conference on TV. Lunching on pizza, Bush Senior listened as George W. Bush said the loss of Congress was a “thumping,” promised to “work with” a commission on Iraq chaired by James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton, and announced that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was resigning. Within two hours the president was in the Oval Office with Rumsfeld and his replacement: Robert M. Gates, Bush Senior’s CIA director and the president of Texas A&M University, the home of Bush 41’s presidential library.

In Houston the phones started ringing, and Bush 41 staffers were pulled away from their pizza. Reporters were calling and e-mailing: would 41 talk about 43’s shake-up? The answer was no, though two perfunctory statements were issued (one for the College Station Eagle and one, as the former president put it, “for everybody else”). Still, the reality spoke for itself. Dad’s team was back—a remarkable course correction in the political life of the son and, quite possibly, in the life of the nation.

The American people, as politicians like to say, spoke last week—and spoke in no uncertain terms. The 2006 vote does not suggest an eagerness for a sharp left turn. It seems, rather, to be a plea for a shift from the hard right of the neoconservatives to the center represented by the old man in Houston. The re-emergence of Iraq Study Group voices such as Baker, Gates and Alan Simpson—all longtime friends of Bush Senior—is not unlike the entrance of Fortinbras at the conclusion of “Hamlet.” These are 41’s men, and the removal of Rumsfeld—an ancient rival of Bush Senior’s from the Ford days—is a move toward the broad middle. The apparent triumph of pragmatism over ideology on Iraq was welcome news, at least to the public. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 67 percent favor Bush Senior’s internationalist approach to foreign policy over his son’s more unilateral course.

In terms of foreign policy, it is true that 41 was more a realist than an ideologue—the prose to Reagan’s cold-war poetry. And it is also true that the son would prefer to be remembered not as a second George Bush but as a second Gipper—a big, transformative president who confronted a mortal threat to the nation with steely soul and soaring words. Hence, it seems, the innate appeal of the neoconservative argument, advanced in part by Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney (a 41 figure who got neocon religion after 9/11), to strike Iraq in a noble bid to transform the Middle East.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15674912/site/newsweek/

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WASHINGTON - The situation in Iraq is ``even worse than we thought,‘’ with key Iraqi leaders showing no willingness to compromise to avoid increasing violence, said Leon Panetta, a member of the high-powered advisory group that will recommend new options for the war.

The Iraq Study Group, including Panetta, plans to meet with President Bush and his national security team Monday at the White House, and gather more data on the war through briefings and interviews next week. Panetta was chief of staff in the Clinton White House.

Gates expressed his frustration with the administration’s Iraq policy during a visit last year to the Bay Area.

He shared the stage with former Clinton administration national security adviser Samuel ``Sandy’’ Berger at a May 2005 lecture at the Panetta Institute.

Both men expressed surprise that resentment of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and elsewhere had not resulted in suicide bomb attacks inside the United States.

I too am puzzled by the fact that there haven't been suicide bombers,'' Gates said. That’s not an invitation, just an observation. We should count ourselves very fortunate.‘’

Berger and Gates both were critical of the intelligence apparatus that allowed President Bush to receive false information concluding that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

``Fundamentally, it was just a lousy piece of work,‘’ Gates said.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/15987947.htm

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 — As Israeli bombs fell on Lebanon for a second week last July, the Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio arrived in Washington with 3,500 evangelicals for the first annual conference of his newly founded organization, Christians United For Israel.

At a dinner addressed by the Israeli ambassador, a handful of Republican senators and the chairman of the Republican Party, Mr. Hagee read greetings from President Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and dispatched the crowd with a message for their representatives in Congress. Tell them “to let Israel do their job” of destroying the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, Mr. Hagee said.

He called the conflict “a battle between good and evil” and said support for Israel was “God’s foreign policy.”

The next day he took the same message to the White House.

Some evangelical leaders say they are wary of reports that a panel including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III might recommend negotiating with Iran about the future of Iraq. “It certainly bothers me,” said Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and one of the most influential conservative Christians. “That has the same kind of feel to it as the British negotiating with Germany, Italy and Japan in the run up to World War II.”

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Newsweek: Fareed Zakaria on recommendations to the Commission:

This is not our chessboard. The Iraqi government has authority over all the political issues in the country. We may have excellent ideas about federalism, revenue-sharing and amnesty, but the ruling coalition has to agree and then actually implement them. So far, despite our many efforts, they have refused. There is a desperate neoconservative plea for more troops to try one more time in Iraq. But a new military strategy, even with adequate forces, cannot work without political moves that reinforce it. The opposite is happening today. American military efforts are actually being undermined by Iraq’s government. The stark truth is, we do not have an Iraqi partner willing to make the hard decisions. Wishing otherwise is, well, wishful thinking.

Time is not on America’s side. Month by month, U.S. influence in Iraq is waning. Deals that we could have imposed on Iraq’s rival factions in 2003 are now impossible. A year ago, America’s ambassador to Iraq had real influence. Today he is being marginalized. Thus any new policy that requires new approaches to the neighbors and lengthy negotiations carries the cost associated with waiting.

America’s only real leverage is the threat of withdrawal. Many outsiders fail to grasp how much political power the United States has handed over in Iraq. The Americans could not partition Iraq or distribute its revenues even if Bush decided to. But Washington can warn the ruling coalition that unless certain conditions are met, U.S. troops will begin a substantial drawdown, quit providing basic security on the streets of Iraq and instead take on a narrower role, akin to the Special Forces mission in Afghanistan.

And one last thing: for such a threat to be meaningful, we must be prepared to carry it out.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15674301/site/newsweek/

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From Newsweek Story on Jim Baker and the Commission “The Rescue Squad”:

But make no mistake: Baker is no mere lawyer for the Bushes. Trying to describe Baker’s role and his true allegiances in the Iraq Study Group, the former Baker aide quotes Justice Louis Brandeis, who once said that in certain cases the lawyer has a responsibility to represent the situation, not the client. In this case, the situation is the national interest in getting a solution to the Iraq mess—not protecting the president or the Bush family. “It so happens that this also serves Baker’s interests,” says the aide. As his memoir makes clear, Baker cares deeply about being remembered as a statesman, not a pol or a hired gun.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15675316/site/newsweek/

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On the other hand, Kinsley has some different thoughts in a Washington Post editorial:

If we had wanted our country to be run by James Baker, we had our chance. He was interested in running for president in 1996 but discovered that his interest in a James Baker presidency was not widely shared. Although he has held a variety of government posts, from undersecretary of commerce under Gerald Ford to secretary of state under Bush the Elder, and has all the trappings of enormous consequence and wisdom, such as a Presidential Medal of Freedom and his own James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, Baker is essentially a political operative. His place in history is Florida 2000, where he secured the presidency for George W. Bush. Reporters were awed by his brilliance and ruthlessness. History may be less admiring of his willingness to make inconsistent arguments and to lie with a straight face.

Being a Washington Wise Man does not require much wisdom. Baker has a “conviction,” said a Baker colleague quoted in The Post on Sunday, “that Iraq is the central foreign policy issue confronting the United States.” Wow. Now there’s an insight. Actually, it is a nice small insight into the Baker mentality that he apparently can imagine a war that is killing large numbers of young Americans every month but that is not our central foreign policy issue. Baker also believes that “the only way to address that issue successfully is to first build a bipartisan consensus.” Now, that is a conviction you can sink your teeth into. People like Baker always favor a bipartisan consensus.

They don’t really believe in politics, which is to say they don’t really believe in democracy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/13/AR2006111301058.html

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Ah, this is new. Just when I thought there was a way out of the forest…

President Bush formally launched a sweeping internal review of Iraq policy yesterday, pulling together studies underway by various government agencies, according to U.S. officials.

The initiative, begun after Bush met at the White House with his foreign policy team, parallels the effort by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to salvage U.S. policy in Iraq, develop an exit strategy and protect long-term U.S. interests in the region. The two reviews are not competitive, administration officials said, although the White House wants to complete the process before mid-December, about the time the Iraq Study Group’s final report is expected.

The White House’s decision changes the dynamics of what happens next to U.S. policy deliberations. The administration will have its own working document as well as recommendations from an independent bipartisan commission to consider as it struggles to prevent further deterioration in Iraq.

The White House review could give the administration alternatives so that it feels less pressure to fully implement the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group report, foreign policy experts said.

The administration’s new review “was not done in response to the ISG, but it came about as a result of everybody looking at facts on the ground,” a State Department official said. But the administration is basically trying to do in one month what the ISG has done over eight months.

The review will knit together separate efforts that have been underway at the State Department and the Pentagon over the past six weeks, U.S. officials said. It will also include reports by the CIA and the National Security Council. National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley will oversee the expedited review and integrate the various papers, officials said.

In a measure of the suddenness and importance of the review, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week postponed a long-planned trip to an Asia-Pacific conference in Vietnam to take part in discussions about Iraq.

Rice has been doing “a lot of thinking” about the issue over the past two months, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday. “The primary focus is on the State Department’s role in Iraq and are we pursuing the proper policies, are we seeking the right objectives, are we using the right means to achieve those objectives, following the right strategies and right tactics?” he told reporters.

One component of the larger effort is likely to be a military review initiated in mid-September by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. His assessment of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, with a core focus on Iraq, includes 16 top commanders meeting daily to brainstorm on questions such as “Where are we going? What are we trying to do? Are we going to get there this way?” according to a joint staff spokesperson.

The administration’s policy review comes almost a year after it issued a 38-page “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq,” released with much fanfare Nov. 30, 2005. It outlined the “eight pillars” for victory, which included defeating terrorists, moving toward military self-reliance, improving the rule of law, increasing international support and strengthening the economy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/14/AR2006111401095.html

Well, at least they’re thinking now…?

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President George Bush has told senior advisers that the US and its allies must make “a last big push” to win the war in Iraq and that instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, according to sources familiar with the administration’s internal deliberations.

Mr Bush’s refusal to give ground, coming in the teeth of growing calls in the US and Britain for a radical rethink or a swift exit, is having a decisive impact on the policy review being conducted by the Iraq Study Group chaired by Bush family loyalist James Baker, the sources said.

Although the panel’s work is not complete, its recommendations are expected to be built around a four-point “victory strategy” developed by Pentagon officials advising the group. The strategy, along with other related proposals, is being circulated in draft form and has been discussed in separate closed sessions with Mr Baker and the vice-president Dick Cheney, an Iraq war hawk.

Point one of the strategy calls for an increase rather than a decrease in overall US force levels inside Iraq, possibly by as many as 20,000 soldiers. This figure is far fewer than that called for by the Republican presidential hopeful, John McCain. But by raising troop levels, Mr Bush will draw a line in the sand and defy Democratic pressure for a swift drawdown.

“You’ve got to remember, whatever the Democrats say, it’s Bush still calling the shots. He believes it’s a matter of political will. That’s what [Henry] Kissinger told him. And he’s going to stick with it,” a former senior administration official said. “He [Bush] is in a state of denial about Iraq. Nobody else is any more. But he is. But he knows he’s got less than a year, maybe six months, to make it work. If it fails, I expect the withdrawal process to begin next fall.”

The “last push” strategy is also intended to give Mr Bush and the Republicans “political time and space” to recover from their election drubbing and prepare for the 2008 presidential campaign, the official said. "The Iraq Study Group buys time for the president to have one last go. If the Democrats are smart, they’ll play along, and I think they will. But forget about bipartisanship. It’s all about who’s going to be in best shape to win the White House.

The official added: “Bush has said ‘no’ to withdrawal, so what else do you have? The Baker report will be a set of ideas, more realistic than in the past, that can be used as political tools. What they’re going to say is: lower the goals, forget about the democracy crap, put more resources in, do it.”

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Hello Vietnam?

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I don’t really know what to make of the Guardian story. They only seem to have one inside source on this and his spin is, obviously, negative. Baker isn’t the whole commission and there are several personalities on it I don’t think would go along with a plan that’s simply designed for political expediency. At least I’d hope that’s the case.

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Nov. 17, 2006 | WASHINGTON – In late 2005, three Washington insiders with foreign policy expertise were summoned to a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – a little-known event that may end up changing the course of the war in Iraq. The three men were working to help Rep. Frank Wolf, who wanted to create an independent panel to overhaul the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq, after a recent trip there left the Virginia Republican worried that the war was headed from bad to worse.

The three men, to their surprise, were asked to attend a meeting on Nov. 29, 2005, with Rice, who had been among the core defenders of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. At the end of that meeting, Rice agreed to the idea for the panel and pledged to take the case directly to President Bush. At Rice’s urging, Bush embraced what would become the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker.

“It was remarkable that Condi Rice took the lead,” said David Abshire, president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Washington, and one of four people in the November meeting, including Rice. The Iraq Study Group, he said, “happened with her going to the president.”

It has been widely speculated that George H.W. Bush, the president’s father, turned to his trusted former advisor Baker to help orchestrate the Iraq Study Group to clean up the Iraq mess. But the little-known story of how the panel came into being began not with Baker, but with a congressman’s effort to call it like he saw it in Iraq – and with Rice’s maneuvering to sidestep an entrenched Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It set in motion the unlikely scenario now playing out in Washington in which an independent panel is about to counsel a White House not typically known as receptive to outside advice on the war.

One challenge was finding the right people. They had to be sufficiently independent. Wolf says that he wanted “people who were not connected to the administration nor connected to the Democratic campaign committee,” people who could “honestly” tackle the problem.

Former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton seemed like an obvious choice. A highly respected voice on foreign policy, Hamilton had been vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission. Abshire called him first, in November. Abshire then contacted Baker, a man with obvious foreign policy credentials, who maintains close ties to the Bush family.

Abshire bristled a bit when asked about speculation in the press that somehow Baker had set up the group as some sort of favor to help out the president’s father. “It is sometimes misunderstood that this is a group that Baker formed,” he said.

Wolf explained that his interest in the panel was driven by what looked like disturbing trends on the ground in Iraq, particularly during his third trip there in late 2005. Voyages to Iraq by members of Congress are strictly scripted affairs, carefully chaperoned by the military. But Wolf traveled in Iraq without an official government escort, hiding his identity as a member of Congress in an effort to get an unvarnished view of the war-torn nation. “We dressed in old clothes. We lived with Iraqis, we actually went to an Iraqi wedding,” Wolf recalls of those trips. “We went to all parts of the country.”

He was troubled by what he saw there in fall 2005. While he noted that some schools and hospitals had been built, the violence wracking Iraq looked like it was getting worse.

At the same time, the White House was suggesting just the opposite. In his Iraq stump speech that fall, President Bush said things were, in fact, getting better. “Area by area, city by city, we’re conducting offensive operations to clear out enemy forces, and leaving behind Iraqi units to prevent the enemy from returning,” he told a Washington audience on Oct. 6, 2005.

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i had wondered about the level of funding for this group…seems like the best “bang for your buck” i’ve seen in this whole bloddy mess.

Exhibit A is the quiet launch of an independent, bipartisan panel to bring “fresh eyes” to the Iraq conflict. Last week, the House included $1.3 million in a defense funding bill for the panel, which will work out of the congressionally chartered US Institute for Peace here.

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The problem facing Gates is that the options being considered may already be obsolete. The conditions on the ground in Iraq are deteriorating so rapidly that even the Baker commission is struggling to keep up, several well-placed national-security sources told Time. October was the deadliest month yet for Iraqi civilians since the start of the war, and November seems destined to surpass it. A Thanksgiving Day onslaught by Sunni militants killed more than 200 Iraqis, wounded hundreds and spurred a round of Shi’ite reprisals. As the Iraqi capital erupted in another frenzy of sectarian violence, the U.S. lost eight service members in a span of six days, bringing its death toll to nearly 2,900.

Although Baker has said the commission will develop its proposals by consensus, there were signs last week that the group had hit some speed bumps. Sources say renewed pressure from both political flanks in the U.S. is making it difficult for the commission’s center to hold. Emboldened by their takeover of Congress, Democrats have sent unmistakable signals that they favor some movement, if not reduction, of forces at the earliest possible date.

Meanwhile, present and former government officials say Vice President Cheney intends to oppose any proposal that would make regional talks with Iran or Syria a key part of the U.S.'s Iraq strategy, even though Baker favors such an opening. As the commission broke for Thanksgiving, the partisan pincer movement was beginning to provoke some talk of stalemate. “The impulse toward consensus has diminished somewhat,” a close panel observer told Time. “Everything that is happening—the election, the postelection, the situation in Baghdad—makes it more difficult.”

Baker and Hamilton held dozens of listening sessions this summer and fall, but members for the most part were careful not to stake out their positions. With a tentative mid-December deadline just a couple of weeks away, the decision-making process is just beginning. Commission members, said a close adviser, “are just now trying to make sense of what they heard, what the choices are and who stands where on those choices.” While a Baker-led deal is still a good bet, several sources said, the odds that the commission will be unable to provide a clear user’s guide for cleaning up Iraq are narrowing. And that means Gates may need to sort out the options on his own.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1562916,00.html

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If I believed Iran and Syria could do anything more than carve out spheres of influence over warring Iraqi factions, I might be willing to go along with the hope of “regional talks” as a panacea. But they can’t. So let’s go ahead and agree with Darth Cheney that it’s pointless to legitimize either of these rogue regimes with consultations.

Robert Kagan lamenting the new “realism”:

Thus, the “realists” advise us to seek Syria’s help in Iraq even as the Syrian government engages in a concerted campaign of assassinating every Lebanese political leader who opposes the return of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon. Presumably, the “realist” position is that we should give Lebanon back to Syria, or at least turn a blind eye to its murderous efforts to regain control there, as an incentive to Syria to help us in Iraq, where Syria is also engaged in supporting terrorists. “Realism” is letting dictators get away with terror and murder–and, in particular, letting them get away with the murder of our friends.

The “realists” advise seeking Iranian help in Iraq as well. They are coy about suggesting what the United States could give Tehran as an inducement for such assistance, but the implications of their position are clear. After all, the Bush administration has already offered to talk to Iran, provided the Iranians agree to suspend enrichment of uranium. That has also been the position of the Europeans. The Iranians have refused.

So the “realists” are adapting to the reality of Iranian intransigence. They are in effect suggesting that the administration drop its long-standing position and begin negotiating with Iran despite the Iranian regime’s refusal to agree to the common U.S.-European demand. What the realists have in mind, then, is that the United States should turn a blind eye to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, in exchange for Iran’s help in easing our retreat from Iraq. Who cares if this would destroy U.S. credibility, weaken those in Europe who are trying to be strong, undermine the effort to prevent Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, and lead to a cascade of additional nuclear states in the region? It would at least make possible further “realistic” accommodations to these new and deadly realities.

The “realists” also advise putting pressure on Israel to deal in a more forthcoming way with the Hamas-dominated Palestinian government. Israel should be induced to make concessions despite the ongoing violence and the refusal of Hamas to ratify even Yasser Arafat’s acceptance of Israel’s right to exist. Thus, in order to conciliate Arab dictators and radicals, Washington should retreat from long-standing principle and hand a dramatic victory to the forces of violence and extremism in Palestine.

So let’s add up the “realist” proposals: We must retreat from Iraq, and thus abandon all those Iraqis–Shiite, Sunni, Kurd, and others–who have depended on the United States for safety and the promise of a better future. We must abandon our allies in Lebanon and the very idea of an independent Lebanon in order to win Syria’s support for our retreat from Iraq. We must abandon our opposition to Iran’s nuclear program in order to convince Iran to help us abandon Iraq. And we must pressure our ally, Israel, to accommodate a violent Hamas in order to gain radical Arab support for our retreat from Iraq.

All of which is to say that we can “change the course” without capitulating to the blackmail of terrorist regimes. Just because the world lacks the stomach to confront the region’s aggressive/nuclearizing tinpot dictators doesn’t mean we need to invite them to the Rose Garden.

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Not sure how you define a regime as “rogue” (Syria isn’t developing nukes) but both are certainly legitimate (somewhat freely elected, in Iran’s case) and both are regional powers. Failing to bring them into the negotiation process merely ensures that they will continue to sabotage it as they have done so effectively to date. Just because we find a regime abhorrent doesn’t mean we can’t sit down and do necessary business with it. In fact those are usually the regimes we most need to negotiate with, to counteract their activities that are opposed to our interests.

As for responding to the neocon you quoted, Syria is trying to topple the Lebanese government, which will hopefully fail since if it succeeds we’ll see a rerun of their civil war. That if anything should serve as further impetus for us to open channels of communication - a Grand Bargain where Syria has a stake in Iraq and the return of the Golan in return for a cessation of support for terrorists and disengagement from Lebanon is certainly a deal they’d consider, and is directly in our interests. As for Iran - they’re the regional superpower. Closing our eyes and refusing to talk to them means the status quo continues, which will eventually result in a rump state of Iraq (minus the Kurdish north and a Syrian-backed or even -annexed west) as an Iranian puppet regime. This is not something we particularly want to encourage.

The primary problem with neocons and the Middle East is that they resolutely refuse to acknowledge our vital interests in their quixotic quest for remaking the world into something they agree with. At some point we need to realize that far too many Americans have died for the cause of Iraqi democracy, and it’s not a battle we can win if the Iraqis themselves don’t want it.