Iraq Study Group

Joe Conason makes the classic case for why a Republican embrace of the Iraq Study Groups conclusions would result in a real break with the President. And clearly Conason is correct. Except for .......

Joe misses a key point. But he's not alone. I was listening to "Big Eddie" Schultz today on the radio and he is making the same error. And it's the error that Republicans want everyone to make.

That error is this. There is a very large difference between following the Iraq Study Groups recommendations (Conason correctly points out that the report is over 100 pages long) and saying you're implementing the ISG recommendations. Since the report was released, it has been widely misinterpreted by both the left and the right, acting as a sort of rorschach test of your position on the war. An example? Conason:

This too was predictable, especially because the Senate Democrats lacked the wit to adopt the bipartisan ISG recommendations for regional diplomacy and negotiated withdrawal and against military escalation.

However, the ISG report authorizes short term escalations to enforce security. Did they mean 20,000 troops? Did they mean more troops to guard convoys on the way out? What exactly does it mean? Here's another example from Conason:

The report explicitly demands that the U.S. and Iraqi governments sit down with their armed opponents to discuss all relevant issues -- most notably including a date for the withdrawal of American troops. Among its most startling recommendations for the steps the Bush administration can take to assist in Iraq's reconciliation is a negotiated approach to the redeployment of American forces.

Do you see an withdrawal date there? Some Iraqi's want us out today. Some, most notably the current government doesn't ever want us out. And do you see a location for "redeployment"? This "negotiation" component is merely taking the civil war to the negotiation table, assuming they'll all go and assuming anyone can agree. What if they don't?

In the ISG recommendations, the left saw withdrawal, the right saw redeployment. The left saw negotiations with Syria and Iran, the right saw a surge of troops prior to redeployment. In fact Bush has often argued, and I think correctly, that without specifically announcing it, he is following the ISG recommendations.

Remember, none of the Republican defectors thus far have said to withdraw. They've all said to redeploy to permanent bases, an essential return to the Bush policies prior to the recent escalation. Conason may or may not be technically correct that a call for following the ISG recommendations means a break from Bush policy. But he misses the key point that the devil's in the details of the reading of those recommendations and their implementation. And that's no minor detail. Conason's final graf:

Of course, the ISG report is not a blueprint for immediate redeployment, as many Democrats would wish. When the report was issued last winter, however, it represented a useful bipartisan alternative to the continuing escalation and permanent war policies of the Bush administration -- and it would have led inexorably to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. It still does, and it still would.

Maybe Joe. When you read the report there are a whole lot of maybe's. Maybe the U.S. could begin to negotiate with Syria, Iran, al Sistani and al Sadr. But what if they don't want to? What if negotiations break down? As the now old saying goes, what is plan B? And again, "redeploy" where? Permanent Iraqi bases outside the cities? Kuwait? Saudi Arabia? A bunch of aircraft carriers in the gulf? That's a whole lot of where's now isn't it? And Conason seems to think that somehow redeployment translates into withdrawal. I got news for ya Joe .......

I see Conason's piece, and the emerging conventional wisdom, as merely setting the clock back to before escalation, and an attempt to maintain the denial structure to the reality that we've lost. The same dangers and impossibilities exist that existed then when Bush felt he needed a "new approach" and when the ISG made their recommendations. A wholesale embrace of the ISG recommendations is merely, again, giving Republicans cover to continue the war, and a continuing waste of American lives.