The Iraq Study Group released its long-awaited report today, and while it has some important information on the current state of our operation in Iraq, its recommendations descend from some strange Utopian vision of peace and brotherhood that only exists in the fevered imagination of the so-called realists. The ISG calls for a "support group" of nations surrounding Iraq and relies on their supposed self-interest in a stable and functional Iraq:

RECOMMENDATION 3: As a complement to the diplomatic offensive, and in addition to the Support Group discussed below, the United States and the Iraqi government should support the holding of a conference or meeting in Baghdad of the Organization of the Islamic Conference or the Arab League both to assist the Iraqi government in promoting national reconciliation in Iraq and to reestablish their diplomatic presence in Iraq. ...

The Support Group would not seek to impose obligations or undertakings on the government of Iraq. Instead, the Support Group would assist Iraq in ways the government of Iraq would desire, attempting to strengthen Iraq’s sovereignty—not diminish it.

It is clear to Iraq Study Group members that all of Iraq’s neighbors are anxious about the situation in Iraq. They favor a unified Iraq that is strong enough to maintain its territorial integrity, but not so powerful as to threaten its neighbors. None favors the breakup of the Iraqi state. Each country in the region views the situation in Iraq through the filter of its particular set of interests.

The ISG wants us to believe that Iran and Syria have no interest in instability in the region. That's an interesting perspective, since the two are the most notorious terror-sponsoring states in the world. Eight pages later, the report notes that Syria is the "principal transit point for shipments of weapons to Hezbollah," the group that's presently trying to undermine the Lebanese government and that just started a war with Israel. Iran, with whom the ISG wants us to negotiate for regional stability, is presently run by a millenial theocracy that openly desires the global chaos that will herald the arrival of the Twelfth Imam.

Of course, the New Diplomatic Offensive -- which is capitalized in that self-important style throughout the report -- states that we cannot hope to achieve peace in Iraq without achieving it in the Palestinian territories. How does the ISG propose to solve that problem? Three guesses:

There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria, and President Bush’s June 2002 commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. This commitment must include direct talks with, by, and between Israel, Lebanon, Palestinians (those who accept Israel’s right to exist), and particularly Syria—which is the principal transit point for shipments of weapons to Hezbollah, and which supports radical Palestinian groups. ...

RECOMMENDATION 15: Concerning Syria, some elements of that negotiated peace should be:

• Syria’s full adherence to UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of August 2006, which provides the framework for
Lebanon to regain sovereign control over its territory.
• Syria’s full cooperation with all investigations into political assassinations in Lebanon, especially those of Rafik
Hariri and Pierre Gemayel.
• A verifiable cessation of Syrian aid to Hezbollah and the use of Syrian territory for transshipment of Iranian weapons and aid to Hezbollah. (This step would do much to solve Israel’s problem with Hezbollah.)
• Syria’s use of its influence with Hamas and Hezbollah for the release of the captured Israeli Defense Force
soldiers.
• A verifiable cessation of Syrian efforts to undermine the democratically elected government of Lebanon.

Remember when we used to call James Baker and his disciples the "realists"? All we need for peace, they postulate, is to have Syria quit supporting terrorists and trying to undermine the Lebanese government. While they're at it, they should cooperate in a murder investigation that will implicate high-ranking members of the Syrian regime. At the same time, we should find Palestinians willing to acknowledge Israel's right to exist to negotiate a land swap that will end all of the violence in the territories.

If any of that had any remote possibility of happening, we wouldn't need the ISG. And if we have to wait for Syria and Iran to end their support for terrorism before we have any hope of stabilizing Iraq, then acceding to their demands will have the opposite effect of what Baker, Hamilton, and Company recommend in this report.

Not everything about this report is silly and disconnected from reality. The ISG has a series of good recommendations about how to help solidify Iraq through the adoption of policies that encourage unity. Part of that is an abandonment of de-Baathification that would allow the Sunnis to finally and fully engage in the government. Any national reconciliation will involve the forgiveness of past actions on all sides, and while some of that may not set well with Americans, it's an unfortunate necessity. They also have some intriguing recommendations on oil revenues that would incentivize Iraqis to work with each other rather than fragment on regional and sectarian lines.

This gets dissipated, however, in the general direction of withdrawal that the document takes. It insists on prioritizing disengagement over mission success, and throughout the sections on security it talks about the need to reduce the American footprint as paramount. Even when they want the US involved in military actions financially and technically, they want the US to have no control over the mission. Page 69 talks about how best to disband the militias (emphasis mine):

Both the United Nations and expert and experienced nongovernmental organizations, especially the International Organization for Migration, must be on the ground with appropriate personnel months before any program to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate militia members begins. Because the United States is a party to the conflict, the U.S. military should not be involved in implementing such a program. Yet U.S. financial and technical support is crucial.

In other words, we should shovel out money and technology to the United Nations (who ran out of Iraq because they were dumb enough to contract with former Saddam regime security forces to protect them and got bombed because of it), but should have no say on how either get used. That sounds like a terrorist financing program, not a serious attempt to reduce the violence. It's precisely this kind of utopianism that runs through all of these recommendations which makes the entire exercise a complete waste of time and effort. It's this kind of thinking, in fact, that allowed the fall of Iran in the 1970s and the rise of state-sponsored terrorism ever since.

NZ Bear has taken the time to convert the report into HTML format, and I would encourage all CQ readers to read it for themselves.

UPDATE: See my next post for more thoughts. I've also posted links to the corresponding report pages at Truth Laid Bear.

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