Iraq Study Group Fails

The Iraq Study Group report was a noble undertaking by well-meaning bureaucrats and former politicians. But the report was a failure – a complete failure.

While their intentions may have been good, the group failed to construct a vision for a new way forward in Iraq that is significantly different from what the United States military and her allies are already doing there.

What they did manage to do was highlight the current problems in Iraq, and in doing so provide fodder for the news media to repeat the same doom and gloom mantra they've dished out over the past year.

The panel did not propose much in the way of meaningful solutions beyond what others have already proposed. The few new ideas the Iraq Study Group report does raise are for the most part dangerous and counterproductive.

The most important element missing from the Iraq Study Group's report was any focus on how to achieve victory and success in Iraq.

Unfortunately, this omission was deliberate. Former Sen. Alan Simpson, one of the principals of the Iraq Study Group, boasted in a television interview on Wednesday that the Iraq Study Group went out of its way to avoid any discussions of "winning" in Iraq as the group found such notions polarizing.

Instead of winning, the Iraq Study Group calls for efforts to secure "international consensus." In the 1930s, international consensus involved giving away countries and their populations to Adolf Hitler in an effort to secure stability and peace. From the 1950s to the 1970s, international consensus meant a policy of tolerating the violent march of communism across the globe under policies of "containment" and "détente."

Margaret Thatcher said it best when she explained her view that to her consensus was "the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects."

With all due respect to the members of this panel, we're not interested in finding "unity" or "consensus" with the terrorists and their nation-state sponsors. We're interested in defeating the forces of Islamic jihadism.

To win the war on terrorism we need leaders who identify the problem and articulate the path to victory, not just a path "forward." The Iraq Study Group has totally failed in this regard.

There is a move by a number of conservatives, including former Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney, Ret. Col. Gordon Cucullu, Investors Business Daily and others to refer to the Iraq Study Group as the "Iraq Surrender Group." The derisive title is apt given the comments by Baker, Simpson and others stressing "unity" and "consensus" and dismissing an approach toward "victory" or "winning."

But the group advocates surrender in other ways as well, namely surrender in the war against terrorism.

The panel goes so far as to recommend that Iran and Syria – two nations identified by the U.S. as official state sponsors of terrorism – be invited to help solve the problems that exist in Iraq. The group says that Iran and Syria would play valuable roles in a "support structure" for Iraq's future.

This proposal is absurd. Iranian and Syrian conduct is part of what is currently going wrong in Iraq. Both nations have made deliberate efforts to further destabilize Iraq, and both are motivated by a desire to see U.S. foreign policy fail in the region.

We can't trust the Iranians to be true to their word on nuclear weapons programs, but now the Iraq Study Group wants us to invite the fox to come police the henhouse in Iraq? This is what the world waited with baited breath to hear as the "new way forward" in Iraq?

The entire premise for Operation Iraqi Freedom was to advance the war on terrorism, but now the Iraq Study Group wants us to start kissing the ring of nations President Bush properly identified as being part of the "Axis of Evil."

Finally, a report on the Middle East from the appeasement crowd wouldn't be complete without taking shots at Israel, and the Iraq Study Group doesn't disappoint in this regard.

In Recommendation No. 13, the report states that to ensure peace in Iraq we must first resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

That's OK, because with the Iraq Study Group's call for Iran to be part of the Iraq "support group," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for wiping Israel off the face of the earth can take on even greater import.

The Iraq Study Group also advocates an intensification of "land for peace" diplomacy. For those unfamiliar with this policy, it involves Israel giving up more and more of its land to the Palestinians so that terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas can move their Katyusha rocket launchers ever closer to Israel's major cities.

It's just another reminder of why we must leave the path to victory in the hands of our military commanders in the field and far away from bi-partisan panels comprised of milquetoast do-gooders and has-been Washington insiders.

The Bipartisan Surrender Group Report was akin to corporate America committees.

No one goes out on a limb and makes a decision, just call a committee reach a consensus, then when everything fails, blame the implementation of the committee's suggestion; not the committee.

No responsibility, no harm, no foul. Nobody gets canned because of a dumb decision.

In a town, Washington, where buildings can talk (The Pentagon said today, The White House said today, The State Department said today) it is the optimal "No Blame Game."

Just gather a bunch of out of office hangers-on, well-connected do-nothings, ex officio blowhards, and give them each a million bucks and have them reach some pie-in-the-sky conclusion attributable to the "committee" and then do the round of talk shows for another half million and write a book for another few mill.

What a life!

Iraq Study Group Report Hailed by Terrorists, Dupes

According to leading Islamists, the Iraq Study Group’s (ISG) recommendation for a Jewish withdrawal from Palestine, an American surrender in Iraq, and acquiescence in Iranian and Syrian hegemony in the region provides a blueprint for the final push toward Mohammed’s dream of universal Islam.

“A small group of mujahedeen has brought the so-called superpower to its knees,” said bin Laden lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahiri. “It should be clear that Allah is supreme. The unbelievers can surrender peacefully, as the Iraq Study Group advises. Or they can die painfully as we sever their heads from their bodies.”

Abu Nasser, of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group in the West Bank, called the Iraq Study Group report “an acknowledgment of the injustice of the Zionist occupation of Islamic land. James Baker is one of the few Americans not blinded by Jewish propaganda. He is truly a wise man. I hope he comes to Islam so we don’t have to kill him.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Western leaders to follow the Baker-Hamilton plan or “vanish from the face of the earth.” “The might of Allah is irresistible,” Ahmadinejad asserted. “The American defeat in Iraq is but another sign of the imminent collapse of the Great Satan.”

Former President Jimmy Carter said the ISG report confirms that Bush’s venture into Iraq was the worse calamity in U.S. history. “This is far worse than sitting idle while your embassy is taken hostage and diddling for more than a year without getting any results, really, it is,” Carter claimed. “This is worse than running the economy into the ground and losing your reelection bid to an actor. It’s worse than having your brother urinate in public. I think this will help the American people realize that I wasn’t the worst president.”

Former Vice President Al Gore says he sees the report presenting an opportunity for the United States to disengage the Islamists and turn its attention to the real threat of global warming. “Losing to the Islamists is minor compared to the defeat we will all suffer if the next 100 years sees temperatures rise by the 900 degrees scientists unanimously agree they will,” Gore said. “I think most Americans would rather be Muslims than roasted by global warming. Ironically, the de-industrialization promised by an Islamic global caliphate may be just the medicine the planet needs to stave off climate disaster.”

The ISG, also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission, was appointed by congress last March and is co-chaired by James A. Baker, III (Secretary of State during the first Bush Administration), and Lee H. Hamilton (former Democratic congressman from Indiana).

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