Vision Check for the Iraq 'Realists'

By now it has become obvious to most, even on the left, that some of the recommendations of the "realists" on the Iraq Study Group are "untethered to reality." 

It's almost laughable that the Iraq Study Group wants to make Iran and Syria part of an "Iraq Support Group."  While we're at it, let's ask Venezuela and Cuba to join an "America Support Group."  I'm sure Hugh Chavez and whoever is running Cuba would be happy to help America . . . right over a cliff.  Ditto for Iran and Sryia, and Iraq.

This ISG report reflects both excessive pessimism about current circumstances in Iraq and unwarranted optimism about the Islamic tyrannies that are Iraq's neighbors.

Andrew C. McCarthy is one of many who see with clarity how poorly the Iraq Study Group apprehends the threat posed by Iran:

ISG Chairman James Baker, a foolish man, looked Congress in the eye on Thursday and explained his master plan. Did it seem foolish to propose negotiations with Iran, our relentless enemy? Sure. But, the “realist” doyen puttered, if we invite them to negotiate about Iraq’s future, and they demur, why, we’ll expose their intransigence for all the world to see.

Right. They slaughter and abet the slaughter of our marines, our airmen, our sailors, William Buckley, Robert Stethem, William Higgins, and countless others. They tell us their defining goal is a world without America, a world in which our allies are wiped from the face of the earth. But, at long last, we’ll know who they really are … if they don’t show up for a meeting.

Blue-ribbon panels can afford such juvenilia. They are, after all, unaccountable. What’s the administration’s excuse?

What makes a superpower super is power. If we don’t use it, what’s left? Iran believes they will destroy us and acts on that conviction every day. We … seek negotiations.

I’m not a hugger, but I hugged my four-year-old son as I wrote this. We abdicate now. We turn a blind eye as our implacable, insatiable enemies pick off our best and our bravest. We shrink from the duty a quarter century of mayhem imposes. We don’t have the will.

Iran is, of course, putting the finishing touches on its nuclear program -- not only through enrichment, but with acquisition of missiles from North Korea and searches for untraceable sources of uranium ore.  If you want to know what Iran has to "contribute" to Iraq, ask the brave Iranian students who risked their lives protesting Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday.  (He responded by calling the Iranian students "American.")

You can tell that even the left in the mainstream media realize something is amiss in the ISG's approach because, instead of trying to defend it, the media have switched the meme of their coverage to "frustration" on the left over Bush's reluctance to accept some of the ISG's recommendations and alleged "worries" by former White House advisers over Bush's reaction. 

Let's review that maneuver in slow motion so we can see just where and why the mainstream media switched the focus:

• The ISG recommends that the U.S. negotiate over Iraq with Iran and Syria, two virulently anti-democratic regimes (and one of which countries was at war with Iraq not so long ago)
• Commentators point out that this suggestion is unrealistic and would require the America and the West to make unacceptable concessions, such as giving a green light to Iran on its nuclear program and/or overlooking Syria's aggression against Lebanon.
• Instead of defending the ISG's proposal, the mainstream media switch the focus to President Bush, whom the White House has said won't react in detail to the ISG report for several weeks while he assesses it and awaits various internal government reports on the situation from his own advisers.  Since this leaves no room for direct attack, the media make a final switch of focus to . . .
• The idea that the left is already "frustrated" with the President and the right is "worried" that he hasn't already accepted the ISG's proposals . . . which begs the question of whether it would be wise for any president to do so. 

Meanwhile, instead of endorsing the ISG's proposal -- which would require them to take a position and defend it rationally -- Democrats in Congress are switching their focus to stepped-up "oversight" of the war.  Once again, Democrats in Congress remain more interested in scoring political points, or avoiding responsibility for failure, than they are in seeing to it that America prevails in the war:

Lawmakers control the war budget and some Democrats, including Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, have advocated cutting funding for it. But Democratic leaders have dismissed choking off military funds because it could hurt troops.

Also, Democrats — like Republicans — remain divided on exactly how to end the war, dimming hopes they would find consensus among themselves, let alone agree on a bipartisan plan.

Leaving a course of action up to Bush also allows Democrats to sidestep the political land mines associated with failure.

The ISG report matters because more than Iraq is at stake.  Taken at face value, the ISG's report would move America and the West in the direction of losing not just the Iraq war, but several other wars as well:

• We would quietly concede the war against nuclear proliferation, because America would have to accept Iran's nuclear program in order to cajole its cooperation over Iraq.  And it won't stop with Iran.  Iran's nuclear program, and the lack of any effective response to it from the European Union and the United Nations, is already bringing other Arab nations to the conclusion that they, too, need "peaceful" nuclear energy programs.
• We would lose Lebanon's fragile democracy, because the world would be forced to bow to Syria in order to obtain the dubious benefit of its "cooperation" in Iraq.
• We would move toward losing Israel's war for its own survival -- because once Iran's nuclear program is complete, all bets are off.  Besides, conceding Iraq will conclusively show enemies of Israel that the West lacks the stomach to stand by its allies or to remain long involved in any fight against determined terrorist enemies.

So, yes, that's realism for you . . . you really can lose several wars at once, with just a little effort.

It's not just the Iraq Study Group that has it wrong about Iraq.  It's the entire "Iraq is a lost cause" crowd, some of whom take glee in the deeply implied pessimism that imbues the Iraq Study Group report.

Has America become a nation of fatalists?  We see what looks like writing the wall, conclude that the moving hand has writ, and bow our heads in surrender?

Have the "realists" on Iraq never snatched victory from the jaws of seeming defeat?  As a lawyer, I have known that joy many times.  Any athlete or sports fan has too.   

A war is not like sudden death overtime in a football game.  There's no game clock.  It's not over 'til it's over.  And it isn't over.

America's fate is not already decided; neither is Iraq's.  The situation in Iraq can go in any of several directions from here:  up, down, sideways, or through the roof.

We can declare Iraq doomed and toss it to its fate, or we can stay and continue to lend a hand to a democracy that is still barely out of the oven.

What is the alternative to so-called "realism?"

Vision.

The men and women who end up changing the world are those with vision.  They look beyond their immediate circumstances and imagine the improbable.  They turn it into the possible.  Then they turn it into the real.  They invent light bulbs and telephones and airplanes.  They find cures.  They send men to the moon and bring them back safely.  They found nations.

So it is in Iraq.

It's a battle already lost, to those who lack vision.

It's a battle we can and will win, to those whose vision is strong.

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

David Warren puts it beautifully:

It is like this. The U.S., with precious little help from allies, who even in the case of Canada refuse to contribute anything like their fair share to the alliance's military costs, for even the most conventional defensive preparedness on the home front, is fighting our common enemy in Iraq. We could be fighting them elsewhere, but that's where our enemy's efforts are concentrated at the moment -- as opposed to, say, the streets of Europe, or exposed infrastructure in North America. It is an enemy remorselessly committed to our annihilation, held up by proxy wars in the Middle East. We must therefore be committed to eliminating them, now and there, instead of here and later. This will not be done by negotiation and retreat.

And such media as CNN (perhaps unfairly singled out), persist in airing a worldview tantamount to blaming the police for the existence of crime. For the consistent argument of the talking heads amounts to, "We may need more troops on the ground in the short term, but the long-term answer is to get out." Translation: "We may need more cops in the short term, to deal with the mess they've already stirred up, but the long-term solution can only be to let the criminals get on with it."

To the criminal mind, even working on low wattage, the response to that has got to be "wait them out". To the mind I call "gliberal" -- to distinguish it from the honourable and responsible tradition of liberal thought -- the very concept of a mortal enemy is beyond processing. Even those who recall what happened on Sept. 11th, 2001, have persuaded themselves that we are only a target because, after that fact, the U.S. went into Afghanistan and Iraq. The unspoken assumption is, withdraw from there, and our problems are over.

Sure, circumstances in Iraq are frightening.  But fear must be our counselor; not our master.

I make my living as an attorney.  There have been times when I have approached a courtroom and felt no concern at all about my client's prospects for success.  There have been times when I have felt a flutter of fear. 

And there have been times when I have felt something akin to a moment of cold terror.

Do you know what I say to myself then?  I remind myself that I have felt just the same way many times before, and that it ended well anyway.

I remind myself:  "This fear is exactly how victory feels -- in the early stages."  And then I go in and do my best and win.

So it is with Iraq.  Conditions on the ground are just conditions.

Am I alone in seeing that present circumstances do not define the limits of Iraq's fate?  Of course not.  I am but one of thousands, if not millions, who know that full well that it  is still possible for liberty to take root in Iraq.  Even the terrorists know it; that is why they are fighting so hard.  Others see beyond today's headlines too.  Fortunately, one of them is in the White House.

This is how victory feels, in the early stages.  New democracies are rarely born quietly and peacefully, but more often they are the product of years or decades of agony, strife, suffering, pain, death, destruction, conflict, war, and fear.  Look at Japan, born of a long, bloody war and two nuclear bombs, yet a thriving democracy today.  Look at India.  Look at Britain.  Look at America, for that matter.

But it's worth the price.  Human freedom is always worth the price.

Iraqis today, for all their struggles, live in a democracy.  They already enjoy freedoms that were unheard of during the rule of Saddam Hussein.

But now Iraq's democracy is under vicious attack.  Forces hostile to democracy and human freedom see Iraq for the must-win battleground that it is.  And we still stand by Iraq's side -- to our honor and credit.

There is a statue that still stands in New York Harbor.  It was a gift to the United States from France, a nation without whose help America might never have won its freedom.  Much has happened since then; but the Statute of Liberty remains a part of the shared legacy of France and the United States of America.

What legacy will the United States leave to Iraq?

Will the fate of Iraq be left to the likes of Iran and Syria?  Will Iraq be allowed to fall back into that world filled with tyranny, censorship, beheadings, torture, misery and repression?

Will we let allow anyone to snuff out the light of liberty in Iraq that our soldiers lit with their own hands and lives?

The legacy we leave Iraq is also our own legacy.

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More excellent commentary at All Things Beautiful

Comments

[Edward Nashton]

Quite a bit of rosy language, but like so many in the neoconservative camp, your analysis is faulty and you do not propose alternatives. "It's not over till it's over" (btw the original quote was 'it ain't over till it's over') is not a policy. While you spend your time talking about "human freedom" (btw what does that mean? i thought that this nation was goverened by laws which are checks on certain forms of 'human freedom'), the failed strategy that is in place is claiming additional innocent American lives. By all objective accounts, the United States is failing in Iraq. Why do you think the President is proposing a change in strategy? Because he was pressured by the media and the toothless left?

Why have the American people abandoned the Iraq policy in droves? Because they're too stupid to accurately assess the situation on the ground thanks to the left-wing media?

All of these theories, though convenient, are not supported by the facts. The President has decided to change course because the violence in Iraq continues to rise. A majority of the American public doesn't support this war, not because they don't see us building schools and handing out gum to children, but because Iraq does not resemble a stable, prosperous, democratic state that is an ally in the war on terror (per the President's changing threshold of success).

Moreover, you assume that we have an indefinite period of time to get Iraq right. If the elections last month are any indication, we have less than a year and a half to "resolve" this situation. Otherwise the democratic party will take back the White House and "solve" the situation for us all by precipitously pulling out American forces...Certainly not a good end.

Your claim that realists are the problem ignores all of the problems that the President and the neoconservatives have caused by executing this war in the fashion that they did. While some of the recommendations of the ISG are fanciful, there are others that will have to be done whether you like it or not. For example, you're opposed to speaking to Iran...Well what do you propose we do instead?

Ignore them?...Ok, they keep supplying the insurgency with weapons and Iraq continues to deteriorate. The American people elect someone to pull our troops out.

Attack them?...Ok, you destabilize the south of Iraq and you've made both Iraq and Iran (as well as Hezbollah) an active threat against you (Every analyst believes that we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg with regard to Iran and Hezbollah).

At least by opening up a dialogue with them you maximize your chances to cut a deal over their activities in Iraq. And frankly it's in their interests to help you because Iran wants to see us leave Iraq sooner rather than later (which is going to happen by 2009 anyway), secondly they would like a Shiite dominated government (done), finally they don't want to see the country fall apart (refugees are bad for them considering that they can't create jobs on their own). Combined with our efforts in Saudia Arabia and Turkey and Jordan, I think we can manage Iran. As to their nuclear program...That's an entirely different issue which I invite you to ponder on my blog.

[kent]

I don't think Baker is a fool, but I do believe he yearns to be back on the world stage. His ego, needing a quick fix, prevents him from seeing Iraq and neighboring Iran and Syria in proper context.

The ISG is a complete waste of paper. If I were an environmentalist, I'd be outraged.