[...] Iraq Study Group’s executive summary starts with these words: “The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating.” It documents [...]

To say that “The Iraqi people have a democratically elected government” here is only technically accurate, and reflects to some degree how the Bush administration and the media have distorted the major Iraqi elections since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Iraqi Sunnis overwhelmingly boycotted the first such vote, and then delivered a resounding “no” to the nation’s new constitution, meaning that a critical faction of the country had rejected the very idea of this government from the get-go. For a further description of how U.S. diplomats failed to either anticipate or accurately report this, see Mark Danner’s generally brilliant overview, “Iraq: The War of the Imagination,” in the December 21, 2006 New York Review of Books.

“No country in the region will benefit in the long term from a chaotic Iraq.” If there is any reason for hope for Iraq and the region, it lies in this observation, tucked away in the middle of the executive summary and qualified by the disparaging remark that the neighbors are not doing their assigned jobs. These neighbors are divided on most issues, but they have one crucial thing in common: none has an interest in Iraq’s break-up. The challenge is to bring them together to work from this common foundation. So far, we have seen little more than the imperious conveyance of instructions to Iran and Syria — not the most sensible way of convincing these influential regional players that they might actually have something in common with the US.

This is one of those distressing ironies of Iraq’s reconstruction. Yes, there were elections that saw mass participation, especially the second set in December 2005. But an important truth is elided here: by organizing elections so early after the regime’s ouster, when no indigenous (let’s call them “inside”) politicians had yet had the chance to emerge and challenge those who had come back from abroad, the American administration offered these former exiles and expatriates a head start. They had superior resources, organizational skills, and international backing, and they used these assets to great advantage. Apart from the two main Kurdish parties, which enjoy a measure of popular support in Kurdistan, the Shiite Islamist parties (SCIRI, the Da’wa splinters, Fadhila, etc.) could only ride on the coattails of famous clerics assassinated by the regime, not on any achievements, or popularity otherwise earned. If they won, it is because the Shiite electorate, eager to vote for the first time in free elections and encouraged by the foremost Shiite religious authority Ayatollah Sistani to “vote Shiite”, had no alternatives. The Shiite retreat into religious politics triggered a Sunni reaction: the big winner there was also an Islamist coalition. In the end, the biggest losers were the secular middle, perhaps Iraq’s silent majority. Thus the elections spawned a “democratically elected government,” one that has wasted no opportunity to further polarize the country, as it demonstrated so painfully with its rushed, botched execution of Saddam Hussein.

Interesting that this allusion to Israel-Palestine has caused the neoconservatives (Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, etc) to become so unhinged. This is simply a re-statement of current policy with the call for
“renewed and sustained commitment” to implement it. It is that call that enrages the critics although the very idea of mentioning Israel-Palestine in an Iraq report disturbs them even more i.e. the hint of “comprehensiveness.”

The ISG report did not urge two of the key steps that I consider essential if the US is to be able to undertake a troop withdrawal from Iraq that is orderly, speedy, total, and generous. It did not urge that President Bush publicly specify a deadline or timetable for the completion of the US withdrawal. And it did not urge giving the key role in sponsoring the diplomacy required to allow this withdrawal to the U.N. However what it did recommend was a quantum-leap improvement over the policies still being pursued and advocated by the President. In particular, I think its call for US engagement with Iran and Syria as part of the strategy of managing and deconflicting the imbroglio in Iraq is both necessary and long overdue.

The recommendation regarding trying to engage diplomatically with Iran and Syria has been, I think, the most controversial of the ISG’s recommendations within the US political sphere. Many people in the US political elite– and also, of course, in Israel– are reportedly deeply opposed to any move that might take off the table the threat of a military attack against targets inside Iran. And that, obviously, would be one of the Iranians’ very first requirements if they are to be persuaded to enter into constructive talks re de-escalation in Iraq.

The ISG was probably right to specify that the ever-thorny dispute over Iran’s nuclear programs should continue to be dealt with on its existing (and formally quite separate) track. However, it is hard to see why the Iranians should feel incented to engage in constructive discussions over Iraq so long as the US keeps on the table any threat that it might resort to military force against targets inside Iran (let alone, of course, continuing to pursue measures explicitly aimed at “regime change” in Teheran.)

It strikes me that the central argument of the report is spelled out in the second sentence of this paragraph. The ISG’s members seem strongly convinced of the need to plan toward a significant (perhaps total– though they don’t specify this) drawdown of US forces from Iraq. And they quite corrently recognize that for this to be done “responsibly”– that is, in a way that minimizes chaos and casualties to both the troops themselves and all who are around them– then the broad political parameters within which this drawdown occurs need to be established first.

In my own writings, e.g. here, I have stressed that the withdrawal needs to be “orderly”, conveying the same general meaning as the ISG’s term “responsible”. I also urge that the withdrawal needs to be total.

Despite these differences, however, I think the ISG diagnosis (“grave and deteriroating”) is quite correct and the broad prescription it offers in that sentence is on-the-mark.