Say Anything Blog

Huh?

A draft report on strategies for Iraq, which will be debated here by a bipartisan commission beginning Monday, urges an aggressive regional diplomatic initiative that includes direct talks with Iran and Syria but sets no timetables for a military withdrawal, according to officials who have seen all or parts of the document.

While the diplomatic strategy appears likely to be accepted, with some amendments, by the 10-member Iraq Study Group, members of the commission and outsiders involved in its work said they expected a potentially divisive debate about timetables for beginning an American withdrawal.

In interviews, several officials said announcing a major withdrawal was the only way to persuade the government of Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to focus on creating an effective Iraqi military force. Several commission members, including some Democrats, are discussing proposals that call for a declaration that within a specified period of time, perhaps as short as a year, a significant number of American troops should be withdrawn, regardless of whether the Iraqi government’s forces are declared ready to defend the country.

Among the ideas are embedding far more American training teams into Iraqi military units in a last-ditch improvement effort. While numbers are still approximate, phased withdrawal of combat troops over the next year would leave 70,000 to 80,000 American troops in the country, compared with about 150,000 now.

I’m not sure why anyone thinks diplomacy with Syria and Iran is going to change the situation in Iraq.  Both Syria and Iran are state sponsors of terrorism in Lebanon, where they back Hezbollah, and are also responsible for arming and supplying much of the insurgency in Iraq.  Neither of these two countries want to see a representative government in Iraq (just as neither really want a representative government in Lebanon) and have been working to undermine our mission to establish such a government in Iraq since shortly after the invasion was over.

If we begin talks with them now are they suddenly going to embrace the idea of an independent, democratic Iraq?  And even if they do, how sincere will that embrace be?

I think we’d be wasting our time with this.

As for the idea of threatening a withdrawal of troops from Iraq unless al-Maliki gets Iraq’s fighting force in line, I’m not sure how that added pressure would do anything to help.  It seems to me that al-Maliki is already under enough pressure to get Iraq’s security situation under control.  A threatened withdrawal from we Americans couldn’t really motivate him more, and would really only serve to embolden the terrorists to strike more in order to further undermine American support for the war and hasten our retreat.

If this is all the Iraq Survey Group has to offer then it is a pretty disappointing, if much-hyped, effort.  Diplomacy with two countries that have no interest in seeing our objectives achieved and threatened withdrawals which will only serve to embolden the terror insurgency is hardly a good plan.