Assessment of the Iraq Study Group
By Chad A. B. Wilson
Published December 13, 2006, 10:35 am in Military / Foreign policy.
The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward--A New Approach is divided into two sections. Today, I want to focus on the first, "Assessment," and my next column will more than likely discuss the second section, "The Way Forward--A New Approach."
The discussion in my last column focuses on the members of the Iraq Study Group, especially considering those peoples' biases. That discussion was prompted by a review on Amazon by Elaine Gonzalez that said
"James Bakers is an old friend of the Bush family, and a senior partner in the Carlyle Group. In other words, he can't be trusted. He wrote this book pretty much to agree with Bush, but not so much that Bush would look like a fool. This was just created to appease the American people and to let them know that the problem is being addressed in some way, shape or form. It still does not change the fact that Bush and his buddies are unwilling to budge, with some considering bringing more troops to the war torn nation....Don't trust the writers of this book, and don't trust Bush. They will tell you that we can't let the Iraqis down, that we need to stay, but that's just to keep up the military spending so that they could continue rolling in dough."
And then there was another review that I can't find now, for it may have been taken off the site, that said the book was written by a bunch of Bush cronies and will do nothing except support the Iraq war.
But now, I look around, and everyone is crying that this is liberal propaganda. The NY Post even called the group "surrender monkeys." Most of the conservative commentators have said things to that effect.
After examining those who are actually invovled in the report, however, I can't find evidence of this kind of bias. On the one hand, we do have James Baker and the old Bush group. But then there are the Democrats, too. So it seems pretty balanced.
But then I read the report, and the first section, the assessment of the situation in Iraq, offers one of the bleakest views I have yet read. It is an indictment of everything that has happened since the mission was "accomplished" in May 2003. I knew the situation was bad in Iraq, but it wasn't until reading this report that I realized exactly how bad it is.
Allow me to hit the highlights:
Violence from many corners. The Sunni insurgency, the al Qaeda terrorists, the Shiite militias, and the Kurdish Workers Party all pose significant threats. They all want different things, and they form alliances when it benefits them. Some want a unified Iraq that they alone will control, while others favor a split Iraq.
National reconciliation. Because of the problem with the different sects described above, national reconciliation appears fleeting. Even the Iraqi Constitution leaves room for pseudo-independent states, such as Kurdistan, which has taken down its Iraqi flags and flown Kurdish ones. The Sunni insurgency wants to control the country like they did before, which means expelling the foreign forces and keeping the Shiites at bay, while many Shiites pretend to work with the government while leading sectarian clashes--the Mahdi army, for example, has ties if not leadership from Al-Sadr, who controls the large portions of the Iraqi government. Some Shiites want an independent Shiite province in the south, and the Kurds then want the north. These vying factions keep no one happy.
Reconstruction failures. The entire economy is in shambles, and no one knows quite how to fix it. The country has the oil reserves to produce a lot more revenue, but they don't have the resources and infrastructure to get it out. Things are improving, but there are still a lot of things preventing the economy from growing like it could:
"Instead of meeting a target of 10 percent, growth in Iraq is at roughly 4 percent this year. Inflation is above 50 percent. Unemployment estimates range widely from 20 to 60 percent. The investment climate is bleak, with foreign direct investment under 1 percent of GDP." (p. 23).
That's bad, really bad. The security problems lead to the lack of investment and other economic problems, but it's also a matter of national reconciliation and sectarianism yet again.
Support of the International Community. The report makes it clear that the neighboring states are doing nothing to help Iraq, and some are actively undermining its stability. What the report doesn't say, however, is why Iran, for example, really wants a stable, unified government. The report assumes that it is in Iran's interest, but it doesn't clearly state why.
What to do About It?
This assessment of the situation leads directly into the recommendations, which I will deal with next time. The situation is bleak and it is fomented most directlly by a lack of national reconciliation within the country and the interference from external forces such as Iran and Syria.
So they have to set it up as a terrible situation in order to make their recommendations work. And they focus on specific aspects of the situation, making everything lead back to that idea of national reconciliation. It all comes down to trust, though. The group has a lot riding on it. It is the first comprehensive review of the situation from a seemingly bipartisan committee, and it did a lot of research to come up with this assessment.
What the assessment lacks, however, is a list of resources. How can I check up on the situation to see if they're correct? Well, I can't, unless I go interview Bush et al. myself. It isn't clear what information came from which source, and they group tries to keep its informants at least a bit secret. It constantly refers to "one senior American official" or "one leading Iraqi minister says..." I would love to have some actual research here, though. Where is the list of works cited? Nowhere, because there are no works cited.
Just like I have to trust that Bush tells the truth, I am forced to trust that the Iraq Study Group is telling the truth, with no real proof that they are. It is only their bipartisanship that sets them above the rest.
I need to make one final comment; if the Iraq Study Group's assessment of the situation is correct, I am aghast that we did that to a stable country. Hussein was bad, no doubt, and he oppressed portions of his population in cruelty I can't even imagine. But the assessment we have in this report makes it sound like the entire country is now screwed up. It was bad for some people before, and now it's bad for everyone. I just heard on the radio yesterday that 60 percent of Americans think the war was a mistake in the first place. But where were those people in December 2002 when all of this was being debated? It's almost as if we're only against these things in hindsight when they turn out to be difficult. That's where the cut and run idea comes in, and that's where I can't agree.
If you're gonna do it, you do it until the job is complete. I know, I know, I sound like G. W. Bush there, but I think that's the way it has to work. The consequences are too great at this point. I didn't support going in in the first place, but now that we're there, we have to finish it.
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