The Iraq Study Group Report Is A Farce.

 by Steven D. Laib  

| View comments |  Print This Post

The Baker - Hamilton Iraq Study Group’s recommendations are, in sum, delusional. 

Since Aaron Goldstein recently wrote on the subject, this writer has had the opportunity to review the entire Iraq Study Group Report.  However, a full read does not provide much more than the summary materials, which leads me to wonder exactly why we even bothered asking a group of aged diplomats and lawyers who know essentially nothing about the region to get involved.  If know nothing about the area, its history and its culture, you cannot create a credible or worthwhile set of recommendations about what to do in Iraq.  It was simply an exercise in wasted time. 

As talker Michael Savage has pointed out, it is perhaps not surprising that some the results came in as they did; for example, the attempt to link the situation in Iraq with Israel.  The media spotlight discussing the report has completely missed the fact that former Secretary of State James Baker is now a senior partner in the multi-national law firm of Baker Botts LLP , which has widely represented Saudi interests, and also was involved in supporting the Dubai Ports World attempted takeover of several key ports on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts.  This makes as little sense as trying to link Iraq to a revolution in Paraguay.  

The most important aspect of this particular mistake is that Israel has nothing to do with the problems in the Middle East.  The fact that Israel exists merely provides a convenient local target for militancy and if Israel were to disappear tomorrow, the militancy would go on, with a new target in the crosshairs.  The problem is not Israel; it is Islamic militancy, plain and simple.  Thus, while, James Baker has been described as a foreign policy realist, his reality has more in common with that found in an LSD trip, than in the real world.  His committee report therefore becomes an unmistakable the reincarnation of Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 Munich pact with Nazi Germany.
Even more foolish is the recommendation that the United States enter into negotiations with Iran and Syria over how to stabilize the region. Both of these nations are documented prime movers in the destabilization of Iraq, and have a vested interest in fomenting a civil war in the area.  They clearly want the attempt to instill some form of real democratic rule in the post-Saddam Iraq to go down in flames while they move in to take over and run what is left in their own interests.  

Suggestions that Iran recognize the territorial boundaries and government of Iraq are likewise ludicrous.  Islam, which dominates Iranian politics, recognizes no such things.  It recognizes only itself, and the actions of Iran are nothing more than an extension of this.  The destabilization of Iraq is directed to bringing Iraq or parts of it into a modern Persian Islamic dominated empire.  It is almost if not actually certain that the Iranian government is working closely with Iraqi Shia troublemaker Muqtada al Sadr, who has been involved in wide spread insurgency operations ever since the Saddam Hussein Government was deposed.  

Further, when the report tries to compare the proposed diplomatic efforts with the comparative success we have had with Libya, they appear not to notice that Libyan dictator Col. Qadaffi approached us, in fear that he might be our next target for removal.  It was military might that did the trick, not coming to him, hat in hand.  

In another key aspect the Study Group’s recommendations are in sum, delusional.  They suggest that we can treat with the people in charge of Iran, Syria, and various of the regional factions as if they were Americans or Europeans, which betrays a sad fact about western governments that was recently brought to a focus by Gregory Davis, producer of the feature documentary Islam: What the West Needs to Know. As Davis states it,

 “the West is guilty of the ages-old error of projection, of imposing its own ideas, beliefs, and aspirations onto the other guy. When Westerners approach Islam, they imagine that it is a religion like others that they are familiar with - like, say, Christianity. They see Islam as basically another item on the religious menu available in an integrated world. What they fail to understand, however, is that Islam is decidedly outside the Western tradition and therefore Western assumptions are inapt when assessing it.” 

Davis goes further to state:
There can be no question of the type of government in Islam because Islam is a government, which Allah through Muhammad has ordained to comprehend the entire earth. Once the political nature of Islam and its universal pretensions are grasped, it is not hard to see why Muslims and Muslim societies are so hostile toward the rest of the world.

This conclusion is something that I have been harping on for some time.  That Islam is not a religion; it is a political system, and therefore, is for all intents and purposes a subversive element wherever it exists within an non-Muslim society.  Those who refer to “moderate Muslims” who are not militant are missing the point; these people are not Muslims because of the very fact that they are not interested in militant expansion of an authoritarian government handed down by an illiterate bandit chief over a thousand years ago; a system that has survived only because no one took it seriously as a threat to the modern world.  The West is now learning of this mistake when it may be too late to do anything about it, short of all out war.     

If  the above is insufficient, and anyone still doubts that the report is out of touch with reality, they should read the article posted on WorldNet Daily illustrating the reaction in militant Muslim quarters.   "The [Iraq Study Group] report proves that this is the era of Islam and of jihad," said Abu Ayman, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad; the group responsible for every suicide bombing in Israel during the past two years. And, "[With the Iraq Study Group report], the Americans came to the conclusion that Islam is the new giant of the world and it would be clever to reduce hostilities with this giant. In the Quran the principle of the rotation is clear and according to this principle the end of the Americans and of all non-believers is getting closer," again from Abu Ayman.

According to Abu Abdullah, a senior leader of Hamas, Baker's report is a victory for Islam brought about by "Allah and his angels.  It is not just a simple victory. It is a great one. The big superpower of the world is defeated by a small group of mujahedeen (fighters). Did you see the mujahedeens' clothes and weapons in comparison with the huge individual military arsenal and supply that was carrying every American soldier. 

Or take this article quoting  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:"These oppressive countries are angry with us … a nation that on the other side of the globe has risen up and proved the shallowness of their power."

Meanwhile, the Kurds, in Northern Iraq see the report as a betrayal, in line with that which occurred during the presidency of George Bush 41.  (Article One)   (Article Two)  President Massoud Barzani speaking for Iraqi Kurdish officials stated that the study group "made some unrealistic and inappropriate recommendations for helping the U.S. to get out of these difficulties." He went further to state that "If under this pretext, these inappropriate recommendations are imposed on us; we declare, on behalf of the people of Kurdistan, that we reject anything that is against the constitution and the interest of Iraq and Kurdistan."

Barzani rejected the study group's call for a "new diplomatic offensive" that would include discussions with all of Iraq's neighbors.  He essentially demanded that the study group report be rejected because it does not follow the “public will of the Iraqi people and their constitution.  As a result, at least one of the major Kurdish political parties may press for a declaration of an independent Kurdistan. 

American officials should be paying attention to Barzani, whose people are the only ones with any kind of democratic tradition in the region, and who have been a major source of broad based support for a constitutionally governed democratic Iraq.  Barzani knows what he is talking about.  He knows that trying to reason with the militants will be counterproductive, and that expecting Iran or Syria to act in a positive manner is simply foolish. 

Returning to the Gregory Davis’ opinions, with respect to the prospect for democracy in Iraq he says:
“It is possible to have elections in an Islamic country as long as Sharia law is not violated - which is hardly what we would call democracy. Democracy implies some sort of pluralism, which is the very antithesis of a Sharia state. Installing genuine democracy would first require a program of de-Islamization, which would be simply impossible.”  What he is saying is that a true democratic government and society are impossible without a complete and total restructuring of the population involved. 

Meanwhile, according to scholar Robert Kagan the Report “”does not even come close to offering a workable solution in Iraq.  Their main recommendation is the rapid training of Iraqis so that they can stand on their own.  Perhaps the commission has not noticed that this has been the administration's strategy from the beginning, and that it has failed.”  Even the Iraqis know this, as shown in the statement of Sheik Mohammed Bashar al-Fayadh , a spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars who states that the Report seeks 'guarantees for an exit [from Iraq] but without paying heed to preventing a civil war from breaking out. The report recommends the training of Iraqi forces, but will it reach the level of the American army? The answer is 'no.'  If the American army is unable to settle the question and get out of this predicament, so how can that be?"

What went wrong?  America opened the liberation of Iraq with “shock and awe.”  Then, once the Saddam Hussein government was removed, it expected the general population to welcome them as liberators.  They tried to win friends through respect and tolerance for local social norms, and in so doing made a grave mistake.  They needed to continue the “shock and awe” until a new society was built on the ashes of the old one; a society that was secularized, and divorced from connections to the past.  It needed to eliminate Muqtada al Sadr and others like him, rather than trying to negotiate with them. 

Behaving in any way other than that of a victor imposing its will on a conquered population was seen as a sign of weakness.  Now, the only way to restore the possibility of success maybe to become that much more brutal than the insurgents; something no sane American would want to do; yet we may face an all out war unless we do so.  It is the same with Iran.  Anything other than forcing Ahmadinejad to accept that American victory and Iranian defeat is the Will of Allah will bring no results.  His kind and all together too many people in the region have been raised to understand only one social structure; dominance and submission.  That’s what Islam is all about.  Do we want to submit, or do we want to dominate?  There is no middle ground. 

Foreign Affairs, National Defense, Foreign Affairs: Iraq War, Foreign Affairs: Israel-Palestine

Read more articles by Steven D. Laib