I don’t have a lot to say about it that isn’t obvious already. The angle that interests me, though, is whether this group, representing the country’s power establishment, has any real power. I’m not sure. There seems to be a different dynamic going on here that makes this "commission" and its report different from, say, the toothless 9/11 commission and its report. I really wonder if the President can ignore this one because it’s a very strong signal that the nation’s power elite are fed up with him.
Whatever one might think of the usefulness of the seventy-nine prescriptions for this illness, the diagnosis of the disease is pretty right on. And pretty surprising for its toughness. That’s what matters, not whether this or that proposal will be implemented. What can or cannot happen depends on where the power lies, and it will be interesting to see if Bush still has enough left to control the Middle East agenda in the next two years.
This report is not significant for its remedies; rather it’s significant as the moment the power establishment went public about its rejection of the Bush presidency. It’s a shot across the bow, and I might be wrong about this, but if it were just another b.s. commission report, I don’t think it would have been so severe in its criticisms. It’s Bush bashing taken to an entirely new level. These people don’t do that kind of thing unless there’s a point. I"d be surprised if the power establishiment would be content to submit its report and just let Bush ignore it.
So if it were left to the congressional Democrats to rope down the loose cannon that this presidency has become, I would not be too optimistic. They might surprise me, but I doubt they are not going to grow a backbone overnight, even with the majorities they will have come January. And if it were just the ISG by itself, probably not much would happen. But it’s the combination of the power establishment, represented by the ISG, and the shift in the congressional power balance that might be able to bring a measure of sanity and accountability back to the hall of mirrors otherwise know as our national capitol.
The nutcase right wing and the Israel-is-right-no-matter-what crowd will fight the ISG establishment/Democrat majority, and we’ll hear all the clever arguments that miss the essential point: the U.S. was outmaneuvered by Iran and the game is over. To persist is folly. Iran is the waxing power in the region, and we have every reason to be
concerned about its strategic goals. But the last people in the world anybody wants dealing with the Iranian problem are these fools in the White
House.
The new game has to start with the reality that we lost and get the best deal we can to minimize further losses, and in order to do that we have to negotiate with the winner whether we like it or not. It’s not about what we’d like to happen in the Middle East; it’s about what’s possible. And that’s why James Baker has been called onto the scene. He’s the go-to guy when the power establishment needs to negotiate, and they hope he will negotiate the best deal possible. That’s what it means to be a realist.
So come the new year we’ll see if that’s how the new game will be played or whether the Bush and McCain dead-enders still have enough clout to continue in we-can-still-win-this-thing idiocy. These people have a far too inflated idea about the kind of power and influence we have in the region right now. We have no credibility. We are perceived as fools and losers, and for good reason. Continuing to be foolish and continuing to lose makes no sense. We’re in the same position now we were in around 1972 in Vietnam. The jig was up, but we persisted in thinking we could win, and the only result was more people getting killed. The same fundamental dynamics are at work now in the Middle East. If we had any clout to influence events there for the better, we’ve squandered it.
The American capacity for self-delusion seems limitless. The only thing that seems to snap us out of it is when the ugly truth can no longer be denied. We’re long past that in Iraq, and the ISG report is a sign that at least the power establishment gets that. But it’s still an open question who has the power: the fools or the realists.
UPDATE: An interesting angle presented by Juan Cole in a Salon article. The rift between Baker and Bush runs parallel to the rift between Sunnis and Shiites with Baker representing not just key players within the American power establishment but also the interests of the Sunni Saudis. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out with Bush now pushed into the embrace of the Shiites. Will that force Bush to change his attitude toward Iran? The Kurds don’t like Baker either.
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