View from abroad - America
The Iraq Study Group report has left the US facing a "lose-lose situation"
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Friday, 08, Dec 2006 06:17
The times are a-changing in US politics. For six years the Republican party has been dominant, dealing with the war on terror by sending American troops overseas to enforce regime change in strategically important middle eastern countries. Now, after last month's "thumping" in the midterms, as president George Bush described his party's electoral defeat, the political landscape is beginning to shift.
Most noticeably, the 43rd president will be forced to work with the Democrats for the first time during his last two years in office. This will drastically tie back his scope for leadership in the country - both in domestic policy and, crucially, in matters of foreign train.
This setback is something he and his party appear to have accepted. First came the departure of hawkish neo-conservative Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defence. After six years in the job Mr Rumsfeld became a casualty of the electorate: the midterm elections had, after all, become a referendum on the Iraq war, so it made sense for President Bush to sacrifice him to the anti-war lions.
Then came the much bigger blow in the form of the findings of the Iraq Study Group (ISG). Chaired by former secretary of state James Baker, the group's report called for a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq if there continues to be no improvement in the overall security situation. With the Democrats standing on an anti-war platform, it seems President Bush has no choice but to come along quietly and take the bitter pill of defeat. But it remains to be seen how quickly, and to what extent, the recommendations of the ISG will be adopted by the White House.
As a result US politics is in a strange state as 2006 comes to a close and this is reflected in the partisan arguments played out in the nation's famously free, and equally famously divided, press. What is the real significance of the midterm defeat for the Republicans? Is Iraq really sliding into the mire of a disastrous civil war? Or could a sustained US military deployment there make a real difference?
Bill O'Reilly, an openly right-wing journalist who presents his own news comment show on the Fox News channel, had his own interpretation of the ISG report. He was on uneasy ground for there was little to attack, making his comments lack their usual punch.
"The study group's big contribution has been to instill a sense of urgency into the Bush administration and Iraqi government," he commented. "Prime Minister Maliki must now realize that continued corruption and poor military performance on the part of the Iraqis will result in fewer US and British troops."
However a little of his usual verve returned when he attacked New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who "initially supported the war but now believes it's a lost cause".
"He said on the radio today that the insurgents had defeated the U.S. military on the battlefield. That's absurd. That's like saying the IRA defeated the British military or Hamas has defeated the Israeli forces. No armies can stop bombings and civilian murders. The truth is that US and British forces have held Iraq together and continue to do so," Mr O'Reilly said.
David Broder, writing for the Washington Post, argued that President Bush has no choice but to accept the ISG report because of the consensus it has achieved.
"The ISG report has been embraced by most congressional Democrats. It has been greeted warily by most congressional Republicans. One thing is clear. As Baker and Hamilton say, there is no other bipartisan blueprint for the future. Bush will reject it at his peril."
But Roger Cohen of the New York Times disagrees with Mr Broder in terms of the importance of the ISG report, dismissing it precisely because of its bipartisan nature.
"As befits a bipartisan report on what looks like a lose-lose situation, it was a fudge," he claims.
"It's hard to escape the conclusion that the report treats Iraq as an existing country needing a quick fix in the name of resurgent American realism, rather than a still-to-be-born country that needs to be ushered into being in the name of American idealism."
Mr Cohen receives some help from Jonathan Chait, writing for the Los Angeles Times, who gets to the nub of the issue by seeking to explain why the report's recommendations are so tepid.
In his view, "the commission generously avoided revisiting the whole question of who got us into this fiasco and how" simply to avoid "inflaming" the president.
"Everybody seems to understand that if you want to help amend the disaster in Iraq, the number one rule is that you can't acknowledge it's a disaster in Bush's presence," he explains.
Few in the US seem able to predict quite what will happen to Iraq in the next year. The state of political debate in the country's media remains confused and distracted; until a solid decision from its leaders is made on future foreign policy nothing is likely to change.