Dan Rather
Somewhere between Secretary of Defence nominee Robert Gates telling the Senate that we are not winning in Iraq and the Iraq Study Group opening its report with the instantly famous statement "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating," reality came home to roost this week in Washington. These were not assessments that could be pinned on partisanship or punditry; they came from an incoming member of the administration and a bipartisan congressional commission co-chaired by no less a Bush-family loyalist than former Secretary of State James Baker.
All this blunt talk may have once and for all punctured the administration's bluster that 'we're winning' the war in Iraq. And for all the talk of 'a new way forward' in Iraq, that might be this week's - and the Iraq Study Group's - most enduring legacy.
Because beyond its assessment of the situation in Iraq, the ISG report could be viewed as a supersized version of the Bush administration's 'As they stand up, we'll stand down' strategy - a strategy that, thus far, has not worked.
Better focus
The report calls for greatly intensifying United States efforts to train Iraqi forces. And to help Iraq's government better focus on preparing the conditions that would make an American withdrawal possible, it counsels against making "an open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of American troops deployed in Iraq." In other words, if the Iraqi government does not show sufficient effort in getting its military act together and ending sectarian strife, we'd be out of there.
Regional conflict
But would we be? The spectre raised by the report of a potential regional conflict, should Iraq 'slide toward chaos' and neighbouring countries 'intervene', would seem to call whatever bluff the U.S. might make about withdrawing its combat forces from anything but a stabilised Iraq. The U.S. can say it will pull out of Iraq if its government seems to lack the will to accelerate national reconciliation and the readying of a credible military, but would we really do so if faced with the possibility that leaving could spell not only the collapse of Iraq but also open up a war - fought through proxies or directly - between Iran and Saudi Arabia, waged on the battleground of Iraq? Yes, such a development would be a "humanitarian catastrophe," in the words of the report; it would also involve three of the nations in the world's top five in terms of proven oil reserves.
'diplomatic offensive'
The other major recommendation put forward by the report, for a 'diplomatic offensive' aimed at achieving a consensus for stability in Iraq, essentially calls for the Bush administration to publicly hit reverse on its Middle East policy. Instead of the U.S. creating its own reality in the region by initiating transformative, democratic change in Iraq, the ISG would have our government approach 'all of Iraq's neighbours' (hello, Iran and Syria) to seek their aid in keeping Iraq from plunging into total chaos and taking the region with it.
Such a scenario might yet take place in some form, but early reaction from the White House suggests that diplomacy will continue to be something the U.S. engages in with its friends alone. Further, one is left wondering just why Syria or Iran in particular would want to help the U.S. in any way in Iraq.
The White House has made clear that it will consider the ISG's findings alongside those of anticipated internal studies, so it is hard to say what role it will ultimately play in the search for a solution to the Iraq problem. But, if nothing else, the Iraq Study Group may have finally got Washington's factions on the same page about just what - and how big - the problem is.
Dan Rather is an American television commentator.
