A Grim Verdict, Some Tough Calls to Make
Can the White House really find a way to fix Iraq?
The violence has been mounting at an alarming rate for months, but it was only last week that the debate over Iraq in Washington truly shifted. First, there was incoming Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, whose forthright admission that America is not "winning" in Iraq contrasted sharply with the dismissive doublespeak of Donald Rumsfeld. Then came the verdict of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group: "Current U.S. policy is not working."
While its specific recommendations might have been anticlimactic, the Iraq Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, has already succeeded in one of its main objectives-changing the tenor of the debate in Washington. As recently as early November, President Bush was still telling cheering crowds, "We got a strategy for victory that will work." Last week, following the panel's report, a more chastened Bush struck a different chord. "It's bad in Iraq," he said, standing next to his close ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "I believe we need a new approach." (Not everything changed, however: The front page of the New York Post derided the Iraq Study Group as "Surrender Monkeys.")
"Not enough time." It is unclear how many of the group's 79 recommendations President Bush will embrace-or even whether any changes in U.S. policy can have much effect on the ground in Iraq. Broadly, the Iraq Study Group calls for U.S. troops to transition to support roles and for combat units to be withdrawn by the first quarter of 2008. This would be accompanied by ambitious milestones for the Iraqi government and a broad new U.S. diplomatic offensive that would include reaching out to Iran and Syria. Bush's initial reaction to the specific proposals was chilly, but panel members are pressing him to use the report as an opportunity to change course. "He doesn't want to have these last two years be the failure of some stubborn president who didn't listen-some cowboy president," panel member and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson tells U.S. News.
The shortcomings of the U.S. effort in Iraq-which costs American taxpayers $2 billion a week-are clear enough in the report. For example, only 33 of the 1,000 staffers in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad speak Arabic (and only six of them are fluent). The group also says that U.S. intelligence is lacking, adding that fewer than 10 of the analysts "on the job" at the Defense Intelligence Agency have been tracking the insurgency for more than two years (a point DIA disputes). And the option of sending more U.S. troops to quell the violence cannot even be considered because "we do not have the troops or equipment to make a substantial, sustained increase," the report says.
Perhaps most damning, the Iraq Study Group blasts the Bush administration for routinely undercounting the violence by, for instance, excluding sectarian attacks when the perpetrator cannot be determined. So while 93 attacks or violent incidents were recorded on one day last July, an Iraq Study Group review turned up 1,100 violent incidents that day. "Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals," the report concludes.
But the report's recommendations also betray its authors' lack of familiarity with Iraq's complex web of ethnic, sectarian, and tribal interaction, as well as the daunting political constraints on Iraq's government.
For one thing, Iraqis are alarmed by what amounts to a 15-month deadline for the U.S. combat presence. "The security situation here is difficult-and complicated," says Abdul Rahman Mustafa, the Kurdish governor of the contested city of Kirkuk. "My personal feeling is [that] is not enough time."
One of the group's most controversial proposals could turn out to be its call for a timetable of political milestones for the Iraqi government, along with stiff penalties, including a reduction of U.S. support, if those deadlines are not met by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "It's out of touch with reality," says Judith Yaphe, an Iraq expert at the National Defense University who was an adviser to the Iraq Study Group. "We're looking to Maliki to be able to exercise the kind of authority and control he doesn't have."
Other recommendations are already underway, including the group's key military suggestion that the United States dramatically boost the number of American soldiers embedded as trainers with Iraqi security forces. U.S. military officials have long been worried that a dozen trainers simply aren't enough to help transform an entire Iraqi battalion, which numbers anywhere from 350 to 700 soldiers. Recently, some of the U.S. teams have been enlarged to 60 trainers. "Now, it's at the battalion level and higher-what we need is company level and platoon," says Lt. Col. Timothy Karcher, who heads the military transition team for the 3rd brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division in Baqubah. "That's the biggest hole in our game right now-junior-level leaders. They're our seed corn."
Iraqis are particularly surprised by the angry reaction in Washington to another of the group's proposals-dialogue with Syria and Iran. This is a move considered essential by many in Iraq, given that Tehran has infiltrated many aspects of Iraq's political and security affairs. "We know they are controlling so much here," says a Sunni battalion commander in the Iraqi Army, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "At least if America speaks with them, it will be out in the open. We will have a chance to hear what they say."
Stability. Some of the report's omissions are just as significant. Though Bush has said for more than three years that one of his main aims is to build a democracy in Iraq, the report barely mentions "democracy," let alone whether it is a realistic goal. Instead, the panel lays out a more modest objective: stability. The implication is clear. "Somebody said during our deliberations that it's like a patient who woke from a coma after 30 years and was asked what he wanted," says Simpson. "He started to say food and water, but they said no, you're going to have democracy and a vote."
Many in Washington worry that this report, and the Bush administration's own policy reviews, are simply too little, too late. "If these recommendations had been made and taken up a year ago, they would have had a higher probability of success than today," says panel member William Perry, defense secretary under President Clinton. "But our collective judgment is that it's not too late."
With Anna Mulrine in Iraq
This story appears in the December 18, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.