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Condemnation of Bush Iraq plan mirrors failure to follow Baker ideas
By David Millikin
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com 01 12 07
Defying expectations, the new Iraq strategy unveiled by President George W. Bush this week mirrored many proposals from the heavyweight Iraq Study Group led by former secretary of state James Baker.
But Bush's refusal to incorporate two of the panel's central recommendations -- set a target date for beginning to withdraw US forces from Iraq and seek Iran's and Syria's help to stabilize the country -- was enough to earn the plan a searing thumbs down from the president's critics.
Bush's plan, unveiled Wednesday, called, on the contrary, for a "surge" of 21,500 more troops to Iraq while boosting military efforts to isolate the regimes in Tehran and Damascus.
The decision to deepen US involvement in the unpopular war while foregoing diplomacy drew scathing criticism not only from opposition Democrats but also from some leaders of Bush's Republican party.
"I believe it's a tragic mistake," said Senator Joseph Biden, a 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared before the panel Thursday to defend the Bush plan.
His Republican colleague, Charles Hagel, called Bush's plan "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam."
In stark contrast, the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by Baker, a Republican who served with Bush's father when he was president, and Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, won wide praise for the proposals it submitted in early December.
The report focussed on shifting responsibility for ending the spiralling sectarian violence in Iraq from US to Iraqi forces so American troops could begin withdrawing by early next year.
It also called for a broad diplomatic offensive that would involve Iran and Syria -- backers of anti-US insurgents and sectarian rivals in Iraq -- and include a major push to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seen as a source of tension and radicalization across the region.
Bush was cool to the recommendations from the beginning and some commentators saw his plan as an outright repudiation of the Baker report.
"From where I sit, Madam Secretary, you are not listening to the American people, you are not listening to the military ... you are not listening to the Iraq Study Group," Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer fumed at Rice Thursdsay.
The strategy released by Bush however reflected key elements of the Baker outline, including a need to boost training of Iraqi forces by "embedding" more US advisors and making US support conditional on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government meeting "benchmarks" for achieving security and political reconciliation.
"Contrary to earlier reports, America will now only surge if Nuri Maliki's government makes a deal to share oil wealth and reintegrate former Baathists, things it has shown no willingness to do," said Peter Beinart of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Rice met another of the group's main recommendations Thursday when she named a "czar" to oversee a new, more decentralised push for economic reconstruction and job creation in Iraq.
She is also due to leave Friday for a tour of the Middle East that will include talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on their moribund peace process and efforts to rally moderate Arab allies to Iraq's aid.
But at the same time, Bush's top diplomat made clear that diplomacy involving Syria and Iran remained out of the question.
Rice argued that such negotiations were unacceptable because in exchange for their help stabilizing Iraq, Iran would insist Washington stop opposing its illicit nuclear program and Syria would demand a free hand in reasserting its control over neighboring Lebanon.
"That's not diplomacy, that's extortion," she said.
A former State Department official who was instrumental in the work of the Iraq Study Group downplayed the differences with Bush's final plan and suggested the Democrats who now control Congress could still force the president's hand on the missing elements.
"Its not a repudiation -- there are a lot of things in the plan that come directly from the Iraq Study Group," said the former diplomat, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly on behalf of the group.
"On the two really critical points they did not adopt -- a target date to begin drawing down US troops and talks with Syria and Iran -- those are points that many people in Congress will press, so they're not dead," he said.
AFP 12 0817 GMT 01 07
Copyright© 2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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