California Conservative

That’s the question I’m left with after reading these seemingly contradictory articles.

I was left shaking my head after reading David Corn’s post titled “Baker Report Puts Bush in a Corner” because it didn’t square with anything that I’ve read thus far on Iraq. In fact, I’ve opined here that we wouldn’t need to read the Baker Commission’s Report after ABC reported that “U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories.” That isn’t just my opinion either. Here’s what John Podhoretz wrote about the Baker Commission Report:

As one of the study group’s members told the Times yesterday, “We had to move the national debate from ‘whether to stay the course’ to ‘how do we start down the path out’.”
This is the consensus view of the Iraq Study Group, which is very proud that it reached consensus.
Its members also reached a consensus view that Depends is a really fine brand of adult diaper, and that they love reruns of “Murder, She Wrote.”
You perhaps note that I am writing with extreme disrespect toward the Iraq Study Group. That’s because its report is a scandal and an embarrassment; it’s flatly immoral to seek to make or guide policy in this fashion.

Only ultralibs like David Corn believe that the Baker Commission’s Report is worth the paper it’s printed on. Intellectual heavyweights like JPod and Thomas Joscelyn can’t. Here’s what Mr. Joscelyn wrote on the matter:

There is much talk these days about the possibility of the U.S. entering negotiations with Iran and Syria. The thinking goes that both regimes could be enticed into stabilizing post-Saddam Iraq as part of some “grand bargain.” Foreign policy gurus ranging from those sitting on the much-heralded Baker-Hamilton Commission to Henry Kissinger to the incoming Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have argued for this course. Unfortunately, their advice is grounded in a dangerous ignorance of our terrorist enemies.
There is no better example of this ignorance, which cuts across party lines, than a paper co-authored by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Gates in July 2004 for the Council on Foreign Relations titled, “Iran: Time for a New Approach.” Amazingly, despite a wealth of historical evidence to the contrary, the authors proclaim that “the official enmity between Washington and Tehran belies the convergence of their interests in specific areas.” And although “the strategic imperatives of the United States and Iran are by no means identical…they do intersect in significant ways, particularly with respect to the stabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The authors come to this conclusion not through any rigorous analysis of Tehran’s behavior, but instead simply through wishful thinking. In no way do Tehran’s interests and American interests in Iraq, or anywhere else in the world, “converge.” Below I have included two pointed examples of just how far off base this thinking is. The prospect for negotiations is not very high since our foreign policy establishment simply does not have a very good understanding of those they seek to negotiate with in the first place.

You know there’s nothing good that can come from heeding Zibigniew Brzezinski’s advice on foreign policy matters. For that matter, the only ‘achievement’ of Jim Baker’s time at State was the coalition pulled together for Operation Desert Storm. Baker’s ‘involvement’ was minimal even in that because President Bush the Elder was his own Secretary of State, making numerous calls that brought the most impressive coalition of my lifetime together.

The truth is that the Baker Commission is like all other supposedly blue ribbon commissions: They’re nice for getting some old political pros together to relive yesterday but they aren’t much good in tackling problems which are nothing like anything they’ve ever dealt with before.

That’s why the Baker Report doesn’t paint President Bush into a box. However, it does present an opportunity for Democrats to overplay their hand. It’ll be interesting to see if, and when, they do.
Technorati Tags: James Baker, Commissions, Zbigniew Brzezinski, John Podhoretz

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at 12:42 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Liberals, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.