California Conservative

This year’s prime example of bureaucratic wrong-headed thinking, aka the Baker Commission report, will be made public this December. This year, like in all other years, Democrats will fawn all over the report while pushing for acceptance of all its recommendations. The White House should reject these recommendations because they’re defeatism disguised as ‘realism’. David Sanger’s article lists a number of interesting insights into the report.

A draft report on strategies for Iraq, which will be debated here by a bipartisan commission beginning Monday, urges an aggressive regional diplomatic initiative that includes direct talks with Iran and Syria but sets no timetables for a military withdrawal, according to officials who have seen all or parts of the document.

As I’ve written before, direct talks with Syria and Iran shouldn’t be held because (a) they aren’t interested in stabilizing the region and (b) because they won’t keep their word. Diplomacy is only useful when dealing with honest people. Otherwise, it’s an exercise that’s designed to impress the ‘world community’, which is meaningless. It seems to me that holding direct talks with Iran and/or Syria only legitimates them. Instead of playing nice in public, we should be putting them on notice that their financing the terrorists and insurgents in Iraq won’t be tolerated.

In interviews, several officials said announcing a major withdrawal was the only way to persuade the government of Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to focus on creating an effective Iraqi military force. Several commission members, including some Democrats, are discussing proposals that call for a declaration that within a specified period of time, perhaps as short as a year, a significant number of American troops should be withdrawn, regardless of whether the Iraqi government’s forces are declared ready to defend the country.

Announcing a Coalition pullout will just undermine security in Iraq. It also undercuts the efforts of brave Iraqi patriots who’ve stuck their necks out against the terrorists and the insurgents in their quest for freedom. Tips to security forces will dry up. Violence will increase. Insurgents’ and terrorists’ actions will become more bold. In fact, the insurgents and terrorists have already become more bold.

Aside from the policy aspects of the Baker-Hamilton Commission’s report, which are awful enough, it should be seen as utterly immoral to abandon a nation after telling them that you’d help them become a democracy. But ‘realists’ like Chuck Hagel, Joe Biden, Jim Baker and John Kerry don’t care about behaving in a morally disgusting manner. Their only consideration is how to declare defeat against the terrorists without accepting the blame for declaring unilateral defeat in the one war we can’t afford to lose.

While we’re at it, let’s just be blunt about this. Let’s not let Hagel, Biden, Baker, Kerry and others appropriate the realist label when that isn’t who they are. Who they are is a collection of failures and/or idiots. To the best of my knowledge, only Baker’s been on the right side of any foreign policy. Even then, he counseled against taking out Saddam, which only left us having to defeat him later on. The rest of them are foreign policy idiots.

The commission’s co-chairmen have urged members and staff not to discuss their deliberations. As a result, those who were willing to talk about the commission’s work and the draft reports did so on the condition of anonymity.

TRANSLATION: Though the commission’s co-chairmen have urged members and staff not to discuss their deliberations, some members and staff have acted dishonorably by ignoring their directives.

Technorati Tags: Baker Commission, Lee Hamilton, Leakers, National Security, Iran, Iraq, Syria

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 1:55 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Patriotism, Terrorism. 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.