TIME: A "family intervention" on Iraq: "It pains the father that it has come to this."

[DeepModem Mom]

TIME: Searching for an Exit Plan
A new team, made up of some old Bush family friends, will try to help the President find a way out of the Iraq mess. Will this family intervention succeed?
By MICHAEL DUFFY
Posted Sunday, Nov. 12, 2006

....The Greeks believed that the gods visit the sins of the fathers upon their sons. But when it comes to the Bush family and Iraq, the tragedy runs from stem to root. And so over the next few weeks, key members of Bush's father's vaunted foreign policy team -- the real A-team of the Republican foreign policy establishment -- will step in and conduct what amounts to a family intervention. Led by former CIA Director Gates and former Secretary of State James Baker, who co-heads a commission on Iraq, Dad's former aides will present the son with a plan for saving his presidency and, with it, some remnant of the family's brand name. None of those involved will call it an intervention, but it's fair to say the nation's future is at stake. Although Gates and Baker will be out front, others who worked for the patriarch are helping behind the scenes. Dynasties don't get to be dynasties by neglecting the line.

The task facing the Old Guard is to fashion an exit strategy from Iraq that can salvage U.S. prestige and avoid turning the civil war into an even wider and more violent catastrophe. There are only a few known knowns here: it surely pains the father that it has come to this. It is just as galling to the son that he had to invite his father's most trusted consiglieres to step in and help clean up his mess overseas. Neither man appreciates the chortling sounds coming from the vast Bush 41 crowd, which has long harbored grave doubts about the soundness of 43's foreign policy team. The biggest question is how the object of the intervention will react. As one senior official in the 41 White House says of the President, "He can fight this and turn into a constantly warring figure, or he can turn back into the friendly wise guy who gets along with everyone. The latter will serve him much better."

It does help Bush that the return of the realists comes at the very moment when both parties are looking for political cover on the war that went wrong. Although the leaders of the new Democratic majority in Congress say they plan to hold the Administration accountable for the spiraling costs, mismanagement and graft associated with the war, the reality is that the party remains divided over what kind of military strategy to pursue now. Democrats who voted for the war and have been on the defensive with the party's antiwar base are anxious to get behind any sign that points to an exit. Those who voted against the war but who don't have a clue about how to stabilize Iraq want to find a program they can get behind without looking like silly skedaddlers. The Republicans are equally torn, between realists furious at the Administration for refusing to change course sooner and true believers who fret that the White House is about to abandon the neoconservative project to bring democracy to the Middle East....

***

...something akin to a shadow State Department has sprung up to figure out how to extricate the U.S. from Iraq. Baker and Hamilton reached deep into the government's foreign policy ranks -- active and retired -- and plucked their favorite generals, spooks and analysts to work in complete secrecy, installing some in a nondescript building that houses the U.S. Institute of Peace. Some 50 advisers, both here and in Iraq, have kicked in reports and working papers; Baker and his team have fired questions back at those who are the most promising. Baker has been in touch with representatives from Iran and Syria, countries the U.S. isn't keen to cozy up to. And about a dozen longtime aides and diplomatic wizards, including Brent Scowcroft, the grand master of the foreign policy establishment, are in communication with Baker and Hamilton as they go down to the wire. The bipartisan pragmatism encouraged by the Baker-Hamilton group, says Clinton U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, marks an end to the era when U.S. foreign policy was crafted by people who looked at the world as they wanted it to be, not the world as it was. Says Holbrooke: "Now there is a tremendous wedge between the neoconservatives and the rest of the national-security community."...

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1558266,00.html?cnn=yes

[wakeme2008]

1. I LOVE IT... everybody sees the same thing

41 is bailing out 43 again. :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[havocmom]

2. Wedge isn't just between neocons and rest of national security community.

It's between the neocons and the REST OF THE WORLD.

Beginning to wonder if this is more than just Baker reining in trouble.
Wondering if it isn't a last ditch effort to keep junior out of the Hague, where many others in the junta seem to be heading.

[midnight]

3. Or was 43 meant to cause all this chaos so the rest of us would

be sympathetic while 41 and his buddies step in and finish unfinished business. Remember 41 was not re-elected for the another term. He had unfinished business.

[MidwestTransplant]

4. Imagine how pissed Bush get's when people suggest his dad has

to bail his ass out AGAIN.

[EVDebs]

6. "A SonTransformed" should be the next book for 41 and Scowcroft

BTW, Dems will return the country to the Powell Doctrine (Praise the Lord).

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

5. I love it....

Especially this one line: "None of those involved will call it an intervention, but it's fair to say the nation's future is at stake." emphasis mine

I would imagine that on Tuesday night after the call was made that the House had gone to the Democrats and things were looking very good for the Dems in Senate, Poppy called Junior and told him, "you're done."

Too bad Poppy didn't say that to Junior when he was screwing things up when he was younger instead of saving Jr's sorry ass everytime..