Iraq panel's real agenda: damage control (Andrew J. Bacevich)

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Iraq panel's real agenda: damage control
The Iraq Study Group's makeup gives away its true purpose.
By Andrew J. Bacevich

BOSTON – Even as Washington waits with bated breath for the Iraq Study Group (ISG) to release its findings, the rest of us should see this gambit for what it is: an attempt to deflect attention from the larger questions raised by America's failure in Iraq and to shore up the authority of the foreign policy establishment that steered the United States into this quagmire. This ostentatiously bipartisan panel of Wise Men (and one woman) can't really be searching for truth. It is engaged in damage control.

Their purpose is twofold: first, to minimize Iraq's impact on the prevailing foreign policy consensus with its vast ambitions and penchant for armed intervention abroad; and second, to quell any inclination of ordinary citizens to intrude into matters from which they have long been excluded. The ISG is antidemocratic. Its implicit message to Americans is this: We'll handle things - now go back to holiday shopping.

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Far be it from the group to ask whether an open-ended "global war on terror" makes sense as a response to 9/11 or to ponder the flagrant manipulation and misuse of intelligence in the months leading up to the Iraq war. The ISG won't assess the egregious flaws in US military planning for the Iraq invasion or the manifest deficiencies in American generalship since the war began. On the role that Congress has played in enabling presidential fecklessness, you can be certain that Baker and Hamilton will remain silent.

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Above all, it will leave intact the assumptions, arrangements, and institutions that gave rise to Iraq in the first place. In doing so, it will ensure that the formulation of foreign policy remains the preserve of political mahatmas like Baker and Hamilton, with the American people left to pick up the tab.

In this way, the ISG will make possible - even likely - a repetition of some disaster akin to Iraq at a future date.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1128/p08s02-coop.html