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(We're going to collect these funky reports.)

By Mark Kilmer Posted in Foreign Affairs — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

It looks like Reuters casts its myopic eyes to Olympus when telling us of the Iraq Study Group/Baker-Hamilton Commission/ISG: Washington power elite advises Bush on Iraq.

Sage members of Washington's power elite shuffled into the White House on Wednesday to advise President George W. Bush that his current approach is not working in Iraq and that it is time for a change.

[ . . .]
"We do not recommend a stay-the-course solution. In our opinion that approach is no longer viable," [James] Baker told reporters afterward.

Those were strong words from a former U.S. secretary of state who is close to the Bush family and who led the legal team that helped George W. Bush win the Florida vote recount in 2000 that ultimately put him in the White House.

Curiously, they remove the clouds from the peak when they cite Baker in referring to the gang of mostly septuagenarians as a "bunch of has-beens." Perhaps that's how the President sees this exercise, but he isn't saying. (We do know, however, that one of Baker's bunch of has-beens is the next SecDef.)

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The creepy Jack Reed declared: ""It's an opportunity for the administration to make some critical decisions." But Tony Snow doesn't see "a magic bullet" in the report. The media has not accorded the ISG the kind of infallibility it granted to the – cue the music – 9-11 Commission, perhaps because Baker-Hamilton hasn't had Dick Clark over for a televised gripefest/book tour, as did Kean-Hamilton.

So we get nothing of import from the ISG. In the Opinion Journal Political Diary today, Holman W. Jenkins Jr. writes:

We'll reserve comment on the Iraq Study Group report till we've seen it, but -- what the heck -- instead of splitting differences, Jim Baker and friends could have done something truly useful by having the courage to set a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq -- and making it 15 years from now.

The world believes we are just one car bomb away from throwing up our hands and skedaddling. "Vietnam syndrome" is the phrase memorized by all the crazies from Baghdad to Pyongyang. That's the factor doing the biggest harm to our efforts in Iraq. No, the violence wouldn't end tomorrow if the 15-year pledge were made and believed. But its nature would change. Today's violence clearly smells of occupation endgame, with groups using terror and mayhem to establish local dominance, expel rival groups and position themselves for our departure. Restored would be the much-better situation of two years ago -- roughly speaking, politics-plus-violence, as groups contested inside and outside the political system we were creating for power in a new, constitutional Iraq.

Of course, we don't need Baker-Hamilton for that, but it would have been nice.

Writing today from Baghdad's Green Zone, TIME mag's Aparisim Ghosh tells us:

It's a shame there's no Arabic word for Duh! because that word would perfectly sum up the Iraqi reaction to the conclusions in the Iraq Study Group report. Nobody living in this country needs a high-powered bipartisan Washington committee to tell them that (a) the situation is "grave and dangerous"; (b) there's no "magic bullet" solution; (c) talking to Iran and Syria is the smart thing to do; and (d) the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki isn't up to scratch.

Is there an English word for Duh? I'm not certain.

His statement "nobody living in this country" needs to be told those things is an assertion that every person (including, I imagine, non-journalists) thinks it is wise, for instance, to chat it up with deranged regime in Tehran and Damascus, mullahs and generals respectively, about which will annex Iraq. Perhaps Jimmy Carter and Kofi can negotiate some sort of power sharing.

But his analysis seems to be that some Iraqis want us to stay and others want us to go; for the rest, he writes, "the report will simply add to the sense of impending doom."

It is a shame that there is no English word for Duh, because I'd be sorely temped to use it here. I'm sorry, Mr. Ghosh, but conducting studies and fact-finding missions and issuing resulting reports is one of the things our government does best. It keeps everyone occupied.