The Iraqi Study Report: Relevant after all.
Darrell Issa. Frank Wolf. Nancy Pelosi. Tom Lantos.
Issa I remember as the man who bankrolled the California Recall Drive, was going to throw his name into the gubernatorial race, but withdrew when Schwarzenager sucked all available oxygen out of the race.
Tom Lantos is the hawkish Democrat who is a Holocaust Survivor and a friend of Israel in the AIPAC sense. (from Wikipedia: Born to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, Lantos was part of an anti-Nazi resistance movement during the German occupation of that country and sought refuge in a safe house established by Raoul Wallenberg. In 1981 Lantos sponsored a bill making Wallenberg an Honorary Citizen of the United States.)
Frank Wolf is the man who initiated the Iraq Study Group (shh!), a group organized to give Bush some political cover to alter his Iraq policy.
I think it was the neoconservative journal (journal as aside from magazine because the cover serves as a table of contents and is devoid of pictures — but it sits there in the periodical section nonetheless alongside The Nation and National Review which are mere magazines) The American Interest where I saw an article written by some name I recognize that blurs together with the roster of signators to PNAC. “The Complete Irrelevance of the Iraq Study Report.”
Looking at its preface, the article promised to explain how something so touted (look at the news magazine articles of the time, including the cover blurb “Why Bush Will Listen”) proved so meaningless in forming our movement forward in Iraq. The tact, I suppose, was that it was a flimsy document created by weakling politics – minded realists.
Its establishment consensus attempt was both its strength and weakness: we are rooting for James Baker and Edward Meese because that’s all we’ve got! (But go ahead and grab some porn and in the bathroom in defiance of the momentary alliance with Meese and.)
But unless the article cast about to the fact that its irrelevance was the product of Bush’s obstinance and refusal to slide together a meal off this weird Chinese Restaurant menu that was the Iraq Study Report, the article was meaningless. Irrelevance determined by the powers that be. Smug retorts of “now to surge!” notwithstanding.
So this past week Nancy Pelosi travelled to Israel. And then to Syria. As did Issa, Wolf, and Lantos. The implicit, and occassionaly explicit, purpose was an end-around around the tedious Bush Administration to pull out some exigencies of the Iraq Study Report. Syria has an interest in the non-complete disintegration of bordering Iraq. As Representative Wolf said, “I don’t care what the administration says on this. I want us to be successful in Iraq. I want us to clamp down on Hezbollah.” (For some crazy reason, Wolf thinks conversing with Syria might help on these accords.)
Likely a message was relayed to Syria from Israel that America’s posture with Iran are not a precusor of any plan Israel has with Syria. So please no pre-emptive strike on the Golan Heights. The newspaper op-eds suggest that Pelosi mis-stepped with a bolder statement than was there about Israel’s desire for peace talks with Syria, something that seems a little bloated only in that however weakly and whatever boldness or fist in the air the Israeli government wants to put on this communication, this trip served as a point in that general direction.
Contemplating the state of affairs, I suddenly realize that George W Bush couldn’t have done anything like this trip even if he weren’t ideologically opposed to it. Rocks are tossed in his direction whereever he goes in the world. So it’s just as well Pelosi gets to be charged with carrying on the spirit of Neville Chamberlain. Somebody has to at this juncture.
The articles floating to the top of the “Watching America” website have shifted from flub-ubs over the movie ‘300’ to editorials which posit Nancy Pelosi with rock-star status. I suppose to Bush accolydes this proves their point. Ah well. Only Nixon can go to China.
Syria, incidentally, isn’t particularly isolated. It’s only through our America-centric lense that Syria is isolated — we don’t deal with Syria, but everyone else does. The Bush strategy to “isolate” Syria is thus a hoax and a sham. It’s just as well that we isolate Bush, though now we need to figure out how to isolate his finger from hovering around the proverbial button.