“The overwhelming desire for the success of policies to which a strong emotional attachment has been made leads to an attempt to alter those facts over which one has control, making them consistent with the outcome that is desired. It is as though there is an expectation at a magical level that events over which one has no control will then fall into the desired pattern.”
Washington
Psychiatrist Peter Bourne wrote those words after a year-long tour of duty in Vietnam in 1966. I thought of them as the 10 august members of the Iraq Study Group filed into a cavernous Senate hearing room and took their seats last week.
They looked like members of the politburo in the late 1980s, lined up at a reviewing stand on Lenin’s tomb, grim scowls masking their fears, as the once-proud brigades of the Soviet Army, mangled by the mujahadeen in Afghanistan, limped through Red Square.
And indeed, when one considers the failures of American government in the last few years – in the years leading up to Sept. 11, on Iraq, and responding to the threat posed by Hurricane Katrina – pessimists might wonder if we will end up like the Soviets, consigned to our very own ash heap.
The study group’s report – you can download it or buy it at a book store – takes about 90 minutes to read. It is as bleak as the Sept. 11 report, unsparing in its description of the U.S. debacle in Iraq.
“The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating … the ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing … Some 3,000 Iraqi civilians are killed each month … Violence is increasing in scope, complexity and lethality … The Iraqi Army is making fitful progress … The state of the Iraqi police is substantially worse … The Iraqi government is not effectively providing its people with basic services – electricity, drinking water, sewage, health care, and education … Corruption is also debilitating … Perhaps as many as 500,000 barrels of oil per day are being stolen … Estimates run as high as $2 trillion for the final cost of the U.S. involvement … Current U.S. policy is not working … Nearly 100 Americans are dying every month … Time is running out.”
It’s reminiscent of what Bourne wrote about Vietnam, the “overwhelming desire” of a president and his advisors for what they wanted to happen, a desire that deluded them about what was going on.
The study group’s recommendation – that our diplomats beg our antagonists in Syria and Iran to let us off the hook in Iraq as we draw down our combat forces over the next 15 months – seems an admission of defeat.
Why not just withdraw? We have a moral responsibility, having plunged Iraq into this hell, to give the Iraqis one more year – “one last chance” – at national reconciliation, members of the group contended.
“Iraqis may become so sobered by the prospect of an unfolding civil war and intervention by their regional neighbors that they take the steps necessary to avert catastrophe,” the group wrote.
It is, they concede, a true Hail Mary pass. “Such a scenario,” they acknowledged, “is implausible.”
“Sunni insurgents will not lay down arms unless the Shia militias are disarmed. Shia militias will not disarm until the Sunni insurgency is destroyed,” they wrote. “To put it simply: there are many armed groups in Iraq, and very little want to lay down arms.”
To put it simply: It may be too late.
“Efforts to exhort Iraqis into reconciliation are scarcely new,” said Anthony Cordesman, a foreign policy analyst for the Center for Strategic & International Studies. “This has been a core political effort of the Bush administration since before the elections, and one that dates back to at least the summer of 2005.”
If we are lucky, our troops will march out in regular order, as the British left Palestine in 1948, and not have to fight their way back down the highway to Kuwait, or flee in helicopters from the embassy roof, as in Saigon in 1975.
If the Iraqis are lucky, and their leaders are men of greater substance and wisdom than they have shown, the resultant bloodshed might be minimized and contained.
Greed may help. Northern Ireland’s Catholics lost their fondness for dying as they saw their southern neighbors prosper in the European Community. Iraq has rich stores of oil that need a stable environment to be pumped, shipped and sold.
You know things are bad when you look to the streets of Belfast and Jerusalem for hopeful precedents.
For all they said about Iraq, what the members of the study group said about America was also troubling.
“This war has badly divided this country,” said Leon Panetta, who served Bill Clinton as chief of staff. “It’s divided Republicans from Democrats and … the president from the people.
“This country cannot be at war, and as divided as we are today,” said Panetta.
The panel urged us, one more time, to put aside differences, and give the Iraqis that “one last chance.”
There they sat. Five Democrats, five Republicans. A retired Supreme Court justice, a retired attorney general, a retired senator, a retired secretary of Defense, a retired congressman, a retired secretary of State, a retired U.S. Marine.
Then they rose to leave, to go back to their lives, hoping they had been heard.
“This bunch of has-beens,” as chairman James A. Baker called them, perhaps left the room hoping they have given their country “one last chance” as well.
John Aloysius Farrell is the Washington bureau chief for The Denver Post. His column appears each Sunday. Contact him at jfarrell@denverpost.com or 202-662-8990.
