A SENSE OF ASIA
Arrogant, castrating blow: The Baker-Hamilton catastrophe
See the Sol Sanders Archive
By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
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Thursday, December 14, 2006
“History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated”, Johan Huizinga [1872–1945], Dutch historian wrote. The dire consequences of Baker-Hamilton’s machinations may come to naught, or even, following the law of unintended consequences, produce an important counterreaction. There seems some of that as this is written and George Bush’s instinctive rejection of their failure to talk of victory has been triggered.
But it would be hard to exaggerate the hurt of the American cause in Iraq, and, indeed, on the whole effort to contain worldwide Islamofascism, wrought by this arrogant group of former American officials and leaders. They failed, of course, to achieve their presumed domestic purpose: to introduce some bipartisan support for a policy to address the growing crisis in Iraq, and to suggest a new strategy for dealing with it. They could not, indeed, calm the domestic waters because the Democrats [and perhaps the Republicans will be soon] are at sixes and sevens within their party over how to proceed.
The Baker-Hamilton recommendations for strategy and tactics are either old bromides, unrealistic, or downright inimical to the interests of the U.S. and its allies.
The chutzpah of a non-elected consulting body asked to give advice to the President demanding he not ‘cherry pick”: their recommendations is not to be believed! That recommendations of the group were not passed quietly and discreetly to the President — if such intra-governmental communication is any longer possible with a disloyal bureaucracy in Washington leaking like a sieve — is testimony to the self-promoting nature of the two co-chairmen, long since past their prime.
Abroad, however, the effect of the study and its implications — minus knowledge of the U.S. political system, the role of the media, and the American ethos — is disastrous:
The report is seen as a repudiation of U.S. goals in Iraq, the Mideast, and, indeed, throughout the world. Without knowledge of the fundamental but convoluted checks and balances of the U.S. constitutional system, it would be seen as a complete castration of the Bush presidency for the remainder of its term of office, acknowledgement of the passage of policy-making to his opponents in the Congress, and a complete reversal of policies.
By its horrific description of the current scene in Iraq, it lends food and comfort to the enemy there – and to the Islamofascists in other parts of the Arab/Moslem world — encouraging them in their own trials of blood and treasure to believe they are on their way to victory.
Its call for direct talks with Syria and Iran, in the face of their promotion of the insurgency in Iraq and their public and private statements in opposition to the fundamentals for peace and security Washington has advocated in the region, makes any possibility of negotiating with them impossible.
It demoralizes our allies in Iraq and all those forces in the Arab/Islamic world who look to the U.S. and its allies for modernization and reform, whether they be the government in mid-crisis in Lebanon or the students demonstrating for freedom in Iran.
By forcing the President into a public “debate” on policy, they have inevitably tipped the hand of the Administration and the military in pursuing any change of strategy and tactics, usurping that most important element of any war, surprise.
But perhaps most of all, the study and the group which has steered its publication demonstrates the utter disregard and importance of propaganda and psychological warfare which has dominated this contest from the American side. After an effort to imitate the important and long-term war of ideas characterizing the Cold War in The Pentagon at the outset of the answer to 9/11, there has been no such campaign. That effort was stillborn because of petty in-fighting by bureaucrats inside The Pentagon led by a former member of Sen. John McCain’s staff.
Instead, the U.S. has pursued a feckless PR agenda in the State Department, the place where more than any other site in the U.S. government such intervention is rejected whatever its so-called commitment to “public diplomacy”. First, a former advertising wizard [from Baker’s stable by the way] made expensive films on the good times rolling for American Moslems which could not be presented on state-owned, anti-American TV in the region. Then, Bush’s totally domestically oriented media mavim has seen her job in such things as having tea with the Saudi harem.
The war of ideas has been so badly handled Washington has encouraged public officials to go on al Jazeera, the chief organ for the Islamofascist propaganda. The kind of massive campaign to win over the great “silent majority: of the Islamic world — impoverished exploited, and crippled socially by their regimes for the most part – has been ignored.
But we live in a world of surprises, as always. This, too, shall pass. If Baker-Hamilton has sent a negative shockwave through the American polity – some of the polls seem to indicate that the public is tired of a losing war but not its goals — then it may in the end have accomplished another purpose than the one elicited by its arrogant architects.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net),
is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent
for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
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