by Robert D. Kaplan

The Iraq Study Group

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The mistakes made in Iraq since 2003 were so many and so serious that it is reasonable to argue that toppling Saddam Hussein was a wise decision, incompetently handled in its occupation phase. It is also possible to argue that the frequency and magnitude of the mistakes indicate a hubristic flaw in the concept of regime change itself, which I supported. Thus it is with humility and open-mindedness that I read the report of the Iraq Study Group.

The report may be less remembered for its details than for its double-edged political effect. On the one hand, it has been a catalyst to force the Bush Administration to initiate its own policy reviews, and step up its own diplomatic initiatives. That is an unmitigated good. On the other hand, by essentially making an end run around the Administration, the group risks seriously undermining it. But that is something the Administration can fix by emerging from all of these reviews with a decisive policy direction; professionally executed. Despite the election results, the Administration’s fate may still be in its own hands.

The urge to dismiss the Study Group’s report as a surrender document (as some neoconservatives have already done) is off the mark. Read carefully, it is a tough, intricate policy statement, albeit with serious flaws. There are pages herein that amount to a blueprint for a virtual, second invasion of the country, were Iraqis to cooperate. Some sound bites may declare that “cut and run” is the theme of this slim book, but that’s not what the fine print says.

The Study Group says a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq could be so catastrophic that it might force the U.S. military to eventually return there. The Group dismisses the partitioning of the country as an unwise policy goal, since it would lead to the collapse of the security forces and is, in any case, impractical because of mixed populations in so many Iraqi provinces. The Group is open-minded concerning a temporary, small-scale troop surge in the Greater Baghdad area. Regarding the region, the report takes Iran’s nuclear enrichment program off the table as a legitimate negotiating item. It calls for Syria and other Arab countries to engage in direct talks with Israel. It calls for an international force, including U.S. troops, on the Golan Heights to provide the Israelis the security guarantees they would need in the event of a withdrawal. It says Syria must cede hegemonic ambitions over Lebanon, and cooperate with investigations of the assassinations of leading anti-Syrian political figures there. Rather than surrender, I detect an attempt at comprehensiveness.

The Group’s summary of the situation in Iraq is banal, but hard to argue with: the improvement of the Iraqi Army has been “fitful;” the state of the police is terrible; the results of the troop surge in Baghdad last summer, Together Forward, were “disheartening;” the Shia are broken down into factions that reward the extremes; the Sunni leadership, to the degree it exists, is shadowy—that is, barely existent; and the state of the Iraqi economy remains uneven, despite vast oil wealth. While none of this is new, the report is also meant for the general public, not merely for dedicated readers of blogs and newspapers.

The document’s core strategy, as the Group admits, is imperfect. It calls for changing the military mission from combat to the support of Iraqi security forces by 2008, even as we and the Iraqi government immediately launch what it labels a “New Diplomatic Initiative” in the Middle East.

The military piece envisions moving combat forces out of the fray, while we ramp up the number of trainers embedded with Iraqi units, who, themselves, will be augmented by quick reaction forces, search and rescue forces, and, in particular, special operations forces to hunt down al-Qaeda and add to the force protection of our trainers. The problem here, which the Group alludes to but does not address, is just how many special units are going to be needed—and how close to the action they will have to be—in order to adequately protect our embeds. When you subtract the combat brigades, but add in all the extra trainers and the force protection element, you may still end up with tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq. I had predicted (in The Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2006) that by early 2008 we would have about 40,000 left in Iraq. The Iraq Study Group, again, rather than cut and run, appears to suggest a somewhat higher number.

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