James Baker’s new job: Declare victory and bring the boys home
Read More About: 2006 Elections, George W. Bush, Republicans, War in Iraq,
This just in: In the tug-of-war between Jack Murtha and the Republican party, Murtha has been declared the winner.
Here’s your tip-off: Last week, the House included $1.3 million in a defense funding bill for something called the Iraq Study Group:
“The purpose of the [Iraq] study group is to come up with a compromise between an administration policy that no one believes in and just walking away,” says Edward Luttwak, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1 of 4 think tanks supporting the effort. “The study-group process will be mysterious, but the outcome is predictable: They’re going to come to the conclusion that the US should disengage, but not abandon Iraq.”
Translation: Murtha was right.
Not only that, look at how may heavyweights it took to counterbalance Murtha:
- Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, chair
- Former SecState James Baker III, co-chair
- Former CIA director Robert Gates
- Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
- Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R) of Wyoming
- Former CoS Leon Panetta
- Vernon Jordan
- Former SecState William Perry
- Former Sen. Charles Robb
- …and one Republican to be named later.
Here’s your clue that the group will do nothing much except provide Bush with an election year fig-leaf: if they figure out how to “end” the war, then Bush no longer has the title of “wartime President.” And if he doesn’t have that any more, that means he has to give up all the extra powers he claims the constitution gives him during wartime.
I’m noting that there are no real neo-cons in that group. That, along with the increased influence of arabist Nick Burns at Elliot Abrams’ expense are nice developments. It looks like he’s behind the India nuke deal (and I’m of 2 minds on that) and getting the Afghans to back off beheading unrepentant Christians.
Right track, but it’s a long way back to sanity.