During the past two days, the political class in Washington has not covered itself in glory. Even as most days are like this, these past two have been particularly low.
Yesterday, Defense Secretary nominee Robert Gates spent five hours undergoing mild questioning by the Senate Armed Services Committee. It apparently pleased the Senators when Mr. Gates declared that the U.S. is not winning the war in Iraq. We wonder how the soldiers and Marines in Iraq, as well as their families, will interpret this statement from their future leader. When the senators tried to elicit from Mr. Gates some thoughts about what should be done about Iraq, the nominee shrugged his shoulders, noted that there were no new ideas, and then muttered that he would ask around for advice and think about it some.
Happy to be rid of Donald Rumsfeld, a man who had the effrontery to actually defend himself during congressional interrogations, the Senators approved Mr. Gates’s nomination by a vote of 24 to 0. It seems as if appearing before a Senate committee as a bland, uninformed, and unimaginative sycophant is a surefire way of gaining approval. And having, to the committee’s delight, shown no thoughts or even apparent interest in the issues that a Defense Secretary must face, Mr. Gates now has infinite freedom to adopt any conceivable position. We wonder how bewildering this spectacle must be to an Iraqi or Afghan man wondering whether he should risk his life as an ally of the United States.
This was followed today by the presentation of the august Iraq Study Group. This commission declared that the U.S. military should emphasize training Iraqi forces and increase the number of Americans embedded with Iraqi units – a policy already in place for two years after the arrival of General George Casey as commander in Iraq (US field commanders in Iraq recently discussed their plans to increase embedded personnel
here and
here). The commission also asserted that most of the U.S. ground combat brigades could be out of Iraq by the spring of 2008. This timeline is at least as long, and maybe longer, than that already contemplated by General Casey and his command...
The Iraq Study Group report is a childish embarrassment, a paper which would get a poor grade if submitted in an undergraduate international relations course. Its authors would be well advised to slink out of town, lest someone remember that they were associated with this project.
Thus ends two ignominious days in Washington, D.C. Many inside the Washington bubble will consider the replacement of Mr. Rumsfeld and the arrival of a bi-partisan commission’s study of Iraq to be progress. On the contrary, U.S. interests have been positively harmed by the Gates hearing and the ISG presentation. The U.S. would be better off had these two days never occurred. Observers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the world must have watched and then despaired at the strength and wisdom of the U.S. government...
