Meet the New Strategy. Same as the Old Strategy.

After all the hullabaloo and the practiced leaks to the New York Times the Iraq Study Group’s big, show-stopping recommendation is…

…stay the course.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group plans to recommend withdrawing nearly all U.S. combat units from Iraq by early 2008 while leaving behind troops to train, advise and support the Iraqis, setting the first goal for a major drawdown of U.S. forces, sources familiar with the proposal said yesterday.

The commission plan would shift the U.S. mission in Iraq to a secondary role as the fragile Baghdad government and its security forces take the lead in fighting a Sunni insurgency and trying to halt sectarian violence. As part of major changes in the U.S. presence, sources said, the plan recommends embedding U.S. soldiers directly in Iraqi security units starting as early as next month to improve leadership and effectiveness.

Let me put that recommendation in other terms that you might have heard before.

“As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down”

“…when Iraqi forces can defend their freedom by taking more and more of the fight to the enemy, our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.”

Any of that sound familiar?

Here’s the most ridiculous part. The ISG couldn’t even be bothered to give a firm commitment to that 2008 date either. Says the article:

The call to pull out combat brigades by early 2008 would be more a conditional goal than a firm timetable, predicated on the assumption that circumstances on the ground would permit it, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the commission’s report will not be released until next week. But panel members concluded that it is vital to set a target to put pressure on Iraqi leaders to do more to assume responsibility for the security of their country.

So 2008 is a target…kind of. If the situation on the ground, as determined by the military leaders, warrants a pullout.

In other words, exactly what the President has been saying for two years.

So what, exactly, has the ISG been doing for the past few months with the sly leaks and the tyrant-emboldening talk about working hand in hand with the butchers in Syria and Iran? Why has James “Isn’t there a dictator around I can suck up to?” Baker and his elite cadre of geriatric has-beens been sneaking their preferred method of “realism” that has the Iraqi President basically begging Mad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for mercy in dribs and drabs to an eager MSM?

How maddeningly craven of them. How sickeningly cowardly. All that effort just to paint a thin veneer of “timetables” over the strategy they have been sneering at from behind their masks of “realism” and “stability”.

You know, I have an idea. It starts with a very simple sentence:

No More Tyrants.

That’s a tall order and if we adopt it, it will change our foreign policy not only in the short term, in Iraq, but for decades to come.

But it’s a sound policy and I believe it is the key to winning the long war that’s being waged on us from the madrassas of the Islamists.

I’m going to spend some time this weekend outlining where I believe our foreign policy ought to be going. But remember. It begins and ends with three simple words.

No.

More.

Tyrants.

No related posts.

Category: No More Tyrants