EXIT STRATEGIES
WITHDRAWAL? IN YOUR DREAMS BY MICHAEL SCHWARTZ
The ISG report is not an “exit strategy;” it is a new plan for achieving the Bush administration’s imperial goals in the Middle East
16 TheREADER | January 2007
T
he report of James A. Baker’s Iraq Study Group has already become a benchmark for Iraq policy, dominating the print and electronic media for several days after its release, and generating excited commentary by all manner of leadership types from Washington to London to Baghdad. Even if most of the commentary continues to be negative, we can nevertheless look forward to highly publicized policy changes in the near future that rely for their justification on this report, or on one of the several others recently released, or on those currently being prepared by the Pentagon, the White House, and the National Security Council. This is not, however, good news for those of us who want the U.S. to end its war of conquest in Iraq. Quite the contrary: The ISG report is not an “exit strategy;” it is a new plan for achieving the Bush administration’s imperial goals in the Middle East. The ISG report stands out among the present flurry of re-evaluations as the sole evaluation of the war by a group
not beholden to the President; as the only report containing an unadorned negative evaluation of the current situation (vividly captured in the oft-quoted phrase “dire and deteriorating”); and as the only public document with unremitting criticism of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war. This negativity brings into focus the severely constrained nature of the debate now underway in Washington – most importantly, the fact that U.S. withdrawal from Iraq (immediate or otherwise) is simply not going to be part of the discussion. Besides explicitly stating that withdrawal is a terrible idea – “our leaving would make [the situation] worse” – the Baker report is built around the idea that the United States will remain in Iraq for a very long time. To put it bluntly, the ISG is not calling on the Bush administration to abandon its goal of creating a client regime that was supposed to be the key to establishing the U.S. as the dominant power in the Middle East. Quite the contrary. As its report states: “We agree with the goal of U.S. policy in Iraq.” If you ignore