Thanks for nothing guys

From The Washington Post:

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group plans to recommend to President Bush that he threaten to reduce economic and military support for Iraq's government if it fails to meet specific benchmarks intended to improve security in the country, a source familiar with the report said yesterday.

The congressionally chartered panel, which is due to deliver its much-anticipated report to Bush at the White House this morning and then unveil it to the public, outlined diplomatic and military ideas intended to change the course of the 44-month-old war. Among other things, the source said, the report urges Bush to aggressively tackle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to reduce the broader regional tensions fueling the Iraq conflict.

The latest details to emerge from the commission's report help flesh out a plan that also calls for the United States to withdraw nearly all combat units by early 2008 while leaving behind tens of thousands of troops to advise, train and embed with Iraqi forces. The report suggests that the Bush administration open talks with Iran and Syria about ways to end the violence in Iraq and proposes holding a regional conference to bring together all of Iraq's neighbors.

There is a great deal here to disagree with. First of all the Israeli-Palestinian "dispute" is not a factor in Iraq. If the Jews of Israel packed up and moved back to Europe and America that would not make the Islamofascists suddenly willing to tolerate a pro-Western democracy in Iraq. They hate Israel because it is a free Western-style state in the Middle East. If we are successful in turning Iraq into another free Western-style state the Jihadists will hate it just as much as they currently hate Israel.

Second, "opening talks" with Iran and Syria makes as much sense as the US government negotiating with the leaders of MS-13 about ways to reduce gang violence in our cities. Iran and Syria are the totalitarian outlaw-states which are the primary cause of the problems in Iraq. If they were not providing funding, training, weapons and explosives and safe passage across their borders to the terrorists in Iraq the "insurgency" would have ended long ago.

Talking to terrorist states like Iran and Syria only legitimizes them, increases their stature in the region and encourages them to keep sponsoring more terrorism (since it is already working so well for them). If the US wants to get serious about doing something about Iran and its lapdog Syria (think of the relationship between John McCain and Lindsey Graham and you will understand the relationship between Iran and Syria) then we need to strip most of our military forces out of Europe (where they are no longer needed to deter a Soviet invasion) and send them to the Iran/Iraq border.

There they need to begin very visible training for an invasion of Iran. This will send the only message that they are capable of understanding that we are serious about doing something about their interference in Iraq and their nuclear weapons program.

Of course the threat of force is useless unless there is a willingness to use force so we must be prepared to go through with the invasion if there is not a rapid change in both their retoric and their behavior.

There is, however, one thing in the Study Group report which I must agree with:

An early working draft from July stated that "there is even doubt that any level of resources could achieve the administration's stated goals, given the illiberal and undemocratic political forces, many of them Islamic fundamentalists, that will dominate large parts of the country for a long time."

It is an unfortunate fact that the culture of Iraq has been indelibly stamped with the influence of the greater Arab/Muslim culture of the region. This makes the Iraqi people unable to implement a genuinely tolerant, pluralistic, secular and democratic society and government. This isn't to say that they will never be able to do this, but it is going to take time. Remember how long it took the West to get from Athens to Philadelphia.

The bottom line is that the Iraq Study Group is made up of a bunch of political dinosaurs (not one career military person is a part of the group) who want to continue the failed policies which allowed the Middle East to degenerate into the snake-pit which it is today.