Quite aside from the wisdom or folly of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, and quite aside from how much, if at all, those recommendations are executed by the White House, I must admit the ISG did a bang-up job of first lowering expectations and then impressing a resigned public with its sweeping breadth -- and severity.
Watching the panel's televised Q&A session after the report's release, I was stunned -- and not alone, I'm sure -- to hear its bipartisan membership publicly condemn Mr. Bush's war management as "a nightmare" equivalent to Saddam Hussein's atrociousness.
For weeks the media rumored the ISG would have little new to say in the way of recommendations, and that much proved true, given constraints on the ground. But the way the ISG said it? That impressed.
For anyone watching yesterday ... thinking, as I did ... that James Baker was there only to wipe Junior's chin, hoist his knickers and rescue his presidency, well, we all got an education. Taking into account the sensitivity of his historical ties to the Bush Dynasty, Baker's defenestration of George W. was as firm-handed as any critic's.
"We do not recommend a stay-the-course solution," he said in direct repudiation of his old boss' scion. "In our opinion, that is no longer viable." He might as well have called George delusional. In private, I suspect he did. I also suspect Baker is no longer on the White House's Christmas card list.
The full written report (here in pdf) was, as mentioned, strongly anticipated, but just as severe -- succinctly labeling Bush's monstrous misadventure with three little words that surely prompted a presidential tantrum: "grave and deteriorating." And of Bush's macro-mismanagement the panel concluded in the present tense that "the most important questions about Iraq’s future are now the responsibility of the Iraqis." We should enlighten Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that our presence is not "open ended." In short, either Maliki's government starts producing, or for us, it's bye-bye Iraq.
Other than its harsher-then-expected temperament, if the report contained anything astonishing it was the way in which it called for "a change in the primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly." Stripping thousands of embedded American advisers of the big-brother protection of a sizable U.S. combat presence would of course move the troops out nicely, but irresponsibly leave those advisers at the mercy of their feckless, or worse, militia-aligned Iraqi "trainees."
Any of the report's irresponsible recommendations are as inconsequential as the sensible ones, however, since Bush "seriously" pronounced all of them worthy of action "in a timely fashion." Translation: they're already collecting dust. No one, let alone one of Daddy's servants, is going to tell George Jr. how to run a war.
In fact, the White House laughably declared the report a validation of its policies, in that the panel proposed no timetabled or immediate withdrawal. Then again, that singular omission was the panel's most egregious misjudgment, so in that sense it was indeed a validation of White House thinking.
Still, in my opinion the Iraq Study Group did an admirable job -- not so much in the steak, but the sizzle. Its stern tone, its somber mood, its severity in presentation penetrated the national atmosphere and stamped a final, blue-ribbon seal of approval on bipartisan condemnation of the administration.
The ISG's starkest condemnation came in a passage that clearly suggested an assessment of present fact, not mere speculation in the subjunctive: "A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq’s government and a humanitarian catastrophe. Neighboring countries could intervene. Sunni-Shia clashes could spread. Al Qaeda could win a propaganda victory and expand its base of operations. The global standing of the United States could be diminished."
Could trigger, spread, diminish, etc.? No. The verbs are realities.