7 December 2006

I do remember it, too. We lived at that time in government quarters, situated at the Daggett, California, Civil Aeronautics Administration airport in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert. There were three family residences in our little enclave, plus a bachelor's quarters area, and the station was manned 24 hours a day. I had turned 7 the month before and I was very aware of the adults around me in my circumscribed world (green grass, trees and water from our deep well, inside the surrounding fence, scraggly sage brush and snakes outside) and responded to the emotions they displayed more than any specific feelings I can recall as being my own.

Now I live in tranquil Costa Rica, where everything is green and God takes care of the watering. They say we have a wide selection of dangerous snakes here, but in almost seven years here I have seen only two, one of them already dead.

One of the mundane types of dangerous things we have, at least in San Jose, are traffic circles. Some politician at some time in the past got the idea of constructing a ring-route highway that would circle the entire city and improve traffic-flow. Well, in the places where it finally got built things are vastly improved, no doubt about that, but since Costa Rica is rather a poor country they decided that all of the major intersections would not be clover-leafs but, instead, traffic circles. At peak hours they are nightmares.

What an idea! As I have pointed out, it rains a lot in Costa Rica. Tunnels fill up with water. (Here, even some bridges fill up with water faster than the small drain holes they have created for the task can manage.) So what's the philosophy here...a tunnel is cheaper than an overpass?

Is the New York Times writing down a little bit for its remaining readers? These two items come from an article about the possibility of liquid water on Mars:

That's a new scientific unit of water volume quite in keeping with what I consider the paper's penchant for accuracy in their other reporting.

"The Congress is not going to accept every recommendation in the report, and neither will the administration. But there's a lot of, you know, very important things in the report that we ought to seriously consider." -- George Bush

Baker and Hamilton said the recommendations were part of a comprehensive plan that could work if it is implemented in its entirety and not piecemeal.

Bush said he discussed the report with Blair, along with "the reviews that are being conducted by the Pentagon and the State Department and our National Security Council." He said he and Blair agreed that it is important to achieve "victory in Iraq," a term that the study group avoided in its report.

Baker and Hamilton have decided apparently that they have replaced not only the Executive but also the Pentagon, State, the NSC, and maybe even Congress. And do I detect any whiff that they prefer to pay more attention to Syria and Iran than they do to Tony Blair?

The study group, chaired by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), called for a fundamental shift of the U.S. mission in Iraq from combat to training and for a "new diplomatic offensive" to prevent Iraq from sliding into chaos and to deal with the broader Middle Eastern issue of Arab-Israeli peace. The report advocated bringing all of Iraq's neighbors into negotiations, including Iran and Syria, "without preconditions."

One gets the impression, reading this, that we haven't been training the Iraqi police forces and military for the past several years, instead we have just been sending combat troops here and there.

And, oh, yes, I high-lighted one of my favorite lines...we are still in the "prevent" phase.

And don't you love the fact that there shouldn't be any preconditions with regard to including Syria and Iran in the negotiations phase? Presumably this means they will do likewise, even though Iran has adamantly said they were going to do whatever they liked and we could stick it up our nose. It rather sounds to me like the Study Group doesn't even think the US should have any conditions at all, simply ask the other side what it is they want?

One hopes they likewise avoid the use of the word "victory" in their response.

Actually, if I was Bush I'd be tempted to say okay, I've heard from you Wise Old Owls and I'm going to go along. I hereby am ready to convene a meeting, without preconditions, which will include not only Iraq's neighbors but all of the other regional countries as well, including Israel, for negotiations. Let's start next Monday. On live television, no behind-closed-doors stuff to be leaked to the NYTimes for massage.

Let's hear what they all have to say and what THEIR non-negotiable demands turn out to be.

I guess the best way to go is draw straws to see in which order each group speaks. Before their spokesperson begins, the charter or constitution or rules by which each group is governed should be read aloud...

I say "group" because I presume we don't allow one spokesperson for, say, Lebanon, but also need to listen to the needs/demands/wishes of Hamas. And Hezbollah. Will the Shiites have one spokesman, or will the Persian Shiites be represented by one mullah and the Arab Shiites by another... For that matter, will the US view be represented by the president, who after all has the Constitutional responsibility even if some people absolutely detest that idea, or the State Department, or the Democrats, Republicans, or even the Baker-Hamilton CG nee SG?

Who will chair this discussion group? I mean, assuming we turn down former presidents Carter and Clinton.

Howard Kurtz makes an interesting observation, as he often does, then fails to follow it to a conclusion, ditto:

What's the conclusion? Why, simply that none of the members who could manage to get along were running for office. The best argument for term limits--maximum of one--you can make.

I think we worst idea our democracy has allowed to come into being is the professional politician. In the beginning we were all citizens first, some of whom took a few years out of their lifetimes to serve the people, briefly, before returning to their own lives. It was a selfless sacrifice, one performed only by dedicated men.

Now politics has become an extremely lucrative career for some people with no more talent than the ability to convince a majority to vote for them.

Our politicians today can go into office as broke as an itinerant tinker (cf. Clinton) and emerge, after a few years on a healthy but still nominal salary, as multi-millionaire tinkerers (cf. same) with pensions that would support entire villages of children.

Something went wrong, somewhere. Look at the Senate, 100 millionaires all claiming they are looking out for the rights of Joe Lunchbucket, a man they don't even know except during campaign years.

The question, of course, is whether any of this will matter, or whether President Bush has already turned thumbs down on most of what the study group is recommending. Talking to Iran and Syria? Drawing down troops? Cutting off aid if Maliki can't meet certain targets? None of this seems at the top of a White House to-do list.

No, the question is whether they have succeeded in convincing the president that he should turn over his executive powers to an unelected group. Because once he does that then the office of the chief executive officer no longer exists, even Congress is at risk.

If American foreign policy can be arbitrarily turned over to a Gang Of Ten who issue an ultimatum of "follow each and every one and all of our recommendations or the whole plan will fail" then goodbye democratic republic.

Slate's Fred Kaplan isn't much more polite: "So many careers and reputations have been ravaged by Iraq. Even James Baker, the canniest of operators, has now met his Waterloo.

"The report of the Iraq Study Group--which Baker co-chaired with Lee Hamilton, that other Wise Man-wannabe--was doomed to fall short of expectations. But who knew it would amount to such an amorphous, equivocal grab bag.

"Its outline of a new 'diplomatic offensive' is so disjointed that even a willing president would be left puzzled by what precisely to do, and George W. Bush seems far from willing.

"Its scheme for a new military strategy contains so many loopholes that a president could cite its language to justify doing anything (or nothing)."

Hugh Hewitt sounds disgusted:

"The report combines an almost limitless condescension towards the 'Iraqi sovereign government,' even going so far as to lay out a timetable for its exact legislative program for the next six months, with a cavalier indifference to the Syrian death squads operating in Lebanon, and the certain nature of the Iranian regime --still, on this very day, hosting the anti-Holocaust conference. It is a wonder, this bit of appeasement virtuosity."

National Review views the panel as being in outer space:

"Welcome to the non-reality-based world of bipartisan commissions. Even commissions flying under the banner of realism, such as the James Baker/Lee Hamilton--led ISG, inhabit that world. The ISG doesn't recommend any plausible way of making Syria and Iran behave the way they 'should.' Instead, it advocates talks that will magically convince the Iranians and Syrians to stop pursuing their interests in Iraq . . . The ISG report is an analytic embarrassment."

Rick Moran slams the report in advance:

"You will excuse me if I believe that talking to Syria while it is in the process of gobbling up its tiny Lebanese neighbor to be one of the most cynical, immoral, and ill-considered diplomatic ideas in a generation -- which of course is right up Baker's alley. He is a specialist at sacrificing others for the greater good; just ask the Iraqi Kurds.

"And talking to the fanatical true believers in Iran (Ahmadinejad purged the foreign service last year, replacing experienced hands with ideological purists) about helping with security in Iraq is like inviting the wolf in for a drink and having Little Red Riding Hood give him a lap dance; the temptation to insinuate themselves even more into Iraqi affairs just might be too much to resist.

"I don't know if there is a way to 'victory' in Iraq. Clearly the rest of the world has already made up its mind (not to mention the American media) that we have lost so that no matter what we do in Iraq, how we leave it, what we accomplish from here on out, the onus of defeat will accompany our withdrawal. Is the ISG simply acknowledging this fact? Or are they encouraging it?"

"I've been watching defense secretaries in confirmation hearings for 30 years, off and on, but I don't think I've seen any perform more forthrightly than Gates," says Fred Kaplan.

"When he was asked if invading Iraq was a good idea in retrospect, he paused, then said, 'That's a judgment the historians are going to have to make' . . . It is impossible to imagine any of George W. Bush's previous Cabinet appointees, or any of his sitting Cabinet officers, making such stark--and, at least implicitly, critical--statements in an open Senate hearing.

THIS, Kaplan says, without even an apparent trace of irony or introspection, constitutes a forthright, stark, even implicitly critical statement?

Of course, what do I know? I never even suspected the meaning of 'is' was so 'iffy'...

But it's really hard for me to imagine Rumsfeld saying "That's a judgment historians are going to have to make." and then having Kaplan exclaiming wow, stark, forthright, implicitly critical!

These comedians are so funny they don't even know when they are intentionally telling jokes and when they aren't.