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Onward,
Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky and Deva
November
14, 2006
Beltway Bromo-Seltzer
A
Sneak Peak at the Baker Commission Report
By WERTHER
As we have stated in the past, the reports
of government commissions serve their intended purposes best
when they act as a cover-up disguised as an exposé. The
9/11 Commission Report is the classic and best-known recent example,
with Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton giving bravura performances in
pretended gravitas, with only an occasional lapse into imbecility
by John Lehman or Jim Thompson. [1] The Robb-Silverman Report,
by contrast, was so shakily constructed, and the co-chairmen's
dissembling so unconvincing, that their "investigation"
should have been accompanied by the music track of "Three
Blind Mice."
In the wake of the human and
fiscal wreckage of the Iraq fiasco, all Washington trembles in
anticipation at the release of the Baker-Hamilton Commission's
report on Iraq. Unlike many other commissions, its lucubrations
have been held in camera, the method favored by chief Bush family
consigliere and fixer James Baker.
A run-down of its other principals
should give us a strong indication where this operation is heading.
Aside from Baker, there is as co-chairman once again Lee Hamilton,
a past master at these performances. As the éminence beige
of the Democratic foreign policy apparatus, Hamilton has been
participating in high-level cover-ups of government shenanigans
stretching back to the Iran-Contra affair.
The rest of the cast consists
of: Vernon Jordan, one of Bill Clinton's money men and obviously
intended to slap the Wahabbite insurgents of the Black Caucus
into line; Ed Meese, faithful purveyor of balderdash for countless
decades and a link to the Reaganites; Lawrence Eagleburger, a
saturnine Bush family wheel horse and Kissinger liegeman known
mainly for his staggeringly immense girth and ability to balance
on a cane while juggling a cigarette and an asthma inhaler; Leon
Panetta, a professional ward heeler and thief of a 1986 Indiana
Congressional election, tasked to corral a spectrum of Democrats
roughly bounded by Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer; former Defense
Secretary William Perry, representing the interests of the merchants
of death; Charles Robb, who began his career as a White House
doorman and who symbolically remains one four decades later;
ex-Senator Alan Simpson, wise-cracking cowpoke (and member of
a disastrous Congressional delegation to Iraq in 1990, whose
purpose was to ply Saddam with U.S. taxpayer loot via the Commodity
Credit Corporation); and former Associate Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor, the lone member of the commission with no obvious ties
to Beltway monkey business and presumably tapped for the sheer
novelty value.
Probably the only reason Baker
and Hamilton didn't select Clark Clifford or Paul Nitze to serve
on the commission is that these two quintessential Establishmentarians
are legally dead. But the leaden predictability of its membership
preordains its conclusions.
Given that the rules governing
these types of commissions are as ritualized as Noh drama, we
believe it is safe to roll out our own projection of what its
findings will be. Here, in capsule form, are the Baker-Hamilton
report's major findings:
There have been major challenges
to stabilizing Iraq, but it remains vital to our interests; precipitate
withdrawal risks chaos and a power vacuum (i.e., Iraq has been
a colossal screw-up, but we are holding no one accountable. "Our"
interests means superior folks like us. Nature abhors a vacuum;
too bad it does not abhor drones and aged blowhards).
The next six months will be
critical (Where have we heard that before? As we have been in
Iraq for over 42 months, there have been at least 7 inflexion
points where "the next six months will be critical."
These are Fabian tactics).
The Iraq government needs to
get its act together (Do tell. But how can the dummy solve problems
created by the ventriloquist?).
The Iraq government must be
given a timetable/benchmarks/some other euphemism (This finding
will challenge the creative writing skills of the commission
staff).
We need to strengthen/beef-up/robustify
Iraq's army and police forces (No kidding; you geniuses earned
your per diems for this? We tried that with a variety of indigenous
forces: the ARVN, Hmong, Meo, Coral Gables Cubans, and a host
of other Third World paladins now operating chop suey parlors
in proximity to CIA front buildings in the Northern Virginia
suburbs).
U.S. forces will redeploy to
neighboring states (where the ruler has a CIA stipend or the
local emir has business interests intertwined with the Bush family.
The "deliberate" and "phased" withdrawal
means the redeployment will proceed at the speed of the Humboldt
Glacier).
The United States must pursue
a multilateral approach with its friends/allies/coalition partners/nodding
acquaintances in order to bring stability to Iraq (That would
be a first; but why, then, has the Executive Mansion resubmitted
the nomination of acting UN ambassador John Bolton, who vetoes
UN resolutions as maniacally as Grover Cleveland vetoed pension
bills? And for the express purpose "as part of a public
relations strategy to put the onus on the Democrats for not allowing
a vote on his appointment to go to the floor"). [2]
There must be a just and lasting
peace in the Middle East. But Israel, our major ally/the only
true democracy in the region/the light unto the gentiles, deserves
blah blah blah (This is standard boilerplate wherewith the commissioners
will simultaneously sound "balanced," yet not risk
suffering a boycott against their lucrative consultancies by
the Israel lobby).
There will be more in the report,
but it will amount to cotton-wool packing, filigree, and cathedral
gargoyles.
The politicians will rush to
praise the report's sagacity, and heed it, more or less. For
the Establishment, which stretches back through Clifford and
Nitze, through Henry Stimson, Colonel House, Albert Beveridge,
back through the Morgans and the Astors, through the founding
of Skull & Bones, and finally alighting on Alexander Hamilton,
the prototypical oligarch of the new North American republic,
it will be a Bromo-Seltzer after the nightmarish hangover of
a failed scion's rebellion against his illustrious father. It
will be an assurance, like a bank vault slamming shut, that in
Washington, everything will be fundamentally the same for all
eternity.
Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based
defense analyst.
[1] Indeed, the session in
which then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice writhed
on the cruel hook set by commissioner Richard Ben Veniste was
a masterpiece of high television drama which connoisseurs of
the old Perry Mason series could fully savor.
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