A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

I don't have much of a problem with a lot of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations. To be sure, it is important to emphasize that we should remain in Iraq for as long as is necessary to ensure a successful reconstruction effort and I am not sure that the ISG went as far as I would have liked them to in that regard, but they left enough play in the joints to push for a policy of patience regarding our investment in Iraq.

But I mentioned a non sequitur above in the title of my post. Here it is:

"The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability. There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria and President Bush's June 2002 commitment to a two- state solution for Israel and Palestine. This commitment must include direct talks with, by and between Israel, Lebanon, Palestinians _ those who accept Israel's right to exist _ and Syria.

Other than the fact that Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and the Palestinians are all located in the Middle East, it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand what the Arab-Israeli peace process has to do with the situation in Iraq. Even if we snapped our fingers and magically solved one problem, that would not lead automatically to the solution of the other problem. The insurgents in Iraq do not fight because they are aggrieved over the treatment of the Palestinians. They fight because they want to achieve political and military power in Iraq, power with which they could dominate Iraq and use it as a terrorist sanctuary and base. Solving the Arab-Israeli conflict will not encourage the insurgents to put aside this goal and there is no effort made to tie the Arab-Israeli conflict to the situation in Iraq except via an argument by assertion.

The irony of it all is that in the buildup to the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein tried to use the Arab-Israeli conflict as a way of uniting the Arab world behind him. The first Bush Administration--assisted mightily by its Secretary of State--prevented this linkage from gaining legitimacy.

That Secretary of State was, of course, James Baker. He should have taken a lesson from the days of his youth and resisted making a linkage between Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict in the presentation of the ISG report.