Baker's factual uncertainty unsettling
By Paul Haist
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On Dec. 6, former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker appeared on the PBS Newshour with ex-Congressman Lee Hamilton in their shared capacity as co-chairs of the Iraq Study Group.
The occasion was the release of the ISG's recommendations.
After watching the broadcast and then reading the transcript, I found the co-chairs' public performance unimpressive for being inconclusive and unpersuasive, among other problems I had, including with the report itself, which is remarkably uninspired.
The co-chairs' remarks seemed to me like the bellowing of ships moving in a fog, bravura baritones from those who cannot see where they are going. Pity the little boats that cannot get out of the way.
They did not reassure me or assuage my apprehension about what America is doing, what is happening to America, what is happening to so many innocent souls.
Near the end of their pas de deux of ponderous platitudes and pontification, Baker remarked on how long the United States has been in Iraq.
He said, "Well, what we say is, we've been there for three and a half years, I think it's about that, maybe two and a half years or three years?"
In fact, the United States invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, a date that should be indelibly engraved in the mind of a co-chair of the Iraq Study Group.
As of Dec. 20, 2006, the United States will have been in Iraq three years and nine months.
Baker's failure to be certain at the drop of a hat about a key fact of the conflict should be a source of concern.
Overlooking just now the shortcomings some learned observers in the Jewish community have with the ISG report—perhaps most significantly the link it makes between the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and peace in Iraq—an individual in charge of proposing solutions to the Iraq morass should have accurate facts about the issue at his fingertips at every moment, on the tip of his tongue, without hesitation or uncertainty.
It's not a small issue. It makes one wonder what else the alleged experts may not know.
Our tenure in Iraq is rather poignant just now.
The tenure of our visit has been in the news recently because it recently exceeded the time it took us to disassemble the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, while simultaneously marching with our allies across Europe and North Africa, destination: the heart of the Third Reich.
Three years and eight months passed from Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and Aug. 9, 1945, when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
Baker should not have missed this recent landmark.
The two conflicts are not comparable. That's not the issue.
The issue is that Baker is supposed to be the expert, and the length of the war was noted recently all across the media in the enlightening contrast with our involvement in World War II.
Baker surely remembers World War II and—perhaps more than younger souls—should have appreciated and recalled the recent contrast, a contrast that ought to have brought home with inescapable and unforgettable plangency exactly how long we have been in Iraq.
Those who venture to suggest resolutions to the Iraq situation—pundits lately have been calling it the endgame, as if it were some polite chess match, a term, by the way, I find depressingly similar to "the light at the end of the tunnel" that we watched for so many years in Vietnam—may be courageous or audacious or maybe something very different. No matter what they say, a host of others will find fault. It surely is a thankless job.
I am thankful that some, surely better informed and more capable than me, are willing to try.
However, I would be somewhat more thankful and less ill at ease if their pronouncements did not cause me to wonder if they actually are better informed than me and and are the right persons for the job, able to steer the ship out from between a rock and a hard place.