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Baker's ISG: Shilling for the Saudis
Ed Lasky
The Iraq Study Group (ISG) recently released its version of the "road map" to guide America's policy in Iraq. Despite an orchestrated public relations campaign that bordered on the farcical, with reverential media treatment at first, the unrealistic nature of some of the policies led to withering criticism. By the next Sunday, Brit Hume was able to conclude that
the almost now completely forgotten Baker-Hamilton commission, which arrived [with] great fanfare... got so much criticism from all sides [that it] now seems to be an irrelevance.
The ISG turned into a colossal dud, a missed opportunity of huge magnitude. Its failure to engage with the real dilemmas, and instead substitute a combination of wishful thinking and hostility toward Israel, was actually quite predictable. An autopsy of its decaying corpse reveals a disturbing pattern among those charged with creating and staffing the Group.
While Professors Walt and Mearsheimer famously hypothesize that an "Israel Lobby" has hijacked American foreign policy, the ISG report suggests otherwise, that a far more influential lobby operates out of country well to the southeast of Israel.
While the Group was charged with analyzing the situation in Iraq, some were surprised and disturbed that the focus shifted to Israel and did so in hostile way. For example, the superb Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens took note of the fact that while most of the policies towards the "players" involved in the Middle East were couched in the language of suggestions ("should") those directed at Israel were seemingly mandatory and were characterized as orders (as in "Israel must").
Three demands were particularly disconcerting: ...
