Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Baker’s Dozen

I’ve been watching with foreboding and dread as the expectations for the Iraq Study Group reach a crescendo, as the chattering classes clearly expect it to deliver us from the mess in Iraq by some talismanic formula. After all, James Baker is leading it! (Insert appropriate ooohs and aaahs here.) But this is the same James Baker who found inpenetrable the ethnic and religious fault lines in the collapsing Soviet Union; suppose he’ll do any better understanding Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq?

The old Michael Kinsley pops up today on this very subject in his WaPo column, noting the AARP-qualified membership of the Iraq Study Group (former Senator Chuck Robb, age 67, is the youngster on the panel), with the wry comment: "This is one torch that has not been passed to a new generation. . . The chance that this group of aging white men, plus Vernon Jordan and Sandra Day O’Connor, will come up with something original is not enormous."

Discussions - 2 Comments

I really can’t believe James Baker has been dragged out again. He’s a competent manager, but hardly an idea or "strategery" guy. An he’s not aging...he’s aged.

Vernon Jordan can get Mookie a job in the federal bureaucracy and O’Connor can fashion an exquisite 2,593-part balancing test for our surrender. Great.

Didn’t these guys already, you know, HAVE THEIR CHANCE? Perhaps if they had done their jobs a little better while they were in office, we’d not need their services today. This should have been settled in Desert Storm but they kicked the can down the road. Reportedly, the plan is to kick it yet again...with Iran and Syria’s help? Victory is an orphan but defeat has a thousand fathers? Please.

Kinsley’s "the torch hasn’t been passed to a new generation" comment isn’t quite correct. His Young Turk Obama’s been laudin’ the same approach: We should "send a message to the Iraqis as well as to the regional powers including Iran and Syria that they have to take some ownership for creating some stability there."

Obama makes it sound like some Neighborhood Watch program. Syria & Iran have shown a little too much "ownership" and experienced a little too much "stability" already. We should be negotiating their surrender instead of ours.

Prof. Stuntz makes a pretty good case fordoubling down over at Kristol’s Ball.

Mookie Must Die. Iran & Syria must pay a price for their war against us. Maliki must get a "Come to Jesus" talk (if only to make St. Andrew of the Blessed Heartache faint).

There may not be any victory for the substitutes, but there is still no substitute for victory.

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