What the Baker-Hamilton Commission Could Do Next Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Trying to use the phenomenal popularity of the Baker-Hamilton Commission (itself very astutely feeding off the phenomenal popularity of the 9-11 Commission) to stand in for strong action on troop withdrawal, Senators Ken Salazar (D-CO) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) put forward a proposal, now apparently dead, for a "Baker-Hamilton II" to propose a way forward in Iraq.

I'd like to see something a little different:  ask the Baker-Hamilton wise folks to go back to work and give us a dispassionate, bipartisan estimate of how Congress can start now, and the next Administration can continue, to clean up the damage the Iraq war has done to our national interests in the Middle East, our position in world public opinon, our military preparedness, and our core national values.

I doubt they'd come up with a sadder, tighter statement of the problem than this piece by Timothy Garton Ash from the LA Times, "Iraq hasn't even begun."  But having bipartisan agreement on the dimensions of the problem -- and bipartisan recommendations on what to do about it -- might do a lot to move some issues off the dime in a closely-divided Congress and past the veto pen of this White House.  It would also prepare the ground and make things easier for the next President, whomever s/he may be.

Just a thought.

Comments

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Heather,

I agree with just about all your post, but not this one. These commissions, while extraordinarily popular, get used more as political football than as a way to change policy or point us forward in a new direction. Even the 9/11 Commission recommendations are still being blocked by Republicans in the Senate who refuse to appoint conferees for the conference committee. And as you point out the Baker Hamilton Commission is being used as political football for Republicans who want to say that they are against the war but don't want to actually do anything about it. Democrats are guilty as well, turning the 9/11 commission recommendation into a campaign talking point without actually evaluating much of it objectively.

Also, the first step to fixing the entire mess we have right now is starting to move troops out of Iraq. There is broad agreement on this issue across the country, but Republicans still aren't there. So, any bipartisan committee that tries to formulate an answer to your question will ultimately have to come to some lukewarm, relatively unclear agreement on what to do with American troops in Iraq. If they don't have a good answer for that question the rest of the report won't be all that useful.

[Heather]

Ilan - We're talking about two different problems. Commissions are less useful for forcing legislative action, for the reasons you cite (although I would argue we might not have even what we have on Iraq or 9-11 fixes without those two commissions) and more for giving a shape to public and media concerns -- setting the terms of the debate that follows. Baker-Hamilton helped break the Iraq debate open; now it has re-hardened into something that is more about politics than anything else. The reality is that we face a broad range of problems that no one can even get oxygen to talk about. It's going to be an ugly surprise for the public when the next President does start talking about them; a bipartisan group could give that president cover and again, set the terms of public debate in a way that useful legislative results could conceivably follow.