The Surrender Gran’pas Inane Strategy Guesswork

Sunday, December 10th, 2006 11:14 am by Neal

Mark Steyn’s latest, “ISG must stand for, uh, Inane Strategy Guesswork”, takes the Illustrious Seniors’ Group “report” to task for being, well, stupid. Steyn rips the reports “Support Group” for the bad joke that it is:

So there you have it: an Iraq “Support Group” that brings together the Arab League, the European Union, Iran, Russia, China and the U.N. And with support like that who needs lack of support? It worked in Darfur, where the international community reached unanimous agreement on the urgent need to rent a zeppelin to fly over the beleaguered region trailing a big banner emblazoned “YOU’RE SCREWED.” For Dar4.1, they can just divert it to Baghdad.

Oh, but lest you think there are no minimum admission criteria to James Baker’s “Support Group,” relax, it’s a very restricted membership: Arabs, Persians, Chinese commies, French obstructionists, Russian assassination squads. But no Jews. Even though Israel is the only country to be required to make specific concessions — return the Golan Heights, etc. Indeed, insofar as this document has any novelty value, it’s in the Frankenstein-meets-the-Wolfman sense of a boffo convergence of hit franchises: a Vietnam bug-out, but with the Jews as the designated fall guys. Wow. That’s what Hollywood would call “high concept.”

Why would anyone — even a short-sighted incompetent political fixer whose brilliant advice includes telling the first Bush that no one would care if he abandoned the “Read my lips” pledge — why would even he think it a smart move to mortgage Iraq’s future to anything as intractable as the Palestinian “right of return”? And, incidentally, how did that phrase — “the right of return” — get so carelessly inserted into a document signed by two former secretaries of state, two former senators, a former attorney general, Supreme Court judge, defense secretary, congressman, etc. These are by far the most prominent Americans ever to legitimize a concept whose very purpose is to render any Zionist entity impossible. I’m not one of those who assumes that just because much of James Baker’s post-government career has been so lavishly endowed by the Saudis that he must necessarily be a wholly owned subsidiary of King Abdullah, but it’s striking how this document frames all the issues within the pathologies of the enemy.

Remember, however, that enlisting every corrupt, washed-up, has-been to a “Support Group” is only part of the plan. We’ve also got to “engage” the middle eastern Third Reich Iran and Syria to make the suicide pact complete:

And that’s before we get to Iran and Syria. So tough-minded and specific when it comes to the Israelis, Baker turns to mush when it comes to Assad assassinating his way through Lebanon’s shrinking Christian community or Ahmadinejad and the mullahs painting the finish trim on the Iranian nukes. Syria, declare the Surrender Gran’pas, “should control its border with Iraq.” Gee, who’dda thunk o’ that other than these geniuses?

Actually, Syria doesn’t need to “control its border with Iraq.” Iraq needs to control its border with Syria. And, as long as the traffic’s all one way (because Syria’s been allowed to subvert Iraq with impunity for three years), that suits Assad just fine. The Surrender Gran’pas assert that Iran and Syria have “an interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq.” This, to put it mildly, is news to the Iranians and Syrians, who have concluded that what’s in their interest is much more chaos in Iraq. For a start, the Americans get blamed for it, which reduces America’s influence in the broader Middle East, not least among Iran and Syria’s opposition movements. Furthermore, the fact that they’re known to be fomenting the chaos gives the mullahs, Assad and their proxies tremendous credibility in the rest of the Muslim world. James Baker has achieved the perfect reductio ad absurdum of diplomatic self-adulation: he’s less rational than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

All the ISG report proves is that folks in the United States still have tremendous respect for their elders, no matter how senile and crazy.

***

“Men go crazy in congregations, they only get better one by one.”
— Sting

Comments are closed.