An Assessment of The Iraq War

Coming to an assessment on the war effort is essential because, in my view, an assessment of the war effort is an assessment on the Bush administration. That is, if things were judged to be going extremely well in Iraq (i.e., the country was on its way to a self-sustaining, peaceful democracy), one could make the argument that the US war effort has been a success and therefore Bush’s policy has been a success. Conversely, if things are not going well in Iraq (i.e., increasing sectarian violence with no resolution in sight), it seems that one would have to concede that the US war effort is failing and that Bush’s policy is failing. It is very difficult for me to see how those assertions don’t follow logically. One could argue that the policy is failing now and that it will emerge from failure in the future (even turn to success in the future). But it seems to me that one must concede that the policy is currently failing if the war effort is not going well.

So, how is the war in Iraq is going?

The problem is that it is difficult to get an answer to this question that everyone will agree upon because when the media reports that things are not going well, many argue that these reports are due to negative media bias (i.e., the war effort is really going very well, but the media is only telling us the bad stuff). Thus, what is needed is an unbiased barometer of the status on the ground in Iraq.

For that assessment, the Iraq Study Group seems to be a perfect instrument. This was a bipartisan group made up of many staunch conservatives respected by the “Conservative Movement” (e.g., Baker and Meese for two) and their assessment was unanimous.

The ISG Report paints a bleak picture of Iraq. I would argue that this bleak assessment must translate into poor grades for the Administration. However, I have heard many voices critical of the ISG’s conclusions (most of the criticisms relate to the ISG’s tactical recommendations moving forward, but the voices also are critical of their assessment).

But how can the assessment of this particular group be dismissed? There are only two ways the ISG’s assessment of the current situation in Iraq could be in error:

They are incompetent and they just simply got it wrong.
They are biased

It seems difficult for me to understand how a group comprised of these highly accomplished individuals (many of whom I disagree with on specific political issues), hand selected to assess the situation could just bungle their task and summarize the situation in Iraq worse than it actually is. Similarly, due to the bipartisan nature of the group’s constituency, it is difficult to imagine that they had some sort of agenda or bias that colored the assessment of the current status of Iraq. I would be curious as to whether there are any other possibilities.

Clearly the ISG gives poor grades to the war effort and, this assessment should translate into poor grades for the Administration.