Tom in the Pro Jo

ARTICLE: Disappointed for different reasons, By Mark Arsenault, Providence Journal, December 7, 2006

Tom's old hometown newspaper quoted him on the ISG report. His parts:

War protester Stephany Kern, who lost her son to a car bomb in Iraq, laments the lack of "quick action" in the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, which were made public yesterday after weeks of speculation and leaks.

On the far other end of American politics, military strategist and author Thomas Barnett — a former professor at the Naval War College in Newport who penned articles advocating a war with Iraq — dismissed the recommendations as "not too bold."

Their politics could not be further apart, yet in interviews yesterday the protester and the military consultant agreed that the Iraq Study Group offered less than the hype would have suggested.

Actually, their politics COULD be further apart, but we'll give him a pass on that one ;-)

Barnett is the author of The Pentagon's New Map, and worked after the 9/11 attacks in the secretary of defense's Office of Force Transformation. Before the Iraq war, Barnett wrote articles in support of overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The study group proposals are "not too bold," Barnett said. "The whole thing is getting a lot more positive press than the proposal would justify in my mind."

The diplomacy component of the recommendations includes direct talks with Iran and Syria, "which [President] Bush has already said he won't do," Barnett said. And the troop withdrawal proposals are "far enough into the future to be almost a non-deadline.

"And they're advocating something that has already begun inside the U.S. effort there, which is to put more people into embedded advisory roles within the Iraqi military. Nothing that they proposed, given the Bush administration's unwillingness to deal directly with Iran or Syria, is going to dramatically improve the situation. To me it's not the salvation it's being presented as in the press, and it has not justified the anticipation."

What should happen?

"I think we should have a regional security dialogue to put the Iraq situation and Israel and Palestine into a larger discussion," he said.

"I think it's crucial we accept the fact that because of our failures inside of Iraq, Syria and Iran are off the hook for now," he said. "Any change is not on the agenda. And we're going to have to pay a fairly steep price with Iran [for help with Iraq], which this administration is simply not willing to do. We'd have to back off on Iran's nuclear development question, and basically make enough of a security guarantee that we're not going after the regime. And then we'll have to accept that their definition of help in Iraq is not going to be making Iraq the place we want it to be, but making Iraq the place they want it to be.

"That's the price for getting somebody else to take ownership of your problem, which we've so far screwed up because we didn't take advantage in the first year after the war to accomplish what needed to be accomplished."

Barnett predicts the administration will approach Iraq "like doing Vietnam backwards," he said. In Vietnam, "we started with an advisory role and went to direct action. Here, we started with direct action and we're going to go to advisory."