I nev­er had ter­ri­bly high hopes for the Iraq Study Group. It smacked too much of Papa Bush try­ing to put lit­tle Georgie on the right path, not like a seri­ous effort to come to grips with the cat­a­stro­phe that Iraq has become (and which, I has­ten to note, I and oth­ers pre­dict­ed it would become). And from what I’ve seen of the report, it seems basi­cal­ly to be what I predicted.

Set­ting aside the details of the rec­om­men­da­tions, we can see the prob­lem in look­ing at Kansas politi­cians’ reac­tions to it:

Rep. Jim Ryun, R‑Kan., said he par­tic­u­lar­ly likes the con­cept of devel­op­ing a broad inter­na­tion­al coali­tion of coun­tries to help. …

Nan­cy Boy­da, the Demo­c­rat who will suc­ceed Ryun in Jan­u­ary to rep­re­sent the 2nd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict in east­ern Kansas, said, “I’m glad we’re final­ly rec­og­niz­ing that we need to move in a new direc­tion. We have known for quite a while that things are worse off than we had been led to believe.” …

Rep. Jer­ry Moran, R‑Kan., who rep­re­sents the 1st Dis­trict, which cov­ers much of the west­ern half of the state, was pleased the study group acknowl­edged that “the sta­tus quo is unacceptable.”

“The report cor­rect­ly calls for the Iraqis to take more respon­si­bil­i­ty for their coun­try’s secu­ri­ty so we can bring our U.S. ser­vice­men and ‑women home,” he said.

Rep. Den­nis Moore, D‑Kan., who rep­re­sents the Kansas City area and part of Lawrence, said he hoped the report would be “the begin­ning of an hon­est and pro­duc­tive debate about how the U.S. and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty can work togeth­er to train Iraq secu­ri­ty forces, sup­port the Iraqi gov­ern­ment, and sta­bi­lize the region so we can begin a respon­si­ble and real­is­tic rede­ploy­ment of our troops.”

Sen. Sam Brown­back, R‑Kan., who announced ear­li­er this week the for­ma­tion of a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign explorato­ry com­mit­tee, called the report “a wel­come con­tri­bu­tion to a nation­al debate on our com­mit­ments in Iraq, but this is only the beginning.”

“Even as we speed up the trans­fer of respon­si­bil­i­ty to the Iraqis, we must ensure the defeat of ter­ror­ists in Iraq and nur­ture democ­ra­cy and sta­bil­i­ty,” he said in a statement.

In oth­er words, they are all say­ing now what they said before. Yes, it would be nice if the Unit­ed States would sit down with the rest of the lead­er­ship in the region, but the Pres­i­dent has indi­cat­ed no inter­est in that par­tic­u­lar course of action, so we’ll be wait­ing two years before a US rep­re­sen­ta­tive meets with some­one from Iran or Syria.

And it would indeed be nice if the Iraqi nation­al gov­ern­ment were any­where near strong enough or sta­ble enough to field a uni­fied police force and mil­i­tary so that Amer­i­can forces could focus on oth­er issues. And after almost 4 years, it’s not an unrea­son­able expec­ta­tion that they could be con­tribut­ing at least some. But because the coun­try is in chaos, it’s hard to get those forces ready to fight. Besides which, the process of train­ing and sup­ply­ing Iraqi forces has the unpleas­ant side effect of train­ing and sup­ply­ing insur­gents and civ­il war­riors who have infil­trat­ed or sim­ply tak­en over those groups. 

In oth­er words, I’d like every­thing in the ISG report, and a pony. I’d set­tle for a clear plan from the White House (beyond the excel­lent sug­ges­tion that we should win). Because Con­gress can do a lot, but they can’t com­mand the troops on the ground. Order­ing troops out of Iraq isn’t even an easy process for Con­gress. Con­gress can­not order the State Depart­ment to talk with Syr­ia or Iran, nor can it nego­ti­ate the cre­ation of a tru­ly inter­na­tion­al force in Iraq. 

Invad­ing Iraq was a solu­tion in search of a prob­lem, and has left us with a prob­lem that lacks any good solu­tions. Irony or word­play? You decide.