Only Useful Idiots Need Apply

There are some days that you vow to remember because you have a feeling in your gut that it will mean something. For me, it was early 1993 and Bush 41 had just lost to Clinton 42 (at the time there was no expectation there would be a Bush 43 and Clinton 44). I was inspired to see James Baker speak about foreign policy, mostly because we shared the same interest in the recently crumbled Soviet Union. If I said I remembered where he spoke, I would be lying, but it was likely at Carnegie Endowment for Peace or the American Enterprise Institute or some other such think tank that employs people smarter than the rest of us.

While the discussion was about the Soviets, the after-speech questions created a lively discussion on the 1991 Iraq War and other regional hostilities. There were two other panelists, one I can’t remember and the other was Robert Gates, the future defense secretary and the then recently former Director of the CIA.

And this is why I remember that day: a question was asked about why we didn’t topple Saddam when we had the chance. Baker first answered that the coalition of countries pummeling Iraq was dead set against it as were the Saudis who were nervous about hot-headed Iraqis slipping across the shifting desert border into Saudi Arabia. It was reasoned that once Iraqis were allowed in, well, there goes the neighborhood.

Gates followed up with his answer that was classic Washington smart-talk but, if you were listening carefully, came out as a response from someone we politely call a “conciliator.” He told us that Saddam could be contained by diplomatic measures and, if we had to get tough, UN sanctions would keep him on a short leash. He admitted there was pressure from Iran to take Saddam out, but no other neighbor other than the Kuwaitis had much of an opinion on the matter. Keeping everyone in the loop, he also asked the Soviet-less Russians what they thought of the situation and was told that it would be impolite to remove Saddam and suggested we slowly back away from Iraq’s oil wells.

So Gates had been busy building a consensus for what would become post-war Iraq 1991-style: a 12-year killing field by vengeful Baathists, an impoverished and uneducated underclass suffering under a dozen years of economic sanctions with no franchise rights in the Oil For Food scandal and millions of nervous Kurds and Shiites who felt completely betrayed by the skedaddling American troops.

Back then, a contained Saddam mixed with allies as far as we could see (or until 2003) was what the so-called neo-cons were pushing. Even Dick Cheney had happily approved of this plan (although he is the only significant one of the bunch to later change his mind).

Now that the voters have sent a message to the ruling elite that is so nuanced that it can mean anything anyone wants it to mean, the race is on to find the nearest exit sign out of Iraq. You may think President Bush means what he says about not leaving Iraq until the job is done, but the hiring of Gates signals that his mantra is no longer operative. Bush even spoke today about how interested he is in the Baker-Hamilton (yes, James Baker) report and hopes it will produce new ideas for winning the peace in Iraq. But he already knows what it says because he just hired one of the principal architects of the Iraq plan in Robert Gates (suggested, of course, by none other than James Baker). Don’t these guys have a handy way of boomeranging back into our lives in the name of service to our leaders?

Here’s the simple truth, when you have James Baker, Lee Hamilton and Robert Gates setting the Iraq agenda, the appeasement to follow will make Neville Chamberlain look like John Wayne. The President has not only abdicated his responsibilities to an unelected group, he has signed a death warrant for millions of Iraqis and offered a view of America that will whet the appetite of terrorists around the world. Good luck to us all, bin Laden’s cave looks like the only safe place in the near future.