Report on Iraq Exposes Divide Within G.O.P.

It was the report that was supposed to give Bush a way out of Iraq. It contained a frank admission that the mission was failing and offered a recipe for "success" that stated if the US could withdraw without Iraq descending into chaos then, at this stage, that could be construed as a victory of sorts.

There were many on the left blogosphere who condemned it as speaking the language of the pro-war crowd and for failing to call for an immediate withdrawal. I personally thought that was expecting too much and that Baker's job was to offer Bush the nearest thing he would ever have to a face saving way to withdraw whilst declaring "victory"; and thought Baker had done very well by pointing out just how far off course the war had gone, and what dangers faced the US if Bush continued down the path that he was currently ploughing.

I saw it as an intervention. Someone finally standing up to Bush to say, "enough is enough".

And much as the report has been attacked by Feingold and many on the left for not going far enough, it appears to have split the Republicans into two distinct camps.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page described the report as a “strategic muddle,” Richard Perle called it “absurd,” Rush Limbaugh labeled it “stupid,” and The New York Post portrayed the leaders of the group, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic member of Congress, as “surrender monkeys.”

Other Republicans, mindful of the fact that the Iraq war cost them dear in the mid-terms, hoped that Bush would take this opportunity to take Iraq off the table before the elections of 2008.

However, it appears that the Republicans are split on how to handle the report and the war. Senator McCain, widely believed to be a possible candidate for the GOP ticket in 2008, has rejected the report because it does not provide "a strategy for victory".

This is a blatantly absurd thing to say but it does go to the heart of the Republican problem. Bush and Rumsfeld have both spoken in recent days about "success" in Iraq, apparently oblivious to the fact that the war was long ago lost.

It really is the Vietnam Syndrome all over again. There are many on the right who have long argued that Vietnam was lost because the Americans somehow lost their resolve and that, if only they had - here come those words again - "stuck the course" then victory would have eventually fallen into their laps like a ripe peach. This same, insane, belief is now splitting the GOP once again. There are many, especially amongst the neo-cons, who refuse to believe that the war is lost. In their mindset America's military superiority guarantees victory and, if you are not currently winning, then one only needs to double the effort for victory to be assured.

However, not all in the Republican Party appear willing to go along with that logic.

The ambivalence and introspection were summed up by Senator Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, who spoke at length in the Senate this week about the dangers of withdrawing from Iraq but said he could no longer support the status quo.

“I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day,” Mr. Smith said. “That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore. I believe we need to figure out how to fight the war on terror and to do it right. So either we clear and hold and build, or let’s go home.”

The battle in the Republican Party now is between the neo-cons - who believe in advancing democracy through the barrel of a gun - and the realists - what I regard as old fashioned Conservatives.

For the past six years the neo-cons have hijacked the Republican Party but the Baker Report is an attempt by old fashioned "realists" to take back the wheel. The reaction of Bush and Co. to the Baker Report implies that they are not yet ready to give up their grip on the Republican movement. Indeed, this point has been conceded by arch neo-con William Kristol.

Bill Kristol, the neoconservative editor of The Weekly Standard and a leading advocate of the decision to invade Iraq, said: “In the real world, the Baker report is now the vehicle for those Republicans who want to extricate themselves from Iraq, while McCain is articulating the strategy for victory in Iraq. Bush will have to choose, and the Republican Party will have to choose, in the very near future between Baker and McCain.”

It is a choice that threatens to tear the Republican Party apart.

I am reminded of nothing so much as the Labour Party's battle with Militant in the eighties. A group of extremists had permeated the Party and the battle to remove them took the best part of a decade and ensured that Labour remained unelectable for that period.

The difference in the case of the GOP is that the extremists have climbed to the leadership of the party and are extolling a vision of the Iraq war - and it's continuance - that has already been rejected by a majority of America's voters.

Moderate Republicans must know that they are on a suicide course but, having sat idly by whilst Bush invested more and more power into the office of President, it is very hard to see how they are now going to find the means of taking back the power that is rightfully theirs and stopping this runaway train.

Like the British Labour Party in the eighties, this is a fight that could see the Republicans out of power for the best part of a decade.

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tag: Bush, Republican Party, Iraq war, "Stay the course", US foreign policy, Baker report