The report of the Iraq Study Group was released this past week (December 6th), and predictably, The Fish Wrapper editors were quick to jump on the bandwagon of the report, while choosing to ignore the consequences of following the recommendations.

I have not read the report in it's entirety yet, but there are two recommendations that have been widely reported that if acted on, would hasten absolute failure faster than anything else.

As recommended by the editors:

But now the United States must embrace diplomacy; it must draw down its military forces and re-allocate those that remain; it must look beyond Iraq's borders and re-engage in seeking a lasting settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Robert Zelnick provides some clarity to these suggestions:

My problem with both plans is that neither seems likely to work. Both advertise US weakness when even during its period of military and political dominance the US-led coalition could not prevent Iran from training and equipping Shiite militias, Syria from providing a haven for Hussein loyalists and looking the other way as Al Qaeda operatives slipped across the border into Iraq, or Iraq's Sunnis from attacking the "occupier."

As a position of power and influence in Iraq has already fallen into his lap, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn't likely to abandon his Holocaust denial activities long enough to attend Mr. Baker's event. In several interviews Wednesday, Baker admitted as much. His fallback position: Try to "flip" Syria from its current Iranian benefactor by offering Damascus the opportunity to negotiate with Israel for return of the Golan Heights, captured by the Israelis in 1967. In addition to behaving in Iraq, the Syrians would also stay out of Lebanon, assist the UN in investigating two political murders in Lebanon, block Iranian weapons shipments to Hizbullah that now transit Syria, and persuade Hamas to recognize Israel.

When does diplomacy become fantasy? Viewed in the cold light of day, the panel's "New Diplomatic Offensive" would qualify.

So you're going to try to convince Iran, whose certifiable nut-job President denies the holocaust and history, and is doing everything he can to obtain nuclear weapons and create total chaos and Syria, who has interfered in Lebanon for years, including the recent the recent assassination of anti-syrian Lebanese leader Pierre Gemayel. Neither of these countries has any interested in a stable Iraq. Like most islamofascist Arabs, all they care about is destabilization of any democracy so they can take over and create Sharia law.

As to the cluster of proposals involving a changed US military role, I fear this would mean foreclosing an important opportunity to make the numbers work to the advantage of the coalition. Just months ago, Marine Corps intelligence estimated that with an additional division in Anbar Province, the marines could defeat the Sunni insurrection. The fleshing out of Iraq's 10 divisions this year, and their accelerated training in 2007, could have complemented the US fighting force, probably enabling it to field that extra Anbar division, with a corresponding increase in bargaining power. Instead, the US would suffer a sharp diminution in combat and bargaining power as the drawdown begins.

A particularly frightening consequence of the combat drawdown could occur in Baghdad itself, where the removal of US troops would leave residents totally at the mercy of Shiite militias overseen only by troops from the Shiite-controlled Army.

Look at past history. Any time troop levels have been increased, violence has subsided. Think of history in places like Vietnam. How many innocent people were slaughtered by the Communists once we left Vietnam? We already allowed Saddam to slaughter many thousands after the Gulf War; do we want to be complicit in the slaughter of many more innocents if we were to leave this time?

It never ceases to amaze me how liberals (like the DFW editors) can be so ignorant of the big picture and the consequences of their actions on other people. I have heard so many stories from troops about how the MSM continually tells only the negative side of the war and not the positive things that our troops are doing over there, and yet the MSM just continues on the same path. Is there ever a point where they have the guts to persevere through difficult times? I'm just thankful the liberal media wasn't around during times like World War II. If they had been, the result might have been completely different.