Iraq Study Group Pt.I

So the much-anticipated Iraq Study Group has published it finding and printed out copies for us all to read. Of course, I went and got my copy the day they were released and boy what exciting reading. Most of it had already been leaked to the press so there really wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of new stuff for a discerning news junkie like myself. Still I read it anyways just so that I would know what was actually in it. This way when the “free” press reports on it I will be able to sift through the disinformation and see which parts they leave out of their reporting. Mostly three things, one of which surprised me, not because it made sense but because it was even mentioned in America, interested me. The other two weren’t surprises just a reaffirmation of what I already truly believe.
I won’t start with the surprise but instead on of the things that least surprised me. Upon reading this, one thing stood out at me immediately and reminded me of why things get done the way they do. It came to my attention that we could gather ten politically intelligent people, I’m not talking Poly-Sci grads just people who pay real attention to the world, set up a committee and that group of ten people could have written this report. First off the writing is below the level that newspapers are written in. It seems like it is written so that even a child could be able to read it.
The recommendations that the panel came up with are also very, very weak intellectually. I swear that we could grab ten people off the bus, random people, and they would have come up with basically the same ideas. Here is just one example of what the Washington Brain Trust came up with. “Recommendation 77: The Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary Of Defense should devote significantly greater analytic resources to the task of understanding the threats and sources of violence in Iraq.” No really this is what the great and revered Statespeople and “realists” were able to come up with. Basically the government should try to find out why and where violence is coming from. This is what they suggested. What is funny is that the press did their part to tell us how this panel was going to come up with great ideas and they fell all over themselves to praise the members.
Virtually every recommendation is obvious. For instance, #40 “The United States should not make an open-ended commitment to keep large numbers of American troops deployed in Iraq.” Basically, we should not occupy the country for ever or let the Iraqi government think we will provide for the security of the State of Iraq, which is, of course, our duty due to international law.
As a kid, I used to think that our leaders/rulers were smarter than us or me. I used to think that in order to be Secretary of State, Supreme Court Justice or Secretary of Defense one had to be intelligent. As I slowly got older I began to realize that these leaders may be marginally more intelligent then the average American. The last six years have proven to me that not only does one not have to be intelligent to be in government but also it may actually be a hindrance to one’s career. How Americans could ever accept leaders of this poor quality is truly depressing. Luckily for me like the rest of America, I have “must see T.V.” that can distract me from the real world.