From The Boston Globe
By Peter W. Galbraith

“DEAD ON ARRIVAL” seems the likely verdict on the much-awaited Report of the Iraq Study Group. Former secretary of state James A. Baker III, who chaired the panel with former Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, demonstrated his skills as the great deal maker by getting the group’s five Democrats and five Republicans to endorse every word of the report.

Consensus came at the expense of candor. Iraq has broken up and is in the midst of a civil war, but this is never acknowledged in the report. The panel seems to assume that nation building is still possible in Iraq, and this underlies its recommendations. The result is a report that, on the most essential points, is pie in the sky. The Iraq Study Group recommends a tough love approach to Iraq’s internal problems. It proposes to condition US support to the Iraqi government on it meeting certain benchmarks. These benchmarks include constitutional revision to subordinate Iraq’s virtually independent regions to control from Baghdad, revising de-Ba’athification laws to permit Saddam’s supporters (who were mostly Sunni) a greater role in public life, regulating militias, and amnesty for Sunni insurgents.

Parts of this program are questionable. Iraq’s 80 years as a unified state produced nonstop misery, including mass killings and genocide, for its Shi’ite majority and Kurdish minority. The new Iraqi constitution allows the Kurds, the Shi’ites, and the Sunnis to form powerful regions with their own militaries and substantial control over natural resources. It is an antidote to Iraq’s deadly centralism and was adopted by nearly 80 percent of Iraq’s voters. It is hard to understand why it should be gutted.

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