As they study Iraq, change seems continent away
WASHINGTON -- Last week was a bitter disappointment for those who had hoped the November election would bring significant changes in President Bush's Iraq policy.
The president's highly touted summit with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq ended with assurances that progress is being made, that troop withdrawals would reward the terrorists, and that the United States would stay in Iraq "until the job is complete" -- in other words, exactly the refrain from before the election.
This week could bring more disappointment: The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, commissioned by Congress to bring fresh perspectives, will issue recommendations tomorrow. Leaks to the media suggest the panel will urge a gradual withdrawal of troops by 2008, "predicated on the assumption that circumstances on the ground would permit it," according to The Washington Post.
This may, in fact, be the most responsible course, but it leaves open the possibility -- to some, even the likelihood -- that "circumstances on the ground" will mandate an indefinite stay. And it could kill altogether the chances of employing some alternative strategy, such as moving troops to neighboring countries, where they could serve as strike forces against terrorists while steering clear of regular policing.
The upshot of the Maliki meeting -- and the leaked recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, if accurate -- seems to be that the likeliest course is more of the same. The message seems to be that Iraq is a foreign-policy sinkhole, and that no number of fresh eyes on the problem can devise new solutions.
"I know there's a lot of speculation that these reports in Washington mean there's going to be some kind of graceful exit out of Iraq," Bush said after meeting with Maliki. "This business about [a] graceful exit just simply has no realism to it."
But a month ago, when the Democrats won control of Congress, conditions seemed good for a major shift in course.
On Nov. 8, Bush responded to the election by announcing the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and by promising that the Pentagon would review all aspects of Iraq policy.
The election seemed to break through Bush's own sense of denial. He unabashedly called it "a thumpin' " in a lively morning-after press conference, at which he seemed almost liberated.
The election freed up Congress as well.
Before the election, many congressional Republicans, eager to preserve their majorities, felt obliged to follow the White House's talking points on Iraq -- that troops were heading toward "victory," and that any withdrawal would bring about defeat.
But behind the bulwark of confidence, many Republicans had their doubts.
Indeed, the bulwark began to crack even before the election. Now, the bulwark is in pieces, and many Republicans are ready for a new approach.
Democrats, too, are feeling liberated. Some congressional candidates were so furious at Bush for starting the war that they offered nothing beyond a public rebuke of the president. Other Democrats, aware that offering any alternatives to Bush's policies would set them up for attacks, stifled themselves until their party could claim victory.
Now it has, and many Democrats are eager to embrace a new approach to Iraq.
With Republicans out of their self-enforced denial, and with Democrats finally willing to discuss alternatives, the moment is ripe for a centrist solution.
And the Iraq Study Group, headed by former secretary of state James A. Baker and former Indiana representative Lee Hamilton, is nothing if not centrist.
Its members include pragmatic foreign policymakers from both parties, along with some political fixers (Vernon E. Jordan Jr., the lawyer and confidant of President Bill Clinton, for one.) There's even former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who often infuriated legal scholars but pleased the public by splitting the difference in major cases.
At their best, centrists can be truly innovative policymakers, with no ideological packaging. At their worst, their solutions sometimes seem merely compromises. And at their very worst, their compromises can be ineffectual, unbinding almost beside the point. As the Iraq Study Group prepares to make its report, Americans who want change in Iraq are hoping for the best. But they also have reason to fear the very worst.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond. 
