CHASING SHADOWS

“Recommendation 16 of the Iraq Study Group’s report calls upon Syria to agree to a peace deal with Israel in return for the Golan Heights. It further suggests that Syria be persuaded to end its interference in Lebanon, cease aiding Hezbollah, convince Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and intervene to obtain the release of two captured Israeli soldiers. Elsewhere the report declares that ‘Iran should stem the flow of arms and training to Iraq, respect Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and use its influence over Iraqi Shia groups to encourage national reconciliation.’ The authors of this report are supposed to be the foreign policy realists? These goals make President Bush’s ambition to germinate a democracy in Arab soil look positively minimalist by comparison. Instead of a sober new look at our options in Iraq, this report consists of platitudinous, utterly naive wishful thinking. No wonder it is being so rapturously received by the media... It is chasing a shadow to imagine that ‘settling’ the Arab/Israeli dispute will pacify the region. But the group chose a particularly inapposite moment to seek a solution to the Israeli/Arab dispute... Shiites and Sunnis are not going to stop killing each other because the borders of the West Bank are redrawn.”

—Mona Charen