Michael Hirsh has an exclusive web article up at Newsweek/MSNBC’s site. His contention is the Iraq Study Group’s(ISG) report won’t solve the problem’s in Iraq, or get our troops out of there any sooner than half a dozen other plans floated lately. A particularly grizzly mental picture he gives us comes from this snippet of the writeup:

“One doesn’t have to be trained by Hizbullah or the Iranian secret service to grab a few Sunnis off the street every night and shoot them in the head. But until those killings stop, the yes-it-is-a-civil war-no-it’s-not-a-civil-war in Iraq will continue to rage out of control.”

What is interesting is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also tossed into the mix. The ISG seems to think the road to stability in Iraq runs through Jerusalem. Hirsh seems to think this is bs. Personally, I see every conflict in the region as related on some level. I think Hirsh is short-sighted and too quick to blow off this aspect of the report, if in fact his sources are correct.

Another point he raises, with which I completely agree, is that Maliki is “owned” by that cleric-from-hell, Al-Sadr. This has to be addressed, and as we know from past experience…Bush and his advisors like to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to obvious roadblocks and problems with regard to their public rhetoric about how well things are going.

Hirsh is very big on Gates however, and actually plugs Gates’ last book “From the Shadows: the Ultimate Insider’s story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War,”. He gives us a brief review of what he considers the good parts of Gates’ memoir, such as the following:

“If presidents had listened only to the hawks, U.S. belligerence and aggressiveness would have been so overwhelming that the Soviets would have been afraid to undertake changes in their system, to have let down their guard at all,” *snip* “If presidents had listened only to the doves, not only would the Soviets have seen many opportunities to gain strategic military advantage and new influence in the Third World; there would have been significantly less pressure on them to change.”

Back to the Baker Group, Hirsh would have us wonder how much of the findings, were culled from Gates’ own philosophy. Hirsh touts the only lasting legacy of the Baker Group as its utilization of Gates philosophy of “management over vision”. Whatever the hell THAT means.

If the congress approves of Gates nomination for Secretary of Defense, we will have to endure more of Gates philosophy as it is applied to our problems in the Middle East.