Opinion (E.J. Dionne): An Ideal In Need Of Rescue

The Iraq Study Group

One of the many disastrous consequences of President Bush's botched policy in Iraq is that it has given the promotion of democracy a bad name.

If the report of the Iraq Study Group is nothing else, it is a devastating declaration that the administration's approach is an abject failure and that the United States needs to scale back its goals. Grand dreams of Iraqi democracy and a transformed Middle East are out. The best we can hope for now is an Iraq that can "govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself."

Cleverly, the report cited those words because they were spoken by Bush himself in one of his least expansive descriptions of the mission. The president is now stuck with a minimalist definition of what can be accomplished in Iraq, because everything he has done since 2003 has made broader achievement impossible.

Read the rest at the Washington Post