In response to a question about the Iraq Study Group report that was released today, Gates told a Senate confirmation committee the day before, “Frankly there are no new ideas on Iraq.”

Gates indicated that large numbers of U.S. troops would need to stay in Iraq for years to come. “My greatest worry if we mishandle the next year or two and if we leave Iraq in chaos is that a variety of regional powers will become involved in Iraq, and we will have a regional conflict,” he said.

Just a few days earlier at a meeting in Amman, Jordan, with Iraqi government leaders, U.S. president George Bush reiterated that Washington will continue to press its war in Iraq. Bush’s remarks came amid an ongoing debate in U.S. ruling-class circles over how best to accomplish its goal of establishing a stable client regime in Iraq as the conflict between bourgeois factions competing for power has become more bloody in recent months.

The Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan commission headed by Republican former secretary of state James Baker and Democratic former congressman Lee Hamilton, released its report today with recommendations on redeploying U.S. troops and how to reinforce the Iraqi government’s forces.

The number of Iraqi civilians killed in the factional fighting reached a record monthly high in October with 3,709 deaths, according to a United Nations agency. The UN report also estimated that more than 400,000 civilians have been displaced from their homes since the February bombing of a Shiite mosque in the city of Samara.

The replacement of Rumsfeld has been widely touted by many capitalist politicians and much of the media as a signal of a change in course on Iraq by the Bush administration. As Gates put it in his confirmation hearings, however, “Whatever changed approach or strategy we come up with…we are still going to have to have some level of American support there for the Iraqi military and that could take quite some time.”

Bush met November 30 in Amman with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. “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 at a news conference following the meeting, referring to press accounts about the study group’s proposals. “We’re going to stay in Iraq to get the job done.”

The framework of the ruling-class debate on the conduct of the Mideast war was summarized in a front-page news analysis in the December 1 New York Times titled “Idea of Rapid Withdrawal from Iraq Seems to Fade.” It began, “In the cacophony of competing plans about how to deal with Iraq, one reality now appears clear: despite the Democrats’ victory this month in an election viewed as a referendum on the war, the idea of a rapid American troop withdrawal is fast receding as a viable option.”

According to press reports, the study group’s proposal calls for a pullback of the 15 U.S. brigades in Iraq. These troops could then be redeployed to U.S. bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries, capable of being rapidly sent back into war zones. It would still leave at least 70,000 U.S. troops in Iraq “for a long time to come,” the Times noted.

A strategy review drafted by the Pentagon could add another 20,000-30,000 U.S. troops to the 140,000 currently in Iraq in order to focus on accelerated training of Iraqi security forces, the Washington Post reported.

The study group’s proposal urges the Bush administration to engage the governments of Iran and Syria in helping to stabilize Iraq. Asked by reporters in Amman if he would deal with Iran, Bush reiterated Washington’s charges that the Iranian government was intervening in Lebanon and Iraq and that the U.S. government would continue to demand that Iran give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Tit-for-tat suicide bombings and killings of civilians have continued to escalate in Iraq since the February bombing of the Shiite mosque. They have been carried out by militias loyal to one or the other of contending capitalist factions vying for control in the Iraqi government. The bulk of those killed or displaced have been working people—Sunni and Shiite.
 
 
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