The real Iraq Study Group

McCain and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman -- who delivered a neoconservative pep talk that could have come off former Bush speechwriter David Frum's hard drive -- were there to formally embrace the plan.

"We have got to see it in the broader context of the war against Islamic extremism and terrorism," Lieberman said about Iraq. "The Middle East is dividing along new lines. I'm speaking here about the Arab world. And the lines are ever clearer and more intense between what I would call moderates and extremists, dictators and democrats," he intoned. "The fact is that we are engaged against an axis of Islamist extremists and terrorists. It is an axis of evil," he warned.

Lieberman made sweeping historical comparisons between the war in Iraq and the Spanish Civil War, the failure to grasp the growing threat of fascism in Europe in the late 1930s and the start of World War II for America. "Pearl Harbor has already happened on 9-11-01," Lieberman said darkly.

McCain and Lieberman emphasized that they are not advocating a plan to blindly throw more troops into the Baghdad meat grinder. Kagan's report appears to be meticulously thought out, detailing the specific forces that will be required to clear and hold Baghdad. The operation would start with securing the Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods closest to the Green Zone and between there and Baghdad International Airport. "Choosing Victory" comes complete with color-coded maps to help envision the neighborhood-by-neighborhood process of successfully pacifying the capital once and for all.

To Kagan and McCain, eliminating insurgents, holding territory and protecting the civilian population in the capital represent a return to classic counterinsurgency tactics that should have been employed long ago, rather than more of the same bumbling around Iraq in Humvees. Such stability then provides the breathing room for enhanced economic development activities and a new focus on forging a lasting political settlement.

The plan looks good on paper, just as the plans to establish democracy in Iraq did back in 2002. But its framers failed to explain how, after three years of shocking mismanagement, the Bush administration would somehow now be stricken with a case of icy competence. Nobody explained how the White House would better manage the war with more troops. McCain said the war had been "very badly mishandled" but said that might be all over now. "I believe that the war is still winnable," he announced. "But to prevail, we will need to do everything right and the Iraqis will have to do their part. Are we concerned about doing everything right and having the Iraqis do their part?" he asked rhetorically. "Of course we are."

At AEI on Friday, there was some palpable concern that even with the color-coded road map to victory the White House might still screw things up. Half measures would lead to failure, according to supporters of this escalation. The Iraq Study Group warned last month against adopting only part of its plan. The same was true of the hawks in the AEI conference room. "This troop surge must be significant and sustained," McCain said. "Otherwise, do not do it. Otherwise, there will be more needless loss of American lives."

That kind of messy carnage couldn't have felt more removed from the posh 12th-floor AEI offices in downtown Washington. Even the roughly 120 war protesters marching out front seemed far away, as reporters and think tank experts snacked on delicately rolled sandwich wraps and a chilled pasta salad, coolly chatting about sending another 25,000 troops into a war that has already cost more than 3,000 American lives.

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