A reality check on the Iraq Study Group report

During the Iran hostage crisis a generation ago, I asked a senior State Department official what he would recommend to extricate the country from its predicament. "There is no good answer," he replied. "The trick is not getting into these situations."

Former Secretary of State James Baker, his Co-chair, Lee Hamilton, and their distinguished Iraq Study Group (ISG), must have echoed that sentiment often. But they persevered and came up with 79 recommendations Wednesday designed to end the US combat role in the country while averting humiliating defeat, giving Iraq the prospect of escaping unimaginable calamity, and providing the region with an opportunity to preempt what could become a spreading war.

For that they deserve credit, and for starkly debunking suggestions by Bush administration apologists that the war was somehow going better than accounts in the media might suggest. No, this is a war of unyielding Sunni insurgents, murderous Shiite militias, a dangerous sprinkling of international jihadists, mounting US and Iraqi casualties, and a staggering price tag of $400 billion to date, en route to a possible final tab of $3 trillion.

Four months ago, during a visit to Iraq, I encountered among senior coalition figures the seeds of disenchantment with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Some suspected his hatred of the old Saddam Hussein regime remained so intense that he wouldn't promote the reconciliation necessary for the Sunnis to end their insurgency. Others saw him as too politically weak and dependent on radical Shiite factions to offer a package that must include amnesty, a fair division of oil revenues, and a standing down of sectarian militias, particularly the 60,000-man Mahdi Army running wild through the vast Baghdad slum called Sadr City.

Still, the tendency in August was to give Mr. Maliki time to "get his legs." The Baker-Hamilton report, however, pulls no punches: "Maliki has ... ordered the removal of blockades around Sadr City, sought more control over Iraqi security forces and resisted US requests to move forward on reconciliation or on disbanding Shiite militias."

For all its insight regarding where the Iraq effort stands and how things can get even worse, the report's worth will ultimately be judged by two groups of proposals designed to make possible a US withdrawal unburdened by mission failure. The first is a diplomatic offensive calculated to enlist key states in the area to support and assist an independent Iraq, encourage an end to the insurrection on generous terms and, of course, to cease all mischief of their own. Contrary to established administration policy, Iran and Syria would both be invited to the table.

The second would transform the US military role from combat to training and support for Iraqi forces, including a substantial US component embedded with host country troops. By early 2008, the plan envisions a complete end to the US combat role with a drawdown of US forces to about half their current number of roughly 145,000.

My problem with both plans is that neither seems likely to work. Both advertise US weakness when even during its period of military and political dominance the US-led coalition could not prevent Iran from training and equipping Shiite militias, Syria from providing a haven for Hussein loyalists and looking the other way as Al Qaeda operatives slipped across the border into Iraq, or Iraq's Sunnis from attacking the "occupier."

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