Via Political Animal, there’s this Q & A with Iraqi study group commissioner Leon Panetta:
When your bipartisan panel came to the conclusion that relying on Iraqi forces and embedding U.S. advisors was the right course of action, rather than a surge, did you think that you were reflecting the consensus of the U.S. military at the time?
Yes. We sat down with military commanders there and here, and none of them said that additional troops would solve the fundamental cause of violence, which was the absence of national reconciliation. We always asked if additional troops were needed. We asked the question of [Gen. George] Casey and others, we asked it of Marine commanders in Anbar. Do you need additional troops? They all said the same thing: we don’t need additional troops at this point; we need to get the Iraqis to assume the responsibility they’re supposed to assume…
Did you interview Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who’s about to take over command of multinational forces in Iraq? What did he recommend? He is now said to be a supporter of the surge.
At that time he was talking about the need to train and embed U.S. forces in the Iraqi army. (laughs)
. . .
Can any number of U.S. troops stop small death squads from continuing sectarian killing in the middle of the night throughout Baghdad?
We had an American general tell us that if the Iraqi government doesn’t make political progress then all the troops in the world won’t make any difference.
So according to American generals, a surge won’t solve the problems in Iraq. But presumably Mr. Bush thinks it may extend him some additional political cover.
Yesterday Richard Clarke spoke at the Center for American Progress. He pointed out a number of things America needs to be doing in the global “War on Terror.” He then made a simple point regarding Iraq: whether America leaves a year from now, or seven years from now, chaos will follow. If we continue assisting the Iraqi government for several more years, this transition will presumably be less chaotic. But whatever marginal benefit this buys us will clearly not be worth the thousands of Americans and hundreds of billions of dollars it will cost. Our resources should be used more effectively elsewhere.