THE ROAD FROM BAGHDAD

Has any report been more widely anticipated and more quickly discarded than the work of the Iraq Study Group? Yet it has already served to change the talk about the war, allowing for new strategies, and even new goals. And it re-emphasized what Congress already knew – that the military cannot settle the chaos of Iraq without political and economic support.

So while the report is being trashed, watch over the coming months as portions of its ideas return after Washington casts about for simpler answers and fails to find them.

Sen. Susan Collins was in Baghdad this week along with Sen. John McCain, who has steadily insisted on sending more troops there. Sen. Collins, like the ISG report, said she sees the limits of heightened military action. “The rising sectarian violence threatens the very existence of Iraq as a nation,” she said, but “I’m not yet convinced that additional troops will pave the way to a peaceful Iraq in a lasting sense. My fear is that if we have more troops sent to Iraq that we will just see more injuries and deaths, that we might have a short-term impact, but without a long-term political settlement.”

This shift toward nonmilitary means for resolving the war in Iraq, however, depends on the capabilities of the government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, and those are unknown. President Bush is correct to take his time with the next steps and to give Defense Secretary Robert Gates time to assess the situation, and a key assessment will be to determine what the Maliki government has the practical authority to do.

The Iraq Study Group’s report is being ignored or worse because it is long and complicated, full of nuanced, linking measures when the streets of Baghdad are exploding with car bombs and the Bush administration seems to be looking for a broad response that doesn’t jeopardize the president’s long-term view of democracy flowering in the Middle East.

Tuesday, according to news reports, even the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the president the United States ought to back away from fighting insurgents and instead support Iraqi troops and hunt down terrorists. More troops were not the answer, it said, while urging more reconstruction and political reconciliation. That advice may be the president’s last best hope, if there is hope left.

The ISG concluded, “Our most important recommendations call for new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq and the region, and a change in the primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly.”

Whether the report is ever credited with this idea is less important than the fact that it is now among the options. To understand how it may be carried out requires the Bush administration to know more about what it can expect from the Maliki government, but the solutions lie in this area, and the president’s emerging change in strategy should reflect this.