A path back to reality

Some of the report's recommendations may prove extremely difficult to implement. This is particularly true of the proposal for an Iraq International Support Group, which would include neighboring states with an interest in preventing a descent into all-out sectarian warfare that could lead to a regional conflagration.

The neighbors have disparate and often conflicting interests. Iran wants stability in a Shi'ite-ruled Iraq and a state next door that can never again present the sort of threat to Iran that Saddam Hussein's regime once did. But it does not want an Iraq that belongs to an American sphere of influence or that refuses to help promote Iranian interests from the Gulf area to the Mediterranean.

Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf Arab states, Egypt, and Jordan do not want the Sunni Arab areas of western Iraq to become a sanctuary that Al Qaeda and like-minded jihadist bands could use as a springboard for assaults on those Sunni Arab regimes. But those regimes also do not want Iraq to be removed from the Sunni Arab camp and delivered into the hands of Shi'ite and Persian Iran.

Nevertheless, the Baker-Hamilton report is justified in insisting that regional cooperation is indispensable if the worst outcome in Iraq is to be avoided. If Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are not brought into a diplomatic process that gives each a chance to secure basic interests compatible with those of the other neighbors, they will be tempted to take actions that could lead to the "humanitarian catastrophe" and the larger regional conflict that the report properly seeks to prevent.

Bush appears reluctant to talk about Iraq with Iran and Syria, fearing that the former will want concessions on its nuclear program and the latter will demand renewed sway over Lebanon as the price for cooperation in Iraq. These fears are not groundless. But Baker's diplomatic career was rooted in John Kennedy's wise dictum: "Let us never negotiate out of fear" but also "never fear to negotiate."

Indeed, Baker recently held discussions with Syria's foreign minister and Iran's ambassador to the UN. So one may assume that, in Damascus and Tehran, there is at least a preliminary willingness to take part in a regional and international conference aimed at helping bring security and stability to Iraq.

Left unspoken in the fastidiously bipartisan report is this fact: an international conference on Iraq is needed today because, at every stage, Bush has failed to forge the multinational cooperation needed to prevent the implosion of Iraq. The report does not indulge in a facile optimism about the ease of obtaining the cooperation of Iraq's neighbors, but it argues persuasively that both Iran and Syria have an interest in helping to halt Iraq's current slide toward ever more horrific sectarian massacres and enormous outflows of refugees.

A crucial recommendation in the report is for "a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace on all fronts: Lebanon, Syria, and President Bush's June 2002 commitment to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine." This proposed initiative reflects not merely the rote formula that the Iraq Study Group no doubt heard from Arab officials. It also reflects a sound understanding that the pursuit of peace in the region depends on untying several knots in the larger Middle East.

The inter-connectedness of the Syria-Israel, Syria-Lebanon, Israel-Palestinian, Sunni-Shi'ite, and Arab-Persian fault lines is obvious to people in the region and to many others outside the region. To Bush and his advise rs, that connection has been just one more inconvenient reality they prefer to ignore.

As for the Baker-Hamilton concept of "milestones," success will be hard to achieve. This is a strategy of conditioning US support for the Iraqi government on its meeting deadlines for such goals as national reconciliation, the purging of militias from key ministries and security forces, the holding of provincial elections, and an equitable distribution of oil profits. Here, too, disparate difficulties are linked to each other.

The Shi'ite militias that have infiltrated the police and protective agencies assigned to various ministries will continue to be popular with the Shi'ite community unless Sunni Arab attacks on Shi'ite civilians diminish. And a fair sharing of Iraq's oil revenues will hardly be feasible until the extent of political power-sharing is clear and the constitutional form of federalism is decided.

These goals are nonetheless worth pursuing. And they may become more attainable if Bush accepts the report's proposal to have US combat troops , other than those needed for force protection, withdrawn from Iraq by the beginning of 2008. This amounts to a timetable that declines to speak its name.

Despite its prudent refusal to guarantee success, the Baker-Hamilton report does offer Bush sage principles for extracting America from the disaster he and his advise rs have engendered. Bush would be wise if he heeded the bipartisan, unanimous counsel of senior statesmen who have advised him to cope with the world as it really is.