Mr. Bush may hope to persuade doubters over his new policy by shuffling some military and civilian bosses involved in Iraq. John Negroponte, America's intelligence chief, will move to the State Department. America's ambassador to Iraq, Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, will take over as ambassador to the United Nations. Admiral William Fallon takes over as overall regional commander. The on-the-ground commander in Iraq will be the army's Lieutenant- General (soon to be full General) David Petraeus. There are, of course, options to the president's military escalation. Most sober analysts - and the majority of Americans - agree that there is no military solution to the conflict in Iraq, only a political one. The United States needs to work with regional governments, including Iran and Syria, to achieve reconciliation in Iraq. In a recent poll conducted by the University of Maryland, 82% of Democrats and 72% of Republicans said we should directly engage with Syria and Iran to establish a political solution in Iraq, as was unanimously recommended by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. Let us hope this Troops' Surge is not an escalation against Iran; since the Bush administration is notorious for opening new fronts to take public attention away from the failures on the existing ones.
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