The Iraq Study Group’s final report isn’t out yet, but already we’ve had two big rounds of leaks and commentary about whether the report will solve all of the problems of Iraq. First, we learned that the report was likely to suggest that the U.S. talk with Iran and Syria about how to calm things down in Iraq. And then we learned today that the report would suggest a phased drawdown of American troops by the end of 2008, “predicated on the assumption that circumstances on the ground would permit it.” Even without access to the report and its reasoning, pundits leapt into action, either praising or dismissing the recommendations (for Slate‘s quick roundup on the more recent leak, click here).

Meanwhile, President Bush can’t wait for the report to influence his strategy for Iraq, either. On the one hand, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley reportedly has indicated that the U.S. strategy in Iraq will change relatively slowly, because no one is in a panic. On the other hand, President Bush dismissed talk of withdrawal after his meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: “this business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it whatsoever.” Sounds as if he’s trying to take options off the table — to set the agenda of the debate about the ISG report before the report gets issued.

And if the report turns out to be as equivocal as the leaks suggest, then it won’t be too hard to divert the policy reaction to the report in line with the President’s long-standing policy priorities, whether or not that’s the real intent of the report’s authors. It seems to me that President Bush has said all along that he intends to draw down the number of American combat troops in Iraq as soon as “circumstances on the ground” permit. The policy discussion needs to be about what those “permissive” conditions look like.

I don’t want to prejudge the ISG report, but it sounds as if its authors are inclined to punt on the serious questions. And they are selectively leaking to find out in advance how much outcry there will be — that is, whether they can get away with it.

The good news for the report’s authors is that it’s likely they can get away with just about whatever they want to. We have a long tradition in the U.S. of using blue-ribbon panels instrumentally. Just as many business executives hire consulting firms to write reports proposing business plans that the executives want to adopt anyway, politicians often use expert advice to bless what they want to do anyway, too.

The only way that expert advice gets policy traction is when policy-makers like the advice, and policy-makers only occasionally ask for advice when they are genuinely uncertain about the answer that they’re going to get. In those cases, they make sure to ask advisors with whom they have a close, trusted relationship, because the executives then know in advance that the advice that will be proposed won’t get them into trouble with key constituencies or violate the decision-maker’s core values.

Bipartisan, blue-ribbon panels can’t be trusted in that sense. So the most common outcome after their reports are issued is that they gather dust on a few bookshelves.

I initially suspected that the Iraq Study Group report would be different. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that it would be more like the 9/11 Commission’s report: hard for politicians not to rush, all-too-fast, to do whatever the commission recommends. And that may still turn out to be right: everyone will see an advantage in doing what the small group of experts says, because if it doesn’t work out, then they can always shift the blame for the bad outcome away from themselves. And besides, no one really has any good ideas for achieving all of America’s goals in Iraq, so no one will have a strong, public case to make for an alternative vision of what to do next.

The smartest advocates for increasing the number of American troops in Iraq suggest that their plan might be a way to tamp down the sectarian violence. Perhaps the advocates are right, although it’s hard to know in advance; we do know, though, that their goal has a certain amount of appeal to the U.S., because we don’t want to accept responsibility for an Iraqi bloodbath. Meanwhile, it’s also likely that increasing the number of American troops would increase the dependence of the Iraqis on the U.S., and for sure, it would increase the strain on the American military. You can’t have everything you want.

The smartest arguments for reducing the number of American troops in Iraq also suggest that doing so might tamp down the violence (although no one is sure how ugly the killing would get in the short term, before stability might come either through one Iraqi group “winning” the civil war or, more likely, through the emergence of a balance of power where Iraqi politicians finally got serious about forming a working government). Whether the advocates of an uncontingent withdrawal plan are right about the violence or not, though, they can be sure that pulling American combat forces out of Iraq would give the U.S. military a breather; on the other hand, they can also be sure that pulling out would lead to claims by people we don’t like (e.g., Osama) that the United States had been beaten and that historical momentum is against the U.S. Perhaps the damage to American reputation really would hurt our national security, and it would definitely be unpleasant to listen to America’s European allies say “I told you so.”

Middle-of-the-road plans have problems, too. I discussed the problems of “partition” briefly in that earlier post on “stay the course,” and that proposal seems to have faded from the policy front-burner for now anyway. Instead, the recent ISG leak suggests that the bipartisan wise men are going to favor a new form of bucking up the Iraqi security forces by integrating American soldiers into Iraqi units, officially as trainers.

Using American soldiers as “trainers” for the Colombian army that chased Pablo Escobar (and ultimately killed him) did not shield the U.S. from accusations that we were working with death squads. Nor did they lead to a surge in the quality of the Colombian military, as it appears that in a pinch, the Americans had to do the hard work and fight the combat on behalf of their “trainees.” (For a good read on this subject, see Mark Bowden’s book, Killing Pablo) My fear is that the U.S. forces will still be engaged in combat, that they’ll get left holding the bag by unreliable trainees, that we’ll still undermine the incentives of the various Iraqi parties to make realistic choices about what they should expect in terms of their ability to dominate Iraq, etc.

Without reading more from the actual ISG report — to which I look forward — I again don’t want to prejudge its proposals. But the big point here is that lots of experts have been working hard for quite some time to figure out solutions to the mess in Iraq. If there were a great option lying around, we’d already know about it. The best we can hope for is that the ISG report will increase the profile of serious debate on Iraq, so that we can choose the best of a set of bad options rather than bulling ahead.

But can we expect even that? I’m very glad that the election results opened up some discussion of different options. I hope that discussion will continue, even if the ISG passes the buck. It’s going to be hard for politicians to fully embrace the ISG recommendation, no matter what it is, if the ISG recommendation is not directly implementable. Sure, shifting American trainers into specific Iraqi units is a directly implementable step. But what about the drawdown if “circumstances on the ground … permit?”

And to go back to the first round of leaking about the ISG report, if the U.S. tries to talk directly with Iran and Syria, what are we supposed to say? What should we offer Iran and Syria to get them to help us? How much help could they really offer, anyway? One of the relatively widely agreed goals of American policy in Iraq is that we don’t want Iraq’s neighbors to exploit a “power vacuum” there. So how can we invite them into Iraq as part of the solution at the same time we’ll keep them out of Iraqi politics?

Basically, if the leaks are to be believed, the ISG report is going to raise as many questions as it answers. Politicians will embrace its recommendations in theory, but then they will have nasty fights (best case scenario) about what they actually mean the U.S. should do. The even worse alternative is that politicians will seize on the report as a way to push the debate about Iraq onto the back burner — to fail, once again, to resolve questions about what the U.S. should really do to adapt to the situation there. If the report serves as that kind of political cover (as many blue-ribbon panel reports do), that would be a most unfortunate outcome for the American national interest.

If anyone is paying attention, my vote is that the leaked trial balloon — to see if the report can punt — be considered a failure. I hope the Commission finishes its job and writes a report with real substance.

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