Senator Carl Levin on Monday’s PBS NewsHour argued that if American troops begin to leave Iraq and the remaining forces assume a more limited role, the Iraqi government will be galvinized to assume more responsibility for securing and rebuilding Iraq:

we believe . . . that we should notify the Iraqis that we will begin a phased reduction, redeployment of our troops in four to six months. And that means that they would be put on notice basically that they have got to address the political problems that divide them.

They would be put on notice that the open-ended commitment of American troops is no longer there, that we cannot stay there in an open-ended, unlimited way, and that they have got to tackle the problems that only they can tackle. That would be the message that we would send, if the president would agree to tell the Iraqis that, beginning in four to six months, we would initiate a reduction in American forces.

As reported in the New York Times, some prominent military leaders sharply disagree with Levin and others who believe that this is the path that will lead to greater stability.

Anthony C. Zinni, a retired general, the former head of the United States Central Command and a sharp critic of the Bush Administration’s policies, argues that any substantial reduction of American forces over the next several months would be more likely to accelerate the slide to civil war than stop it.

The logic of this is you put pressure on Maliki and force him to stand up to this. Well, you can’t put pressure on a wounded guy. There is a premise that the Iraqis are not doing enough now, that there is a capability that they have not employed or used. I am not so sure they are capable of stopping sectarian violence.

Zinni avers that it would make more sense to consider deploying additional American forces over the next six months to “regain momentum” as part of a broader effort to stabilize Iraq that would create more jobs, foster political reconciliation and develop more effective Iraqi security forces.

John Batiste, another retired general, described the Congressional proposals for troop withdrawals as “terribly naïve.” In his view, “[t]here are lots of things that have to happen to set them up for success. Until they happen, it does not matter what we tell Maliki.”

Like Zinni, Batiste says that, before considering troop reductions, the U.S. needs to take an array of steps, including fresh efforts to alleviate unemployment in Iraq, secure its long and porous borders, enlist more cooperation from tribal sheiks, step up the effort to train Iraq’s security forces, engage Iraq’s neighbors and weaken, or if necessary, crush the militias. Also, like Zinni, Batiste thinks it may be necessary to deploy tens of thousands of additional “coalition troops.”

Ken Pollack of the Brookings Institution agrees with the generals:

If we start pulling out troops and the violence gets worse and the control of the militias increases and people become confirmed in their suspicion that the United States is not going to be there to prevent civil war, they are to going to start making decisions today to prepare for the eventuality of civil war tomorrow. That is how civil wars start.

So do I. What amazes me about Levin and others who support his view is their apparent disregard for the irreversibility of the course they recommend. If the “phased withdrawal” of American troops is followed by more, not less, strife, would they countenance a renewed buildup of U.S. forces? I think not.