Baghdad, Iraq—If, in time, the attempt to implant a pro-Western, democratic political System in Iraq ends up buried in the desert sands, historians will have no shortage of things that went wrong. (46) Equally, if the problems here ultimately recede, supporters of the enterprise will find vindication (证明…正确) in the Bush administration"s decision to hold course as others lost faith. (47) Either way, any reckoning will examine the numbers of American troops committed here: whether they were so thinly stretched that their mission was doomed from the start, or, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield said last week, American commanders were given "exactly what they"ve recommended" in terms of troops. Mr. Rumsfield has long taken a "less is more" approach to combat troop levels, and in a BBC interview Monday, be seemed to move toward those now pressing to reduce troop levels soon. (48) "The reason for fewer," he said, "is because ultimately it"s going to be the Iraqi people who are going to prevail in this insurgency(起义)" in other words, Iraqi, not American, troops are the ones who will win the war, if it can be won. The words seemed at least to nod to politics. (49) Last week, even as opinion polls showed continuing erosion in support for the war, a conservative from a state heavy with military bases who has been a staunch(坚定的) supporter of the war, Representative Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, joined with another Republican and two Democrats in calling on President Bush to begin drawing down the troops in Iraq by Oct. 1, 2006. Earlier this year, the Pentagon offered an even earlier date for an initial reduction. But in recent weeks, American generals here have been telling Congressional visitors that the disappointing performance of many Iraqi combat units has made early departures impractical. They say it will be two years or more before Iraqis can be expected to begin replacing American units as the main guarantors of security. Commanders concerned for their careers have not thought it prudent to go further, and to say publicly what many say privately: that with recent American troop levels—139,000 now they have been forced to play an infernal board game, constantly shuttling combat units from one war zone to another, leaving insurgent buildups unmet in some places while they deal with more urgent problems elsewhere. Generals are not famous for wanting smaller armies. (50) But American commanders here have been cautioned by the reality that the Pentagon(五角大楼), in a time of all-volunteer forces and plunging recruiting levels, has few if any extra troops to deploy(部署), and that there are limits to what American public opinion would bear. So the generals have kept quiet about troop levels.