Sustained increases in U.S. troop levels would not solve the
fundamental cause of violence in Iraq, which is the absence of
national reconciliation. A senior American general told us that adding
U.S. troops might temporarily help limit violence in a highly
localized area. However, past experience indicates that the violence
would simply rekindle as soon as U.S. forces are moved to another
area. As another American general told us, if the Iraqi government
does not make political progress, "all the troops in the world will
not provide security." Meanwhile, America's military capacity is
stretched thin: we do not have the troops or equipment to make a
substantial, sustained increase in our troop presence. Increased
deployments to Iraq would also necessarily hamper our ability to
provide adequate resources for our efforts in Afghanistan or respond
to crises around the world.