Kaplan Bombshell?

For those of us following the Ackerman/Kaplan Iraq debate over at TNR, this admission by Kaplan strikes me as a potentially radical change in his "stay the course" position:

The fact is, there is very little that we can do to dampen the sectarian rage and pathologies tearing Iraq apart at the seams. Did the Army make a mistake when it banished "counterinsurgency" from the lexicon of military affairs? Absolutely. Does it matter in Iraq? Probably not. How can you win over the heart and mind of someone who sews a dog's head on a girl? Would more U.S. troops alter Iraq's homicidal dynamic? Not really, given that, on the question of sectarian rage, America is now largely beside the point. True, U.S. troops can be--and have been--a vital buffer between Iraq's warring sects. But they cannot reprogram their coarsened and brittle cultures. Even if America had arrived in Iraq with a detailed post-war plan, twice the number of troops, and all the counterinsurgency expertise in the world, my guess is that we would have found ourselves in exactly the same spot. The Iraqis, after all, still would have had the final say.

To be sure, many of Kaplan's dispatches for TNR from Iraq have echoed similar sentiments. What's more, he isn't calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. But it seems to me that if you harbor the sentiments expressed by Kaplan above, the only real option left is some kind of plan for eventual withdrawal.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum has some more thoughts on Kaplan here.