As House members were debating their Iraq resolution on Friday, a very different Iraq drama was going on in the Senate, with hardly any attention paid.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was holding confirmation hearings for Ryan Crocker, the new U.S. ambassador-designate to Baghdad. Even Iraq skeptics heaped praise on Crocker, one of the country's most talented and intrepid diplomats.

Crocker's hearing underlined one of the most startling ironies of America's Iraq venture: Late in the day, the administration has filled its top military and civilian posts in Iraq with top officers and diplomats who have been critical of the conduct of Iraq policy.

They include not only Crocker, but also the new coordinator of America's Iraq reconstruction effort, Timothy Carney; the new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus; and a circle of outstanding military experts on counterinsurgency warfare assembled by Petraeus. The administration has asked them to rescue a near-impossible situation that might have been avoided had it heeded their warnings years earlier.

The theme that runs through these warnings: If you don't grasp the nature of the society and people you are supposed to be helping, you will fail.

Ryan Crocker, whom I first met as a young political officer in 1982 in Beirut, always wanted to be out in the field, learning about the local people. He was one of the first Westerners at the scene of the infamous massacre of Palestinians by Christian Lebanese militiamen in the Sabra and Shattila refugee camps. An Arabic speaker, he's been ambassador to Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait, Pakistan — and served several frustrating months in Baghdad in 2003 working under U.S. occupation czar Paul Bremer.

In the run-up to the war, Crocker spent sleepless nights worrying about the U.S. decision to invade Baghdad. Washington Post reporter Karen De Young has written of the memo Crocker sent in 2002 to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, titled "The Perfect Storm": He predicted that toppling Saddam would unleash violent sectarian and ethnic tensions. Top Bush administration officials and advisers believed Iraq would be stable after an invasion.

Retired ambassador Tim Carney also confronted the administration's willful blindness. In 2003, when I met him in Baghdad, he was tasked with getting Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Minerals up and running. But he couldn't get the small amounts of cash necessary to restore the factories and to create desperately needed jobs. Bremer's team preferred to pursue ideological dreams of privatization and dispense contracts to big U.S. firms. Carney left Baghdad in disgust.

I've written before of Gen. Petraeus, who, as commander of the 101st Airborne in Mosul in 2003-04, arrived with a plan to stabilize the city, provide jobs and security for Iraqis, and then turn responsibility over to them. Had that model been followed elsewhere in Iraq, the situation might not be so dismal.

Now Petraeus is back with a military braintrust of outstanding colonels with expertise on counterinsurgency war. They include strategists like Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, an Australian with a Ph.D. in anthropology. His basic premise: You can't stabilize a country unless you "know your turf" — the topography, economy, history, religion and culture. Only now, perhaps too late, has the Pentagon recognized the need to wage a counterinsurgency war.

So here you have the dream team, officers and diplomats who are free of ideological delusions, want to stabilize Iraq, create jobs, and make it possible for U.S. troops to leave.

They all understand that military action can only do so much. "Successful military action can provide the space," Crocker said at his confirmation hearings. "But it is only political solutions that can resolve the conflict."

If they have the guts to take on this near-impossible task, I believe they deserve a chance, not just from Congress, but also from President Bush.

Petraeus and Crocker can't achieve reconciliation within Iraq without reconciliation between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni neighbors. This will require a regional negotiating process, which must be promoted by the White House and must include dialogue between Washington and Tehran.

And the White House must now pay close attention to recommendations by Petraeus and Crocker. "It's been made clear to me that whatever I need ... the phones will answer," Crocker said at his hearings. Let's hope so. If he and Petraeus fail, the onus won't be on them but on those who sent them to Baghdad.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Reach her at trubin@phillynews.com.