Back to Baker-Hamilton

Juan Cole on the bottom line:

So now it turns out that recently General David Petraeus has been doing regional diplomacy in an attempt to get local regimes to cooperate in cutting the flow of foreign fighters, money and arms to Iraq.
In other words, the military escalation, which is now getting to be over with, did not do the trick. So the only alternative is to go back to the Baker Hamilton Commission recommendations.
Question: How far ahead of the game would we be if this regional diplomacy had started in December of 2006 instead of being dismissed by Bush and Cheney in favor of a set of purely military tactics?