The Value of Free Advice

I hope to God that President Bush will not accept the recommendations of Baker's Iraq Study Group. Hitchens writes that Baker is the last person we should accept advice from on the subject of Iraq. He is already associated with abandoning Iraq's Shias once and Iraq's Shias have not forgotten 1991.

I wrote that the President should explicitly reject the Baker report:

And with any luck, the President will take the opportunity that the Baker Iraq Study Group is providing to reassure the Iraqi and American people that victory is our only goal. If this Baker's Dozin' of policy advocates who seem to have slept through the end of the Cold War and 9/11 actually propose working with the likes of Syria and Iran to stabilize Iraq or call for dividing Iraq, President Bush should reject this group's work outright and once again end the debate that we aren't trying to win.

I hope our president will use the military's own analysis to provide an alternative to the apparent Baker approach of nuanced surrender. We have the right approach to winning. We just need to make enough cosmetic changes to satisfy the urge for change by some without changing the fundamentally correct approach we are already on.

If President Bush isn't committed to victory, why the Hell is he our president? Send Baker packing.