President George W. Bush will meet with his advisers this week in Crawford, Texas to cement what the Bush administration is calling a new way forward in Iraq. Bush has rejected the Iraq Study Group (ISG) proposals to reach out to Iraq s neighbors and begin withdrawing troops in 2008, preferring instead to focus on what he calls a strategy for victory in Iraq. In rejecting the ISG, and most likely adopting a strategy outlined by the American Enterprise Institute s Frederik Kagan, which will involve surging in Baghdad with an additional 30,000 more U.S. troops, Bush has sounded confident and predicted victory. Critics of the administration s approach argue that Bush has ramped up expectations for success in Iraq at a time in which such expectations are unwarranted, as exemplified by the anarchy in Baghdad. The approach itself has also been described as unrealistic, as U.S. troops cannot be expected to stay forever in Baghdad while getting shot at, and recent history has shown that whenever U.S. forces leave, insurgents quickly exploit the power vacuum. However, Bush has at least made an effort to reach out to critics, such as those who comprised the ISG. But his dispatching of the group s recommendations reflect that the outreach was merely a political stunt, according to David Gergen, a former White House adviser. He has built up expectations, Gergen said. People are saying, OK, if you ve spent all this time and effort on it, you better have a darn good plan.
