Guys, don't forget the object is to WIN

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 — In 142 stark pages, the Iraq Study Group report makes an impassioned plea for bipartisan consensus on the most divisive foreign policy issue of this generation. Without President Bush, that cannot happen.

The commissioners gave a nod to Mr. Bush, adopting his language in accepting the goal of an Iraq that can “govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself.” But the administration’s talk of Iraq as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East is absent, as is any talk of victory.

Instead, the report confronts the president with a powerful argument that his policy in Iraq is not working and that he must move toward disengagement. For Mr. Bush to embrace the study group’s blueprint would mean accepting its implicit criticism of his democracy agenda, reversing course in Iraq and throughout the Middle East and meeting Democrats more than halfway.

Assuming he is not ready to go that far, despite some recent signals of flexibility, he faces the more general question of whether he is ready to embrace the spirit of the report —

Let us hope not. The work of what has come to be called the "Iraq Surrender Group" is deeply flawed. While there are some (a very few) good suggestions in the report the primary effect of adopting its recommendations would be to tell every Islamofascist terrorist and state terrorist sponsor to keep doing exactly what they have been doing, because it is producing victory.

While Mr. Bush will have to face the fact that Islam is not a "religion of peace" and that Arab/Muslim culture really is inferior to Western culture and unable to sustain true Western-style democracy it is still very possible to build a somewhat democratic system around a strong president.

The path to VICTORY in Iraq is admitting that European parlimentary democracy is not working and cannot work in a nation as fractured along tribal, ethnic and sectarian lines as Iraq. The current constitution needs to be modified to reform the government into a presidential system. The chief executive needs broad powers at the best of times with the elected legislature being able to grant him nearly dictatorial authority for a limited time during emergencies.

We then need to find a smart and tough and throughly Western leaning Iraqi to install as the first president and then devote the entire weight of the Iraqi and US military forces to sealing the borders with Iran and Syria and crushing the sectarian militis, Ba'ath bitter-enders and outside terrorist groups.

And by all means hurry up and hang Saddam. Seeing him swing will take the wind out of at least some of the "insurgency's" sails.