There's a simple reason the Washington establishment, Democrats, and the press hate President Bush's new strategy in Iraq: He spurned their advice. He ordered a troop increase, not the first phase of a withdrawal. He didn't echo Democrats like Senator Joe Biden and suggest the war in Iraq is lost. The thrust of his nationally televised speech last week was that we can still win. He mostly rejected the findings of the Iraq Study Group. And he refused--in fact, he's emphatically opposed--to engage Iran and Syria in talks. Nor did he go along with calls to abandon democracy as the fundamental goal of his foreign policy in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

This was a major snub by Bush, a big-time thumbing of his nose at his critics and even at some of those who have advised him. It was the contrarian Bush in action again, much as he was in his first term--only he's less popular now. But he's still willing to go it alone as president. Republicans on Capitol Hill, normally his allies, are "nervous," a Bush aide says. "They're skittish," says another aide. Democrats, of course, are opposed to the president's plan with a fury and indignation that comes with knowing that public opinion is running their way on Iraq.

In embracing a new counter insurgency plan in Iraq that calls for an additional 20,000-plus American troops in Baghdad and in Anbar province, Bush took a step he'd hoped to avoid. He publicly disagreed with his generals. The

Now he's decided Casey and Centcom commander John Abizaid were wrong in their reluctance to deploy more troops and change the military mission in Iraq, particularly in Baghdad. They favored a "small footprint" by American troops whose chief assignment was to train the Iraqi army to take charge. This, in turn, would allow American soldiers to begin coming home. Instead, Bush has changed to a counterinsurgency strategy with American troops more visible, more involved in combat, and assigned, first and foremost, to secure the Iraqi capital.

Historical analogies are inviting here, but the removal of Casey and Abizaid was not quite the same as President Lincoln's firing of General George McClellan in the Civil War. Casey will become Army chief of staff and Abizaid was about to retire anyway. But there is one strong similarity: Casey and Abizaid weren't winning. So Bush has brought in new commanders, notably General David Petraeus, the Army's top counterinsurgency expert. Petraeus's job is to be Bush's Ulysses Grant.

Some Republicans were disappointed in the president's speech. They wanted a rousing address that would electrify the public, spur support for victory in Iraq, and ease the war's political drain on Republicans. But Bush spoke to a camera in the White House library and, as an aide says, he "doesn't deliver good speeches in that forum. . . . There was some deflation with it." Besides, the speech was designed to explain the president's change of plans, not stir passions.