I hope no one got their hopes up. In recent weeks, several Senate Republicans have talked a good game when it came to the failures of the president’s tragic policy in Iraq, but the question was always going to be whether they were willing to follow through. Those of you who placed your bet on “They won’t” can collect your money.
Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.), whose forceful denunciation of Bush’s failed policy seemed like a turning point, tipped his cards a bit on Wednesday. “I don’t think we can do anything that is going to be binding, in the sense of having to force the administration to do something,” Lugar told the Washington Post. “But I would hope that we would be persuasive.”
Yes, because if there’s one thing the president has shown in recent years, it’s a willingness to be persuaded by lawmakers who disagree with his Iraq policy.
Yesterday, Lugar followed through on his passivity with a new measure, co-sponsored by Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), that some are characterizing as some kind of breakthrough. It isn’t.
President Bush faced a new challenge to his Iraq war strategy Friday when two key Republican lawmakers proposed forcing the White House to submit a plan to start redeploying troops by the end of the year.
Sens. John W. Warner of Virginia and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana — former committee chairmen and authorities on foreign and military affairs — called on Bush to be prepared to shift away from a combat role.
“We want to avoid a drift in Iraq policy,” said Lugar, who after years of standing by the president called publicly for change 2 1/2 weeks ago in a detailed critique of the White House’s current strategy in Iraq.
The much-anticipated proposal does not mandate a troop withdrawal. Congressional Democrats have been demanding such a mandate for months. And the measure may be largely symbolic, as odds are long that it can win the support of a bipartisan supermajority of 60 senators.
As a rule, attempts to change Iraq policy with a measure that’s “largely symbolic” don’t amount to much.
To be fair, “symbolically,” Warner/Lugar is mildly encouraging. Here are the two most respected voices on foreign policy in the Senate Republican caucus, and both are clearly unsatisfied with the president’s policy. They don’t want the surge to continue, they don’t approve of the message outlined by the president this week, and they want a new course of action. In this respect, Warner and Lugar are helping demonstrate the futility of the status quo, and offer some leverage to those who want a significant change.
But substantively, Warner/Lugar is weak to the point of uselessness.
Under this approach, U.S. troops would emphasize border security and counter-terrorism. It would also call for a new authorization vote, an idea touted by Hillary Clinton. But does Warner/Lugar reduce troop levels? No. Does it include enforceable benchmarks? No. Withdrawal timetables? No.
Ultimately, it’s about delivering a message to the White House: “We don’t like the current policy and would like you to change it. If you disagree, that’s fine; we won’t do anything about it.”
Warner/Lugar, for lack of a better word, trusts the president to take the Senate’s concerns seriously. Its provisions are voluntary.
The amendment actually includes this gem: “We recommend that the President and the Administration design plans to be executable beginning not later than December 31, 2007.” It prompted Greg Sargent to explain:
We recommend that the President do this? In other words, “Please, Mr. President, can you hurry up and start talking about pulling out? We’re getting politically killed out here — pretty please”?
In other words, this amendment is exactly in keeping with the President’s argument that Congress shouldn’t dictate war policy lest it be “tying the hands of our generals” or “micromanaging the war” or whatever bogus and vacuous phrase you want to use.
There’s a better way — it’s called the Levin/Reed amendment. It includes binding dates, and would start troop withdrawals from 120 days after passage, to be completed by April 1, 2008.
If Republicans are serious about a change, they’ll vote for it.