Just to follow up on yesterday’s discussion, there seems to be a growing consensus among Senate Dems on a phased-withdrawal plan.
Congressional Democrats, seizing on public discontent over the war in Iraq, will offer legislation this week calling for a phased withdrawal of troops from Iraq and a shifting of forces to other nations, where supporters say American soldiers will be less likely to come under attack.
The resolution, crafted by Democratic Senators Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Carl Levin of Michigan, will headline a second week of debate in Congress over the state of the war. It is the first real debate Congress has held on the war since the US invasion in early 2003.
Senate Democrats, many of whom voted to authorize force in Iraq but have become critics of the war, will unveil a resolution today demanding that President Bush begin phasing out US troop presence in Iraq this year.
Good. Under the Reed/Levin proposal, a small contingent of U.S. troops would stay in Iraq train security forces, but would redeploy most our forces. It’s effectively the same policy Murtha, Kerry, Pelosi, and others urged the party to get behind months ago.
Fortunately, this time it’s a policy that seems to be winning over some Dems who had balked at the idea in the past.
“Three years and three months into the war, with all of the losses, the insurgency, the burgeoning civil war that’s taking place — what was it, seven bombings in Baghdad yesterday? — an open-ended time commitment is no longer sustainable,” [California Sen. Dianne] Feinstein said on CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.”
“I don’t think it’s sustainable from the military point of view in terms of troop commitments. I don’t think it’s sustainable in terms of what Americans think about the war,” Feinstein said.
“A timetable, some goals, some discussion with the Congress by the administration. The president might not have wanted to have done that early on, but three years and three months and a bogging down, I think, suggests that the time has come for some discussion as to where we go from here.”
The Reed/Levin resolution may go to the House floor as early as tomorrow. Stay tuned.