{"id":9694,"date":"2007-01-22T12:31:18","date_gmt":"2007-01-22T17:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9694.html"},"modified":"2007-01-22T12:31:18","modified_gmt":"2007-01-22T17:31:18","slug":"if-hes-lost-john-warner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/if-hes-lost-john-warner\/","title":{"rendered":"If he’s lost John Warner…."},"content":{"rendered":"

In October, then-Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) said, “In two or three months, if this thing hasn’t come to fruition and if this level of violence is not under control … I think it’s the responsibility of our government, internally, to determine: Is there a change of course that we should take? And I wouldn’t take off the table any option at this time.” That three-month deadline came and went<\/a> a couple of weeks ago.<\/p>\n

To his credit, Warner is putting a new option on the table<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sen. John Warner (R-VA) will introduce a resolution today “making clear that he does not support the President on increasing the troop levels in Iraq” and calling escalation “a mistake,” CNN’s Dana Bash reports. Warner’s resolution will be cosponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Ben Nelson (D-NE).<\/p>\n

Warner, the former Armed Services Committee chairman, is a “very influential voice when it comes to military matters,” Bash reports, and until this fall had been “whole-heartedly behind the president and the war.” His new resolution “certainly…is not going to sit well with the White House.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that’s a safe assumption. Warner is considered an elder statesman of the Senate GOP caucus, in addition to being a credible, experienced voice on foreign policy and national security issues. If Warner steps away from the White House, he takes some Republican colleagues with him.<\/p>\n

For that matter, this isn’t just a problem for the Bush gang of losing an influential GOP voice; it also undercuts the ongoing smear of White House critics. As recently as last week, Tony Snow argued<\/a> that any congressional resolution, even a non-binding one, may lend comfort to our enemies. Is Snow, Rove, and the rest of the gang really prepared to impugn John Warner’s patriotism?
\n
\nIt’s also worth noting that Warner does not appear to have reached this point overnight. A couple of weeks ago, he was publicly calling on the White House to embrace the path laid out by the Iraq Study Group. Warner said<\/a>, “Young men and women of US forces and coalition forces should not be caught in the crossfire of a civil war prompted by who should have succeeded Mohammed in — what is it? — 650 AD?”<\/p>\n

The same week, Warner told the NYT<\/a> that Bush’s escalation strategy struck him as the wrong move.<\/p>\n

In an interview on Tuesday, Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, said he was becoming increasingly skeptical that a troop increase was in the best interest of the United States. “I’m particularly concerned about the greater injection of our troops into the middle of sectarian violence. Whom do you shoot at, the Sunni or the Shia?” Mr. Warner said. “Our American G.I.’s should not be subjected to that type of risk.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today, apparently, Warner followed through on those concerns.<\/p>\n

That said, it’s a complicated political dynamic, and Warner’s new resolution, while certainly bad news for the White House, isn’t necessarily great news for the Senate’s efforts to criticize the president. War critics had been moving towards backing the bi-partisan Biden-Hagel-Levin resolution, unveiled last week. Though I have not yet seen the language, it appears that Warner’s measure will include weaker, less-forceful language.<\/p>\n

Dems had hoped to get several GOP votes for Biden-Hagel-Levin, demonstrating broad opposition to the president’s policy. Wavering Republicans may now move towards Warner’s resolution instead, as a way of rebuking Bush’s escalation, but in a more passive way.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the debate is leaning in the right way — it’s not a debate about whether<\/i> to criticize Bush’s policy, but rather, how much<\/i> to criticize Bush’s policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In October, then-Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) said, “In two or three months, if this thing hasn’t come to fruition and if this level of violence is not under control … I think it’s the responsibility of our government, internally, to determine: Is there a change of course that we should take? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}