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By The Hill Editors
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Posted: 06/28/07 06:58 PM [ET] |
Sen. Richard Lugar’s (R-Ind.) speech about Iraq Monday night is rightly seen as an important turning point in America’s prosecution of the war against Islamist terrorism.
Lugar has long congressional experience and an instinct for collegiality that tends to make his pronouncements, particularly on foreign policy — he is ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — received almost presumptively as moderate and wise.
They may be so; the senator may be right in his suggestion that the U.S. troop surge, and therefore the war in Iraq, can already be seen to have failed. But that seems quick, to put it no more strongly, in its willingness to write off the tactics of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Baghdad, who said he would need until September to have an idea of how his plan was working.
Lugar’s words have been seized on by anti-war activists who plan to ratchet up pressure on the Senate to cut off funds for President Bush’s military policy when defense authorization legislation is debated next month. Gael Murphy, co-founder of the Code Pink anti-war group, responded to the senator’s speech by saying, “Our strategy for this summer is to take advantage of reality on the ground in Iraq and Lugar’s statement is extremely helpful towards that direction.”
It may also be helpful, although more ambiguously so, for Republicans who want to break with Bush and distance themselves from an unpopular policy as much as possible between now and Election Day next year. The senator’s decisive move, however, is a double-edged sword for these Republicans — they want distance from the president and his policy but are nervous about making the breach.
If the senator has made that breach more likely, he has also made it harder to avoid. It now takes fortitude not to break with Bush, rather than the reverse. But it is not clear how the party’s base will react; the defection may be seen as realism, though it could, equally, be seen as cynical, opportunistic and even treacherous.
Either way, there seems little doubt that Lugar’s break with Bush (civilized and restrained in its rhetoric though it was) will prompt other GOP lawmakers to follow, and Petraeus’s September report will come to be regarded more as a formal deadline for a foregone conclusion than as an opportunity to hear with fresh ears the news brought to Capitol Hill by the military commander.
The general can probably say nothing now to swing Congress behind his tactics. That ship has sailed and history is likely to record, with admiration or not, that it was Lugar who pulled up the anchor.
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