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Prominent Republican urges new Iraq strategy

A key Republican senator warned Monday night that the Bush administration’s current Iraq strategy has little chance of working and could be putting the nation at risk.

Warning that the U.S. military is close to the breaking point, he urged a “more sustainable” Iraq policy that involves fewer troops and more diplomatic and economic options.

Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the former chairman and now ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has stuck with the Bush administration even as other Republicans have distanced themselves on Iraq. In January, when the new Democrat-led Congress was working on legislation opposed to the surge of combat troops, Lugar voted with the administration, warning that opposition would leave allies and adversaries believing the U.S. policy was in “disarray.”

“Unless we recalibrate our strategy in Iraq to fit our domestic political conditions and the broader needs of U.S. national security, we risk foreign policy failures that could greatly diminish our influence in the region and the world.” Lugar said in the late-night speech on the Senate floor.

“A course change should happen now,” Lugar said, “while there is still some possibility of construction a sustainable bipartisan strategy.”

His speech comes as Senate Democrats are planning to use the debate on the 2008 defense authorization bill as another avenue to confront President Bush on Iraq, with planned amendments that could restrict deployments of combat troops and set a timetable for withdrawal. Any such additions to the defense bill are likely to produce a veto threat from the White House, and Bush already showed Congress he is willing to do so when he vetoed a wartime funding bill earlier this year.

Debate on Iraq and the defense policy bill could begin this week, although votes are not expected until after the week-long July Fourth congressional recess.

“Three factors — the political fragmentation in Iraq, the growing stress on our military and the constraints of our own domestic political process — are converging to make it almost impossible for the United States to engineer a stable, multi-sectarian government in Iraq in a reasonable time frame,” Lugar said.

“In my judgment, our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond,” Lugar said. “The prospects that the current surge strategy will succeed in the way originally envisioned by the president are very limited within the short period framed by our own domestic political debate. And, the strident polarized nature of that debate increases the risk that our involvement in Iraq will end in a poorly planned withdrawal that undercuts our vital interests in the Middle East.”

Lugar said the surge, with a burst of U.S. combat forces trying to reduce violence to the point that Iraqi military and security forces that take over the mission of security, isn’t likely to work fast enough for the political process. “Americans want results in months,” he said.

“The window during which we can continue to employ American troops in Iraqi neighborhoods without damaging our military strength or our ability to respond to other national security priorities is closing,” Lugar said. “American armed forces are incredibly resilient, but Iraq is taking a toll on recruitment and readiness.”

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