Opposition to Bush’s War Plan Is Mounting
__________________________________________________________
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 — With a prominent Republican senator joining top Senate Democrats to oppose a troop increase in Iraq, President Bush met today with a group Republican senators in an effort to shore up support for his war plan.
The Senate is preparing to hold a vote on a nonbinding resolution opposing the troop increase. The move has added to the mounting political pressures on Mr. Bush — and on the Republicans who will have to vote on it — over his new Iraq strategy, which has met with widespread criticism.
But other Democrats said today that they would press for even tougher measures, such as demanding that the president seek congressional authorization before increasing the troop presence in Iraq.
Officials familiar with the draft language of the resolution say it would assert that it is not in the nation’s interest to deepen its involvement in Iraq, particularly by raising the number of troops there.
Several hearings were being held on Capitol Hill today concerning the war. Speaking before a House committee, Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state in the Clinton administration, warned that “disturbing, even horrifying events will continue to occur” in Iraq, whether troops are increased or not.
“It would be a disaster for us to leave under the present circumstances,” she told the House Foreign Relations Committee. “But it may also be a disaster to stay. And if our troops are no longer in a position to make the difference, we have an overriding moral obligation to bring them home.”
Senator Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican who has worked with senior Democrats on the Iraq resolution, is a long-time critic of the administration’s handling of the war. But the White House appeared intent on dissuading any fence-sitting Republicans from joining him.
Senator Richard Lugar, a Republican from Indiana and a normally cautious foreign-policy expert, was among those invited to the White House. He warned that, “Iraq will not soon become the type of pluralist, unified, democratic bulwark in the center of the Middle East for which some in the Bush administration had hoped.”
Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who heads the Armed Services Committee, were the chief architects of the resolution.
The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, has argued this week that a resolution, even a nonbinding one, would send a damaging message to American troops, terrorists, Iraqis and U.S. allies. But the more pressing concern for administration officials was that Democrats might try to carry out threats to cut funding for the president’s plan, though this would not happen for some months.
One prominent Democrat, Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, said that he would introduce legislation to bar any further increase in troop levels in Iraq without explicit congressional authorization.
The unusually vigorous debate takes place as Bush prepares to deliver his annual State of the Union message on Tuesday. He is expected to argue again that it is critically important — to Iraq, the United States, and the region -- for U.S. forces to help stabilize Iraq before leaving.
Democrats have struggled to find unity on Iraq, with some urging an immediate withdrawal and others favoring a more patient approach. Further raising the profile of the debate, Senators Biden and Dodd, on the Democratic side, have said they plan to seek the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, and Senator Hagel is considered a possible Republican candidate.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the presumed Democratic front-runner, called on Tuesday for the United States to cap its troop level in Iraq at the number present in the country on Jan. 1, but also to send more American forces to Afghanistan.
Just back from a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, Senator Clinton said that the administration had “frankly failed” in its dealings with the Iraqi government. Instead, she said, “Let’s focus on Afghanistan and get it right.”
With Taliban forces in Afghanistan expected to mount a major offensive soon, she said that “this spring is a make-or-break time” for the U.S. and other foreign forces there.
Senator Clinton originally supported the war, and her evolving views have received unusually close attention. Her idea of capping the troop presence at Jan. 1 levels sets her apart somewhat from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which urged substantial withdrawals by early next year but found that a short-term troop increase might make sense.
One week after Bush described his plan for 21,500 additional troops to be sent to Iraq, with a key mission of securing Baghdad, Mrs. Clinton told CBS that she favors moving troops out of Baghdad and eventually out of Iraq.
“The Bush administration has frankly failed to put any leverage” on the government of Prime Minister Nouri Kemal al-Maliki, she said, days after meeting with Maliki. There had been “clearly an abdication of responsibility” by the Iraqi government, she said.
Mr. Bush himself criticized the Maliki government in a PBS interview Tuesday, saying that it had “fumbled” the executions of Saddam Hussein and two of his deputies, and that the government “has still got some maturation to do.”
He said the botched handling of the executions “reinforced doubts in people’s minds that the Maliki government and the unity government of Iraq is a serious government.” And that, Bush said, made his own job harder.
The idea of a congressionally mandated troop cap for Iraq could face constitutional questions. Some Republicans say that while Congress can cut off funding for U.S. forces abroad, it cannot meddle with the constitutional authority of a president, as commander-in-chief, to broadly control the military.
Mr. Snow, the spokesman, agreed. While lawmakers can do "whatever they want," he said, “there are clear delineations between the constitutional responsibilities and also the abilities of the separate and coequal branches.”
But Senator Dodd said today that he planned to introduce legislation to prohibit the president from increasing U.S. combat forces beyond their Jan. 16 level without advance approval by Congress.
A statement from Mr. Dodd’s office said that the authority Congress provided in 2002 to intervene in Iraq “never contemplated that U.S. troops would be engaged in a civil war in Iraq.” The earlier authorization, Mr. Dodd told reporters, was “absolutely obsolete.”
He said that while other proposals relied on cutting funds for the military, he would use the authorization process instead, as he said Congress successfully did in 1973, 1983, 1984 and 2000 to limit U.S. troops in, respectively, Vietnam, Lebanon, Europe and Colombia.
“Congress is a co-equal branch of government, and the time for blank checks is over,” Mr. Dodd said.
When a reporter suggested that Bush surely would veto such legislation, Mr. Dodd replied, “Well have to find out.”
Three liberal House Democrats, Representatives Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters, all of California, planned to call for the full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq within 6 months, though this would raise an even sharper constitutional issue.
As the debate developed, Senator Lugar warned that even if the United States withdraws relatively soon from Iraq, it must maintain a strong presence in the Middle East.
“If a withdrawal eventually does occur, it may happen in an atmosphere in which American fatigue with Iraq deployment limits our ability to address issues of vital national urgency elsewhere in the Middle East,” said Lugar, the former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
“The difficulties we have had in Iraq,” he added, “make a strong presence in the Middle East more imperative, and not less.” |
