RK ARCHIVE - Warner/Lugar: Conditions for Iraq War "No Longer Exist or Are Irrelevant"

Perhaps most significantly, the New York Times reports Lugar's assertion that "many of the conditions and motivations that existed when we authorized force [in 2002]... no longer exist or are irrelevant." Because of that, Lugar believes the 2002 war authorization is "obsolete and requires revision."

Why is this so signficant, since it doesn't force the President to do anything? Mainly because, as the National Journal notes, "Lugar and Warner, former chairmen of the Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, respectively, are among the most influential senators on defense-related issues."
As I've felt for a long time now, the Iraq War will end not when liberals decide it needs to end, but when moderate Republicans decide it needs to end. The reason for that is a simple fact: Democrats do not effectively control the U.S. Senate, which requires 60 votes to invoke cloture and proceed with a vote in the face of fillibuster. Currently, with Joe Lieberman an Iraq War superhawk and with Tim Johnson still recovering from his near-fatal brain bleed late last year, Democrats are luckly to get 49 or 50 votes, let alone 60.

As if that's not impossible enough, Democrats then have to figure out a way to gather the 67 votes needed to override any veto from President Bush. It's a simple fact that's this is not going to be accomplished with Democrats - let alone liberal Democrats - alone. To the contrary, it will require 17 or so Republicans, people like John Warner, Richard Lugar, Gordon Smith, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Chuck Hagel, and others. With them, we can start to end this war. Without them, we can't. Period.

That's why I support what John Warner's trying to do here, along with Richard Lugar. True, it doesn't get our troops out immediately, but that would be a dangerous course of action anyway. As General Wes Clark said Thursday on the Diane Rehm Show, "I think we have to be realistic about Iraq, we can't simply pack up and leave. There is a threat there, it does have to be dealt with." Or, as Jim Webb says, "We went to war in Iraq recklessly; we must move forward responsibly."

I agree with Wes Clark and Jim Webb, two men who will forget more about military strategy than most of us will ever know. And I also agree with John Warner, let's start moving in the right direction - "responsibly" - and not leave a genocidal bloodbath, regional conflagration, or new base for terrorists behind when we get out of Iraq - as we must. Thank you to Virginia's two U.S. Senators, John Warner and Jim Webb - for leading the way out of Iraq in a way that does not damage our national security interests any more than Bush (and the Republican Congress from 2002 through 2006) has already damaged them with his foolish, non-reality-based, incompetent, pig-headed handling of this war.

Comments

A sensible first step but not quite enough (Dianne - 7/14/2007 10:17:47 AM)

Good post. The WaPo described the Warner/Lugar proposal which seems to be a sensible first step but the last sentence is the problem:

Defying Bush even as his team fanned out to press Congress for more time, Sens. John W. Warner (Va.) and Richard G. Lugar (Ind.) unveiled a measure requiring the White House to begin drawing up plans to redeploy U.S. forces from frontline combat to border security and counterterrorism. But the legislation would not force Bush to implement the plans at this point.

Would anything really "force" Bush to change course? (Lowell - 7/14/2007 10:19:34 AM)

I wonder. I also wonder if any such measure could get 67 votes in the Senate and 2/3 in the House to ovrerride a Bush veto. For now, I'm glad to see Sen. Warner stepping up on this issue, and hope that his fellow Republicans will follow his lead.

Iraq Can Manage Without US (Gordie - 7/14/2007 10:40:48 AM)

For the likes of me I do not know how any Republican can spin those statements. Oh they will try, but can Webb and the rest of the Demos spin better. It looks like the Demos got there opening.

Now I really want to watch "Meet the Press" tomorrow when Webb debates Graham.

The rest of the PM al Maliki statement

http://hosted.ap.org...

Another round of draw-down talk (Teddy - 7/14/2007 11:12:22 AM)

is being hinted at by the White House. We've been tantalized with this before... it's an example of the alcoholic promising to be good, without admitting previous failures to follow through. Bush's propagandists are making noise about drawing down troops, variously predicted for April or next year "sometime." Just another scam by the bad boy adolescent who confuses stupidly reinforcing the original mistake with showing firmness of character and leadership.

In other words, Warner and Lugar are once again offering their president a graceful way to get out of the hole he's dug, but I doubt the foolish bad boy will take it. Or, that he will take it openly. Doing so would be admitting he made a mistake, and that is not possible, even for a petty god.

Talking About An Alcohoic's promise (Gordie - 7/14/2007 1:43:37 PM)

I was wonder if you know waht a "Dry Drunk" experience is?

My definition is "when someone is not drinking but they protray all the mannerisms of some one who is drinking."

And the ex-drunken flyboy continues his drinking behaver without consuming. Sure does discribe Bush.

Warner and Lugar have consistently voted (walkabout - 7/14/2007 9:58:18 PM)

with Bush and against EVERY Democratic amendment, including Jim Webb's that should have been supported by every senator. So can these two be trusted to really take steps to get the US out of Iraq?

Window dressing (Teddy - 7/15/2007 7:31:16 AM)

is all the Warner-Lugar effort is. I cannot understand why the Senate Democrats are not trumpeting the Republican practice of threatening to filibuster EVERY piece of legislation from the Democrats, which is the reason we have so many cloture votes that require 60 votes, which the Democrats cannot achieve on their own. Remember when the Republicans ran everything, and the Democrats occasionally threatened to filibuster a particularly obnoxious Supreme Court nomination, and the republicans came up with "nuclear option" and made a big deal out of Democratic "obstructionism?" What's going on now is far, far more extensive and much, much worse. Why isn't this a topic for discussion?