Republicans Distance Themselves from Bush Iraq Policy

The bungled occupation of Iraq is now toxic enough that top Republicans are backing away, albeit slightly, from the Bush White House. Senators McCain and Hagel along with Congressman Lugar, all members of the GOP, have criticized the administration without breaking with the president. However, should Mr. Bush win a second term (perhaps even with the most votes this time), he will find he no longer has a blank check in the Congress. It comes two years too late, but it is a welcome change nonetheless.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Senator McCain said that the president hadn’t been "as straight as maybe we'd like to see"” on Iraq. He added that it was “a serious mistake” to have an insufficient number of troops on the ground “after the initial success.” On the mess the Sunni Triangle has become, Senator McCain said he would never have allowed the sanctuaries to start with." While saying the commander-in-chief is too optimistic in most statements, he does add, " I've been with him when he has told audiences that this is a very tough struggle that we're in."

The other senator from Arizona, John Kyl, and Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel had an exchange on “Face the Nation” that suggests some in the GOP do understand nuance. Senator Kyl said that “hand-wringing” wasn’t going to win the war, that "war is tough, and there are casualties. And just before victory, sometimes, it gets most violent," by which one supposes he believes it will all be over by Christmas. Senator Hagel replied, that “hand-wringing” was a misplaced term, but bluntly he said, “I don't think we're winning.”

Meanwhile, on ABC’s rather lame “This Week,” which hasn’t recovered since the departure of the late great David Brinkley, Congressman Richard Lugar of Indiana, who happens to chair the House Foreign Relations Committee, noted that the administration has spent only $1 billion of the $18 billion slated for reconstruction efforts. The reason he gave was "the incompetence in the administration."

All of these men are on Mr. Bush’s side in politics. For them to air home truths on the Sunday morning chat shows suggests that there are even worse things said in private. And that there are others in the Republican Party who share their views but out of some misguided sense of loyalty aren’t saying anything in public. If Mr. Bush wins on November 2, they won’t need to hold their tongues for fear of delivering the White House to a liberal. And they probably won’t. Mr. Bush will begin a second term in the same position LBJ found himself in 1968, a lame duck losing a war.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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