House Republicans Warn Bush on Iraq-Nam

Yesterday, 11 Republican members of the House of Representatives visited President Bush at the White House to tell him they needed to see progress in Iraq-Nam by September. Congressman Ray LaHood of Illinois told him, “The American people are war-fatigued. The American people want to know there’s a way out. We will hang with them [the administration] until September, but we need an honest assessment in September. People’s patience is running very, very thin.” The cracks in the dam are beginning to show.

Mark Kirk, like Mr. LaHood a representative from Illinois, told the president in so many words, “we’re all with you now, but we have concerns about where we will be next year.” And the reason the GOP is worried about next year is the 2008 election. A majority of Americans want out of Iraq-Nam, and as things continue to spiral downward, the numbers against the war will rise. In November 2008, the election could well be a simple stay-in or get-out referendum on the war. If so, everything else the Republican Party supports will be sacrificed in an anti-war Democratic landslide.

In addition to the president, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley attended the hour and a half meeting. This is a clear sign that things were serious. Tony Snow, the White House press guy, said that the meeting wasn’t like “marching up to Nixon” the way Barry Goldwater did in August 1974 to tell the President it was over. He said, “"This is not one of those great cresting moments when party discontents are coming in to read the president the riot act.” That will come later.

In September, General David Petraeus, who commands American forces in Iraq-Nam, will give a report to the nation on how the surge in that country is going. In all likelihood, he’ll be cautiously optimistic. This is not a politically motivated posture, but it is what one may expect in counter-insurgency when additional troops deploy. The problem lies in the fact that a surge of 6 or 7 months duration is insufficient to do the job of a massive deployment for 6 or 7 years. The general is probably going to give the president enough legitimate good news to persist in the war into 2008. Then, it gets tricky for Republican members of Congress.

One of the people to visit the president yesterday was Tom Davis of Virginia. He warned the president that in one part of his district, the president had a approval rating of 5% (five percent, really; one less than six percent). When an election becomes a referendum on war and peace, people tend to vote straight party tickets. Mr. Bush doesn’t have to face the voters again, but Mr. Davis and his compatriots do. Without a wind-up to the war in Mesopotamia, though, they’ll all be out of work in January 2009.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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