The GOP’s Iraq gap

PRESIDENT BUSH HAS LATELY adopted what his father might call a “kinder, gentler” tone in defending the U.S. involvement in Iraq. The president seems less obsessed with rehashing the justifications for toppling Saddam Hussein and more interested in focusing on a future made brighter by the death of arch-terrorist Abu

Musab Zarqawi and the formation of a unity government in Baghdad. Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress don’t seem to have gotten the message.

Last week, the GOP leadership in both houses tried to put Democrats on the defensive by bringing forward unnecessary and election-year-inspired resolutions opposing a fixed timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. The twist in the Senate was that Republicans proposed an amendment originally advocated by 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry. It was overwhelmingly defeated.

On Friday, the House, by a 256-153 vote, approved a nonbinding resolution opposing an “arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment.” During debate, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill) dusted off the specious connection between Iraq and 9/11, piously pleading with his colleagues to “show the same steely resolve as those men and women on United Flight 93, the same sense of duty as the first responders who headed up the stairs of the twin towers.” For its part, the Pentagon unwisely provided members with “rapid-response talking points” that sounded more like a stump speech than a military reference work. The commander in chief, meanwhile, appears to recognize that being too triumphalist and partisan could undermine support for his stated intention of reducing U.S. forces gradually as the Iraqi government takes over more responsibility for security.

Partisan finger-pointing and attempts to portray Democrats as the party of defeatism only make life harder for Democrats who agree with the administration that the United States shouldn’t set a “date certain” for a U.S. pullout. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) was booed last week for expressing that opinion before an audience of liberal activists. In that same speech, Clinton was careful also to criticize the Bush administration for what she said was its “open-ended commitment” in Iraq and for not putting enough pressure on the Iraqi government.

It is a deeply unsatisfying stance that also happens to be the most responsible position at this point. Announcing a “date certain” for withdrawal would embolden insurgents in Iraq. But Bush could bring more urgency to the task of encouraging the Iraqis to take more responsibility even has he encourages other nations to become involved in peacekeeping. To paraphrase what liberal theologians say about the Bible, Bush should take the calls for a deadline not literally but seriously -- as a reflection of fears that Iraq could become (or already is) a Vietnam-like quagmire.

In his homecoming news conference last week, Bush sent mixed signals about whether he understands that public impatience with the U.S. presence in Iraq threatens his stated goal there: to help Iraq “govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself” and become “an ally in the war on terror.” On the one hand, he said, “success in Iraq depends upon the Iraqis.” Yet he also suggested that Iraq was so crucial to the war on terror that it could not be left to the Iraqis, at least not yet. “If we fail in Iraq, it’s going to embolden Al Qaeda types,” he said. There is, to put it mildly, a tension between those two statements.

With U.S. fatalities in Iraq having crossed the 2,500 mark, Americans are increasingly uneasy about an open-ended military presence there. In his better moments, Bush demonstrates that he recognizes that reality. Republicans in Congress should take note and cool their own rhetoric about “defeatist” Democrats. Otherwise they might be welcoming more of them to Congress after the election.