Their support for the nonbinding resolution
is one more indicator of Republican discontent with Bush's
strategy.
By Noam
N. Levey, Times Staff Writer
June 8, 2007
WASHINGTON — In another sign that congressional Republicans
are losing patience with the White House war strategy, two
GOP senators Thursday got behind new legislation designed to
encourage the Bush administration to reduce U.S. military involvement
in Iraq.
Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Gordon Smith of Oregon are
cosponsoring a nonbinding resolution by Sen. Joseph R. Biden
Jr. (D-Del.) that urges decentralizing the Iraqi government
and creating semiautonomous regions for Shiites, Sunnis and
Kurds. Biden has been championing the plan for more than a
year.
That comes a day after five GOP senators signed on to separate
legislation that would enact the recommendations of the bipartisan
Iraq Study Group, which envisioned most U.S. combat troops
coming home by early 2008.
That legislation proposed by Sens. Lamar Alexander
(R-Tenn.) and Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) has the backing
of several GOP loyalists, including Sens. Judd Gregg of New
Hampshire and Robert F. Bennett of Utah.
Neither bill sets a firm deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces
from Iraq, a key demand of antiwar Democrats, who have fought
for months to force Republican lawmakers and the White House
to accept such a plan.
Democratic congressional leaders were forced to temporarily
abandon that approach last month after President Bush, backed
by Republicans, vetoed an emergency war spending bill that
contained a withdrawal timeline.
Bush has said more time is needed for his troop buildup to
reduce violence and pave the way for a political settlement
of the sectarian differences blamed for much of the violence
in Iraq. The administration has promised a progress report
by September.
But Republican support on Capitol Hill for alternative strategies
may indicate that the White House will have to shift its own
Iraq plans more quickly.
The administration in the past has spurned both the Iraq Study
Group and the Biden proposals, though recently the president
has spoken more favorably about the group's recommendations.
Biden's plan, which he outlined in May 2006 with Leslie H.
Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations,
envisions a reduction of U.S. forces early next year as Iraq
is decentralized and substantial authority is devolved to the
country's ethnic regions.
On Thursday, Biden said the president still "clings to
a fatally flawed notion that the Iraqis will rally
behind a strong central government that keeps the country together
and protects the rights of all faction."
"Simply put," Biden continued, "Iraq cannot
be run from the center absent a dictator or foreign occupation.
If we want the country to hold together and find stability,
we have to make federalism work."
Brownback agreed Thursday, calling the so-called federalism
plan "the only political solution that works."
Biden acknowledges that his plan could require a long-term,
though much reduced, U.S. military presence in Iraq, much as
U.S. troops have helped keep peace among once-warring ethnic
communities in the Balkans.
That did not trouble Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), one of
the staunchest advocates for withdrawing American troops from
Iraq and a cosponsor of the Biden resolution. "Even those
of us who have been calling for very swift removal
of forces have always said it's not so much that we
object to our being there as what the mission is," she
said.
noam.levey@latimes.com
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