WASHINGTON – Democrats blistered President Bush’s war policy Tuesday night, challenging him to redeem the nation’s credibility – and his own – with an immediate shift toward a diplomatic end to the bloody conflict in Iraq.
“The president took us into this war recklessly,” the Democrats’ chosen messenger, freshman Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, said in response to Bush’s State of the Union address Tuesday evening. “We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable – and predicted – disarray that has followed.”
Webb, a Vietnam veteran who was Navy secretary during Republican President Reagan’s administration, called for a new direction.
“Not one step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos,” said Webb. “But an immediate shift toward strong regionally based diplomacy, a policy that takes our soldiers off the streets of Iraq’s cities and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq.”
Bush offered no such plan in his speech before the most unfriendly joint session of Congress of his tenure.
“The war’s costs to our nation have been staggering,” said Webb, whose son is serving in the military in Iraq. “Financially. The damage to our reputation around the world. The lost opportunities to defeat the forces of international terrorism, and especially the precious blood of our citizens who have stepped forward to serve.”
“Unfortunately, tonight the president demonstrated he has not listened to Americans’ single greatest concern: the war in Iraq,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a joint statement.
“We will continue to hold him accountable for changing course in Iraq.”
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