WASHINGTON – After months of struggling to forge a unified stance on the Iraq war, top congressional Democrats joined voices Monday to call on President Bush to begin withdrawing U.S. troops by the end of the year and to “transition to a more limited mission” in the war-torn nation.
With the midterm elections three months away, and Democrats seeing public discontent over Iraq as their best chance for retaking the House or Senate, a dozen key House and Senate members told Bush in a letter: “In the interests of American national security, our troops and our taxpayers, the open-ended commitment in Iraq that you have embraced cannot and should not be sustained. … We need to take a new direction.”
The 12 Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nev., include liberals and centrists who have differed over Iraq in the past. The signers included the top Democrats on the House and Senate committees dealing with armed services, foreign relations, intelligence and military spending. Their action puts party leaders on the same page, and it helps clarify the Nov. 7 election as a choice between a party seeking a timeline for withdrawing troops from an unpopular war and a party resisting any such timetable.
Some GOP lawmakers are joining Democrats in criticizing the war’s progress.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., last week called Iraq “an absolute replay of Vietnam.” Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn., recently returned from Iraq with a call for U.S. troops to pull out.
Voters in Democratic primaries in several states, meanwhile, are venting their unhappiness.
Pelosi said the impetus for the letter stemmed from a growing concern that Iraq is dangerously draining the military’s readiness, and from fears that Bush’s plan to shift more U.S. troops to Baghdad is ill-advised. “We’re united around a proposal for responsible redeployment, and we want it to begin before December,” Pelosi said. “It’s not about candidates,” she said. “It’s about our young people in harm’s way.”
Also signing the letter was Rep. John Murtha, Pa., the ranking Democrat on the House defense appropriations subcommittee. He and Pelosi caused waves within their party last year when they called for U.S. troop withdrawals to begin promptly. Most Democrats then opposed the idea, and the House and Senate overwhelmingly rejected it.
A senior Democratic strategist, who agreed to discuss electoral calculations only on background, said party leaders concluded voters want a clear choice between backers of a time line for beginning a pullout vs. the GOP’s no-timetable position.
“This offers a pretty clear contrast” for the next few months, the strategist said, and Reid and others plan a series of events to drive home the point. Polling data and focus groups suggest Democratic candidates can embrace the letter’s message without falling victim to familiar Republican claims of being soft on national security, the strategist said, because setbacks in Iraq have eroded the GOP’s traditional advantage on that issue.
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