Agence France-Presse,
US Senator Richard Luger, a top Republican in Congress and stalwart supporter of President George W. Bush, said Monday that US policy in Iraq is not working, and said the time has come for a new strategy.
“The prospects that the current 'surge' strategy will succeed in the way originally envisioned by the President are very limited within the short period framed by our own domestic political debate,” Lugar, the top Republican in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on the Senate floor.
“In my judgment, our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond,” said Lugar, one of the most respected voices in Congress on foreign policy matters.
His admonition late Monday came as news of more bloody bombings and combats in Iraq pushed the US troop death toll to at least 3,550.
Lugar, 73, said “the political fragmentation in Iraq, the growing stress of our military and the constraints of our own domestic political process” were converging to make a stable, multi-sectarian government in Irak unlikely “in a reasonable time frame.”
He warned that the “strident, polarized nature of the (Iraq) debate” tipping from the ongoing US troop surge to a proposed troop withdrawal in Iraq could lead to “a poorly planned withdrawal” of US forces from the country.
“Unless we recalibrate our strategy in Iraq to fit our domestic political conditions and the broader needs of US national security,” he added, “we risk foreign policy failures that could greatly diminish our influence in the region and the world.”
Lugar urged both the Bush administration and his fellow lawmakers “to make adjustments” to their thinking and “take a step back from the sloganeering rhetoric and political opportunism” that has characterized the polarized debate on Iraq.
He called on the president to to downsize the US military's role in Iraq and place more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options.
Progress in Iraq, Lugar said, “will also require members of Congress to be receptive to overtures by the president to construct a new policy outside the binary choice of surge versus withdrawal.”
