Written by Elaine Monaghan
Tuesday’s Senate confirmation hearing for Robert M. Gates to become the new Defense secretary will provide Democrats with their first opportunity since the elections to strike a tone on the Iraq debate.
Democrats will have another chance on Wednesday, when the bipartisan Iraq Study Group releases its recommendations for a new policy toward the Iraq War. The group’s report is expected to call for a withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by early 2008 while leaving enough troops behind to train and support the Iraqi military. The group also is expected to urge President Bush to convene a conference of all of Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria.
But as the Democrats prepare to take control of Congress in January — and the oversight responsibilities that such leadership conveys — the incoming majority has to be careful not to assume too much ownership of Iraq War policy, observers say.
“They want to build on the growing public and Republican opposition to the war without taking sole ownership of a particular change of course, which is bound to have real substantive and political costs associated with it,” said Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution.
Democrats also will have to find a way to bridge the sharp divisions within their party about the best way forward in Iraq.
Many Democratic moderates appear ready to embrace the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, but others, such as John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, have said the blue-ribbon panel’s proposal for a partial U.S. withdrawal by early 2008 falls short.
“The Iraqis want us out of there; the world wants us out of there. We have to find a way to redeploy the troops, and we have to do it sooner rather than later,” Murtha said in an interview on CNN on Dec. 1.
Such divisions have forced Democratic leaders to tread carefully. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she would respond to the panel’s report only after she has studied it thoroughly, according to Brendan Daly, her spokesman. Until then, she would have no comment, he said.
“The Democrats are in a bit of a pickle,” said Norman J. Ornstein
of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “They can run in an
election campaign against an existing policy that Americans believe is a disaster,
but now [that] they are in a position of power, they will have to take some
kind of collective position.”
Road Ahead
Democrats are expected to use the Gates confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee to question the administration’s stewardship of the war and to seek assurances that he will be more respectful of their views than the outgoing Defense chief, Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Democrats show no sign of holding up Gates’ confirmation, which the full Senate is expected to endorse later in the week.
Gates has written that any withdrawal of U.S. troops that would leave Iraq in chaos would have “dangerous consequences” for years to come. This potentially puts him at odds with Carl Levin, D-Mich., incoming chairman of Armed Services, who wants a phased redeployment.
But vigorous criticism of Gates from Democrats could backfire after so many in the party demanded Rumsfeld’s removal. At the same time, being too gentle might open Democrats to criticism from voters demanding a policy shift.
One area where Democrats can feel comfortable with Gates is his support for greater U.S. diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, including talks with Iran and Syria — two countries that Bush has shunned.
But Democrats may seek to highlight this difference with Bush at their peril.
Few experts believe that engaging Tehran and Damascus can produce positive results
in Iraq, so overemphasizing it during the Gates hearings could later haunt Democrats.
Panel Recommendations
In advance of Wednesday’s expected release of the Iraq Study Group report, Pelosi, a Murtha ally, stopped short of demanding a swift withdrawal of American troops.
“We are hoping for serious benchmarks for withdrawal,” a Pelosi aide said of her position on the report. “The American people spoke at the last election, and that is what they want. We need to send a message to Iraqis that our patience is not unlimited.”
Still, Democratic leaders will have to navigate differences within their caucus once the panel’s recommendations come out.
“It’s going to be tricky,” the aide said. “They’ve got very strong views among members. It appears they’re going to take a position different from Murtha’s, and he certainly has some role as an opinion leader.”
The views of moderate Democratic lawmakers such as Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode
Island could become more significant, Ornstein said. Reed has been careful to
avoid specifying a timetable, calling instead for a redeployment in conjunction
with training of the Iraqi army, a political process and a continuing U.S. special
forces presence to counter international terrorism.
Focus on Iraq
In the new Congress, Democrats are planning to keep a focus on Iraq. The House International Relations Committee, which Tom Lantos, D-Calif., will chair, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., will take over, plan hearings with commission members in January, committee aides said.
Biden’s hearings on Iraq would be “intensive and extensive” and last up to eight weeks, an aide said.
Biden, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, favors a policy that would decentralize Iraq along ethnic lines, with Baghdad retaining control over oil and border security.
John Kerry, D-Mass., another likely candidate, would like to see a meeting between Bush and members of Congress to hammer out a bipartisan policy on Iraq.
In anticipation of White House resistance to Democratic ideas, Kerry hinted that Congress has the power to halt funding for military action. He alluded to the 1982 “Boland Amendment” (PL 97-377), which banned Reagan administration funding for the “contras” opposed to the leftist Sandinista-led government in Nicaragua.
Kerry’s reference came in a Nov. 30 interview with CNN. A day later, a Kerry aide said the senator was not suggesting that Democrats might seek to cut off war funding. Indeed, incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said Democrats will not do so while U.S. forces are still deployed in Iraq.
But Bush’s next war supplemental, which is expected to be as high as $100 billion and reach Congress in February, will provide Democrats with yet another opportunity to debate the president’s wartime stewardship, even as they are expected to approve his spending request.
© 2006 Congressional Quarterly