Dealing with the out of touch Senators

Robert Novak:

National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley visited Capitol Hill just before Congress adjourned for the Fourth of July. Meetings with a half-dozen senior Republican senators were clearly intended to extinguish fires set by Sen. Richard Lugar's unexpected break from President Bush's Iraq policy. They failed.

Hadley called his expedition a "scouting trip," leading one senator to ask what he was seeking. It was not advice on how to escape from Iraq. Instead, Hadley appeared interested in how previous supporters of Bush's course had drifted away. In the process, though, he planted seeds of concern. Some senators were left with the impression that the White House still does not recognize the scope of the Iraq dilemma. Worse yet, they see the president running out the clock until April, when a depleted U.S. military can be blamed for the fiasco.

The tone set by Hadley signaled that the White House did not understand that Lugar, in his fateful speech on the Senate floor the night of June 25, was sending a distress signal to Bush that a change in policy can be instituted only by the president and that it is imperative he act now. Hadley was told that it is not too late to go back to the Iraq Study Group's 79 recommendations, neglected since their release in December. But the White House still seems unaware of the building tide, typified by the defection Thursday of six-term Republican Sen. Pete Domenici (who was not among the graybeards "scouted" by Hadley).

The White House no more expected Domenici to jump overboard than it did Lugar. The shock of Lugar's speech was the reason Hadley quickly scheduled sessions with senior Republican senators such as Lugar and Chuck Hagel, the top two GOP members on the Foreign Relations Committee, and John Warner, former chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "The president has sent me up here on a scouting mission," Hadley said to begin the meetings.

Always deferential, Hadley took copious notes. But he did more than listen. Based on what Hadley said, one senator concluded that "they just do not recognize the depth of the difficulty they are in." That difficulty entails running out of troops in nine months. Hadley increased latent fears of the U.S. military being made the fall guy -- a concern shared by many retired and some active senior officers, including a current infantry division commander.

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We are not running out of troops. That is just not happening. What is really strange is how detached from reality Senators like Luger and Domenici are from what is happening in Iraq. Just as the surge is fully up to speed they are already talking about pulling the rug out from under the men fighting it. Their statements and their timing were just ridiculous and Novak does not seem to be able to grasp that fact. How anyone who is really following events on the ground could come to the conclusion that the surge is failing a week after it is fully implemented and then argue that the White House is out of touch is beyond comprehension. What Luger and Domenici are really arguing is that the surge should not be given a chance to succeed and we should go to the recommendations of the Iraq surrender group which were dismissed because they were a prescription for defeat and not victory.

We know that the liberals and the Democrats are desperate for defeat in Iraq. They see defeat as a political benefit. What Republicans should recognize is that there is not political benefit in defeat for them and they need to find a way to win, not find a way to lose gracefully.