WASHINGTON (ABP) — President Bush's plan to add more than 20,000 troops in a last-ditch effort to stabilize Iraq has drawn the ire of many in Congress as well as progressive religious leaders.
“The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people — and it is unacceptable to me,” Bush said, in a Jan. 10 prime-time television address announcing his plan. “Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.”
He continued: “It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq.”
Bush said he would change strategies by deploying 21,500 more American troops to help Iraqi forces pacify the nation's most violent zones: Baghdad and Anbar Province in Iraq's west. He said he would also ask for benchmarks that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has failed to meet.
But Democrats and Republicans alike on Capitol Hill lambasted the strategy, calling it a case of “meet the new plan, same as the old plan.”
“Unfortunately, such a plan is not the outline of a brave new course, as we were told, but a tragic commitment to a failed policy; not a bold new strategy, but a rededication to a course that has proven to be a colossal blunder on every count,” said Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) in a Jan. 11 Senate speech. “The president never spoke truer words than when he said, 'The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people.' But he once again failed to offer a realistic way forward, instead of giving us more of his stale and tired stay-the-course prescriptions.”
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), considered by many to be a potential 2008 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, reportedly said Bush's proposal would be the “most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it's carried out.”
Progressive evangelical Jim Wallis, founder of the anti-poverty group Sojourners/Call to Renewal, also derided the new plan Jan. 11.
“George W. Bush is determined to continue making war in Iraq. I agree with Bush on one point — we need a new strategy in Iraq,” he wrote, in an e-mail newsletter. “But last night, George Bush decided to escalate the war and increase the American occupation — which he still doesn't seem to realize is at the center of the problem. Bush stubbornly believes that military solutions are always the best answer, and consistently chooses war over politics.”
He continued: “The war in Iraq was unjust; to continue it now is criminal. There is no winning in Iraq …. It can't be won, and the truth is that there are no good solutions now — that's how unjust wars often turn out.”
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