The President had a pre-surge strategy, a surge strategy, and now he’s offered a post-surge strategy. What has remained constant in all these strategies is one thing: they all have an open-ended commitment of U.S. forces in the middle of Iraq’s civil war.

That open-ended occupation of a Muslim country by the West has played right into the hands of Al Qaeda. Indeed, the intelligence community is recently reported to have concluded that the years of our occupation of Iraq have seen a surge of al Qaeda in Iraq.

It has come at a staggering cost – the loss of more than 3,600 of America’s best and bravest, seven times that many wounded, and a price of $10 billion each month. And in spite of the heroic efforts of U.S. servicemen and women, chaos and destruction have deepened in Iraq.

Everybody agrees that there is no military solution in Iraq and that the only way to end the violence is for the Iraqi political leaders to settle their differences. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki acknowledged that in November when he said – and these words should be seared in our minds when we vote on Levin-Reed: “The crisis is political, and the ones who can stop the cycle of … bloodletting of innocents are the (Iraqi) politicians.â€?

Our servicemen and women are dying and being wounded while Iraqi leaders dawdle. The Iraqis themselves made commitments to share resources and power, amend their constitution, hold provincial elections and take over responsibility for their own security in many more places than they have. They made the commitments. They made them last year. They made them in writing. But they have not kept them.

We need to send the clear message to the Iraqi leaders that we will not be in Iraq indefinitely and that we will not be their security blanket forever.

That is what the bipartisan Levin-Reed amendment would do. Our amendment would require the President to begin reducing the number of American troops in Iraq within four months after enactment. It would require transitioning the mission of our remaining military forces to force protection, training of Iraqi Security Forces, and targeted counterterrorism missions. Our amendment would require that the transition to those limited missions be completed by April 30, 2008. Finally and importantly, it would call for a comprehensive diplomatic, political and economic strategy, including sustained engagement with Iraq’s neighbors and seeking the appointment of an international mediator under the auspices of the UN Security Council to try to bring stability to Iraq.

Let me also be clear about what we are not proposing. We do not seek a precipitous withdrawal or precipitous reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq. We do not believe that the war in Iraq has been lost - although we believe that policies which are not succeeding need to be changed if there is any chance of success. We do not believe that the Iraqis are incapable of achieving the political compromises that are necessary for reconciliation. But we do believe that they will delay doing so until we begin to reduce and transition our forces in Iraq to prod the Iraqis to make those compromises.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Politics, Homeland Security .