This country cannot be at war and divided at the same time. History has made clear that no president can conduct a war without the support of the American people. That was the message that I and others gave the president in the Oval Office when we presented him with the report of the Iraq Study Group.
What the five Democrats and five Republicans of the Iraq Study Group did was to set aside the divisions, the blame as to what went wrong with the Iraq war, and the political sound bites and focus on the realities.
Seeing the realities of the war up close in Baghdad brought the Iraq Study Group together in a unanimous set of recommendations. The three primary proposals involve a significant change in present policy: shift the primary military mission of U.S. forces in Iraq from combat to one of training and support by embedding our best combat units in the Iraqi Army units to ensure their effectiveness and gradually withdrawing all combat brigades by the first quarter of 2008; establish a clear set of milestones for the Iraqi government to achieve on national reconciliation, security and governance and condition U.S. support on their ability to meet those milestones; and engage in a new diplomatic offensive to bring together the nations in the region, including Syria and Iran, with Iraq and our key allies in order to persuade those that have an interest in a stable Iraq to help in securing the borders and promoting reconciliation.
Our report offers more than an opportunity to consider these proposals – it offers the opportunity to build a new and needed consensus in the nation.
The war in Iraq has badly divided the country. As the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, these divisions have grown starker, and opposition to the war has broadened among Democrats, Republicans and independents.
In addition to dividing Republicans and Democrats, the war is also dividing the president from the people whom he governs. Yet the White House has resisted any change, leaving many Americans concerned that the situation will not improve. The results of the November election made clear the growing frustration of the American people over the direction of the war.
These divisions have resulted in a national debate on Iraq that too often reduces itself to 30-second sound bites. Those who want to draw down our forces in Iraq want to “cut and run.” Those who want to stand by present policy are “stay the course.” Members of the Iraq Study Group have been called “surrender monkeys.”
Why do these divisions impact the conduct of the war? Because the American people simply will not continue to support sacrificing the lives of their sons and daughters in a war that has no clear mission. No president has unlimited power to send our troops in harm’s way. The Constitution vests power in the commander in chief, but it also limits that power through a strong system of checks and balances.
Vietnam became so unpopular that the Congress cut off funds for the war. The conflict in Central America was so controversial that the Congress imposed deadlines on policy. The prolonged stalemate in the Korean War forced President Eisenhower to go to Korea and eventually resolve the war through negotiation. In our democracy, every decision by the president, in peace and war, is tested in the cauldron of public opinion.
President Bush may well decide that he is going to fight the Iraq war his way regardless of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group or the views of the American people. But if he fails to unify the nation behind his strategy, the backlash will come back to haunt his policies and his legacy.
Today, he has another last opportunity to unify the nation by recommending a course of action in Iraq that will end our open-ended commitment and pressure the Iraqis to govern themselves.
Our report offers more than an opportunity to consider these goals – it offers the opportunity to build a new consensus. Now is the time for the president, the Congress and the American people to step back and consider the reality of what we are facing in Iraq. Our ideas should mark the beginning, not the end, of a national debate. But the result of that debate must be consensus.
Iraq is not the only issue on which this country needs to come together. Time and again, we are finding it harder to work in a bipartisan way to solve the country’s problems.
But the immediate challenge is Iraq. We owe it to those who have sacrificed their lives to take one last chance at making Iraq work. We owe it to them to unify the nation.
Democratic former congressman Leon E. Panetta of California was a member of the Iraq Study Group. This column originally appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.
