Sen. George Voinovich said Tuesday the U.S. should begin pulling troops out of Iraq, joining Richard Lugar as the second Republican lawmaker in as many days to suggest President Bush’s war strategy is failing.
He said the Iraqi people must become more involved and "I don’t think they’ll get it until they know we’re leaving."
The Ohio senator’s remarks followed similar comments by Lugar, R-Ind., the previous night. The two GOP senators previously had expressed concerns about Bush’s decision to send 30,000 extra troops to Iraq in a massive U.S.-led security push in Baghdad and Anbar province. But they had stopped short of saying U.S. troops should leave and declined to back Democratic legislation setting a deadline for troop withdrawals.
"We must not abandon our mission, but we must begin a transition where the Iraqi government and its neighbors play a larger role in stabilizing Iraq," Voinovich wrote in a letter to Bush.
Lugar and Voinovich said they were still not ready to insist on a timetable for withdrawal. But they both made it clear their patience was gone.
Once Iraq’s neighbors "know we are genuinely leaving, I think all of a sudden the fear of God will descend upon them and say, ‘We’ve got to get involved in this thing,’" Voinovich told reporters.
"It can’t be something that is precipitous, but I do believe that it should be enough so that people know we are indeed disengaging," he added.
The loss of GOP support for the president’s strategy is significant. Democrats may still not be able to push through legislation demanding an end date to the war, but softer alternative proposals are in the works that could still challenge Bush.
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