COLUMNISTS : The congressman visits
Posted on Tuesday, August 21, 2007
If anything, John Boozman is a man of his party.
The congressman from the Third District is a
reliable Republican vote in Congress. He might differ with the Bush administration from time to occasional time. But on the important stuff, he’s usually going to be there for them. Congress is in recess this month. Representative Boozman has been making the rounds in his district, even stopping in at newspaper offices, such as ours, to say hello and make himself available for questions. When his aide, Ryan James, called earlier to set up a time to drop by, he anticipated what I would want to talk about by saying the congressman would “of course” be ready to discuss the war in Iraq. Last year, when the congressman was here, I’d had to press him to comment on the war. Mr. Boozman was in the middle of a re-election campaign, and he had a Democratic opponent. Yeah, I know. Democratic opponents don’t matter much in the Third District. It’s been in Republican hands since 1967. And, as it turned out, John Boozman easily won re-election a year ago.
We didn’t know that yet when he visited. The congressman was more than willing to criticize his opponent. But he was less eager to get into a discussion of the war in Iraq. The war was shambling along, much as it is today. We’ve got this shiny, new plan, a half-hearted escalation we’re calling a “surge.” But Americans keep dying, and Iraqis, too. Meanwhile, the Iraqis are no closer to coalescing politically than they were a year ago.
So what’s up with the war this year ? (Of course, I phrased my question more respectfully than that. ) This time, Congressman Boozman seemed more resigned to some solution of the mess, even if it’s not everything the administation might wish for. He’s talking up the prospects of reducing troop levels. In fact, he said he expects that to happen whether the muchheralded report due from the commanders over there next month is a good one or a bad one. If it’s good, the pressure will be on to bring some troops home. If it’s bad, “I think you’ll see the same thing.”
But don’t look for a rapid redeployment. He’s says we can’t withdraw too fast or we’ll have a mess on our hands. (As if we didn’t have one already. ) But he thinks bringing home a brigade a month might be workable. At that rate, it would take 20-some months to get out of Iraq, assuming we go for a complete withdrawal, rather than leaving forces permanently stationed there, a prospect that sounds more and more like the long-term plan of our government. And what about all this saber-rattling we’ve been doing toward Iran ? Under what conditions would the congressman support a pre-emptive strike against the Iranians ? I was relieved to hear that he thought the American people wouldn’t favor any further escalation of conflict in the Middle East. But he added that “nobody feels like the world could tolerate a nuclear Iran.” He said there should be continued dialogue, and increased sanctions if talks didn’t produce the result we want. Then he said he was not in favor of the United States attacking Iran “unilaterally.”
How about the stories that Iran is arming insurgents in Iraq, a charge Iran denies ? The congressman said there is hard evidence, although nobody making the claims publicly has provided any such evidence. John Boozman said the evidence was fragmentary. He’ll be making another trip to Iraq while he’s on recess. It will be his sixth time to go there. He said he’s careful to get out of the Green Zone and is confident that he’s getting more than the official version of the war when he goes there. But he’ll be part of a small congressional delegation, and somebody else is making the travel arrangements on the ground. Others, most notably Jim Webb, the senator from Virginia and a combat veteran himself, refuse to take the tours of Iraq. Webb says they’re nothing more than dog-andpony shows to shore up support for a failing effort. I did take the opportunity to recommend that the congressman read Barbara Tuchman’s book, The March of Folly. I’d been struck by her account of our mistakes in Vietnam. Her observations from 20-some years ago were uncannily similar to how we’d made a mess of our involvement in Iraq. The congressman wrote down the title of the book. I hope he reads it.
—––––– • –––––—George Arnold is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s northwest edition.
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