Hooray for Harry’s leadership on Iraq

We Nevadans ought to give the hometown boy more pats on the back.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid really got after President Bush last week over the ever-darkening Iraq morass. In the face of Bush’s nauseating assaults on the nation’s intelligence, Reid refused to back down on a bill to set a troop withdrawal deadline and cut war funding thereafter.

Reid said Bush should understand that “he is president of the United States, not king of the United States, and he has another branch of government, namely the legislative branch of government, to deal with.”

An important point, but Reid, D-Nev., was just warming up. “We are not going to allow the president to continue a failed policy in Iraq,” he said. “We represent the American people’s vision on this failed war.”

Damn straight.

Admittedly, it has taken Reid awhile to find his footing on the Iraq issue. He could have made these comments right after the November elections, when Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. But he and other party leaders moved cautiously at first.

There was no need. A large majority of Americans are sick of Bush’s empty rhetoric about “winning” in Iraq, and they are tired of their patriotism being questioned for wanting the troops to come home.

Reid is at last taking a strong leadership role on this vital issue. “The present course in Iraq is not working,” he told reporters. “We’re losing troops at the rate of three a day. Thousands of people are being killed unnecessarily. And it’s important that Congress continue to put pressure on the president so that he’ll begin to change course on this war that has been so bad for the American people.”

Unlike Bush, who apparently will go to his grave believing an Iraq victory is just around the corner, Reid has his eyes open. The United States has lost more than 3,250 men and women (including 35 with Nevada ties) since the Iraq war began. Thousands more have suffered severe injuries. The war has drained billions of dollars that could have been better spent elsewhere.

At the other end of the spectrum from Reid, we have freshman Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev. Speaking last week before the Nevada Legislature in Carson City, Heller proclaimed himself a eunuch. Well, more precisely, he said we should all get out of the way and let the generals run the war. Heller called for the always-popular wait-and-see approach, because, somehow, he thinks there’s an “opportunity [for] America to win this war.” Heller offered a final flourish, suggesting that if we lose in Iraq, we’ll soon be “fighting it on the shores of America.”

A few nice turns of phrase perhaps, but what Heller is really saying to his constituents is that he’s not going to do his job in Washington. Heller was elected to represent the people of Nevada’s sprawling 2nd Congressional District, but on the most important issue facing the nation, he’s taking a pass. (With this kind of leadership, it’s no wonder Congress.org recently named Heller the least-influential House member — 435th out of 435.)

To Reid’s credit, he isn’t sitting on his hands while the president trudges forward with the worst foreign policy blunder since Vietnam. Reid is taking his responsibility as an elected member of Congress seriously.

For reasons that are difficult to comprehend, many Iraqis do not embrace the principles of democracy and peace. Bush is not wrong when he characterizes some of those folks as “pure evil.” Radical religion stands firmly in the way of transforming Iraq into a civilized nation. As a result, Western efforts in Iraq have proved fruitless and often counterproductive.

It is likely that the consequences of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could be dire for one side or the other in the civil war. But the situation is already severe with 138,000 U.S. troops stationed there. Despite our earnest efforts, things are getting worse, not better.

At some point — and this point has long passed — the United States must acknowledge that its often-valiant efforts are not yielding results — not for Iraq and not for us.

Most Americans have come to realize that Iraq is no longer a win-lose equation. We need to roll back our military presence as quickly as possible to avoid more needless deaths and regroup under the next president to devise a whole new Iraq strategy.

Harry Reid gets it. Dean Heller doesn’t.

A final point: Some Republican readers are likely shouting at their newspaper, “OK, smart guy, so what’s your plan?”

My answer is simple and honest: I don’t have one, other than to get our troops out of there as soon as possible. Who has a surefire plan for Iraq? There really isn’t one, just as there isn’t one to solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The truth is, I’m skeptical of “plans” right about now. Bush and his neoconservative brain trust (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz) had a great plan and look how that’s worked out.

Geoff Schumacher (gschumacher@reviewjournal.com) is Stephens Media’s director of community publications. He is the author of “Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas” and, coming in October, “Politics, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue: The Las Vegas Years of Howard Hughes.” His column appears Sunday.