Indiana Senior Sen. Richard Lugar (R) was a guest on FOX News Sunday discussing the latest state of affairs on the war in Iraq with Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI). Show host Chris Wallace asked Sen. Lugar: “Do we need a change of course in U.S. strategy in Iraq? And if so, what?
Now that’s a straight-forward question, requiring a simple yes or no answer, and if yes is the answer, an explanation of what change of course is required. Lugar’s response was, well, you decide. Lugar responded, “No, we don't need a change of course, but we need an explanation and continual metrics as far as how successful we're doing.” Huh?
If you were confused like us by that answer, Sen. Lugar clears things up for us later in the interview: “The majority of the public in this country still believes that [Iraq becoming a ‘stable country’] is [a] possibility. The elite don't, but the majority of the people believe that we should have gone to war in Iraq to begin with and, secondly, that we're going to have a stable democracy. We've really got to live up to what our own public wants.”
Sen. Lugar, the majority of people don’t use terms like “continual metrics” to describe how successful our efforts in Iraq have been, regardless of whether we support the war. Only an “elitist” would speak of the war in those terms. But you are right, you do have to “live up to what our own public wants.” That means listening to the folks back home who elect you instead of lecturing us on the war like a numbers cruncher at the Pentagon.
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