By Christi Parsons
The engines of the military transport plane were deafening at points during his two-hour flight to Baghdad on Wednesday, but Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) says he heard loud and clear the message from the soldier seated next to him.
Any lawmakers who aren’t sure they should vote to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq ought to come do his job with him – identifying and dismantling improvised bombs designed to kill Americans.
“He said, ‘I wish one of those senators could spend a day with me,'” Durbin said Wednesday, recounting the conversation in a telephone interview from Baghdad. “As brave and skilled as our soldiers are, we are pushing them to the limit.”
In a subtle concession to military leadership in Iraq, Durbin reported that he has seen “signs of progress” during his week-long trip to the Middle East. He traveled ten miles outside Baghdad, for instance, where he said American soldiers have cleared out a pocket of insurgents over the past two months and established a base on their home turf.
Nevertheless, Durbin said a lack of leadership by the Iraqi government makes him less optimistic than ever about the prospects for military success there. And he remains what he was when he left home on Friday night – a harsh critic of the war.
Durbin’s trip to Iraq is just one of several taking place this summer, as Democrats and Republicans in Congress prepare to resume serious debate about the war this fall.
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Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. command in Iraq, is due to report to Congress in September on war strategy – and to recommend troop levels for the U.S. mission there. At the same time, lawmakers will have an opportunity to revive their own debate about troop withdrawal when they take up the question of funding for the military.
In anticipation of those talks, dozens of lawmakers have joined congressional delegations to Iraq in recent months, each returning with personal anecdotes to shape — and illustrate — their own point of view on the war.
Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) visited Iraq with a bi-partisan delegation two weekends ago, where he met with Petraeus and toured an open-air market in Ramadi. His first trip to the war zone didn’t radically change his point of view, said Roskam, who remains opposed to setting time tables for troop withdrawal.
He said he’s under no illusion that he could have walked safely through the market without a heavy Marine escort.
But Roskam also believes that the market tour couldn’t have happened at all without the stepped-up U.S. military presence in Ramadi, capital of the Anbar province and a stronghold of Sunni insurgents.
“My journey in some ways reaffirms some concepts that I had, that the stakes are high and that, ultimately, success in Iraq is something that we need to strive for,” Roskam said. “A trip like that moves everything into Technicolor. You’re able to understand and perceive some of the subtleties of the debate as it moves forward.”
Likewise, Durbin’s visit to Iraq, his third, further cemented his convictions about the war.
Durbin said he sees some signs of progress by U.S. troops trying to take control of territory around Baghdad, a noteworthy allowance from one of the Senate’s harshest war critics.
But Durbin said his trip has not made him any more optimistic the larger situation on the ground in Iraq, despite what he called the “valiant, heroic effort” by American troops there.
In fact, Durbin said his trip has shown him more evidence that President Bush has “ignored reality.” The Iraqi government is not one of national unity, he said.
“I don’t know if we left in ten months or ten years if there would be a remarkable difference,” Durbin said. “I think we’re making some measurable progress, but it’s slow going. The fact is that, as our troops show some progress toward security, the government of this nation is moving in the opposite direction.”