WASHINGTON — Lawmakers who have led the drive to bring troops home from Iraq have not devised a strategy to deal with the widespread killings that could follow a pullout, recent interviews with more than two dozen Democrats and Republicans show.
Many of them acknowledge that Iraq may plunge into vicious sectarian fighting much like the ethnic cleansing that consumed Bosnia a decade ago. However, they said they would reject the use of U.S. troops to stop the killing.
"I wouldn't be surprised if it's horrendous," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.), who has helped spearhead efforts against the war. "The only hope for the Iraqis is their own damned government, and there's slim hope for that."
Some proponents of a withdrawal declined to discuss what the United States should do if the violence increases.
"That's a hypothetical. I'm not going to get into it," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.
Many Democrats, however, believe that any increase in violence would be short-term, and argue that a troop drawdown would eventually lead to a more stable Iraq and Middle East.
Opponents of a withdrawal have raised the specter of spiraling violence between Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis, a wider Middle Eastern war and a resurgent Al Qaeda to blunt the accelerating Democratic efforts to scale back military involvement in Iraq.
At the White House last week, President Bush warned of "mass killings on a horrific scale."
The withdrawal measures offered by Democrats, including one the Senate is scheduled to vote on today, acknowledge the U.S. will continue to play a military role in Iraq for years. The bills would allow an unspecified number of troops to remain to perform limited missions, such as training Iraqis and going after terrorist networks.
Democratic lawmakers, including Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), say such an approach, though not perfect, is the best of the bad options necessitated by the Bush administration's mismanagement of the war.
They argue that the presence of about 158,000 U.S. troops in Iraq is strengthening Al Qaeda, while it gives Iraqi leaders a crutch that allows them to avoid taking action to reduce tensions between the country's sectarian communities.
