In the past when the American people were debating essential foreign policy issues, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee frequently held hearings that provided an important forum for differing views.
Now, when many Americans have serious reservations about a war with Iraq, that committee under the chairmanship of Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, remains conspicuously passive. We believe the committee is abdicating its duty in not scheduling hearings on war with Iraq on an urgent basis.
That there is substantial debate in the United States over whether it should go to war with Iraq is indisputable. The misgivings are reflected in anti-war demonstrations in Pittsburgh and other cities, verbal volleys between the Bush administration and leaders of friendly countries and a nervousness in the stock market. The anxiety flows from President Bush's apparent intention to proceed from the buildup of forces around Iraq -- now at well over 100,000 -- to all-out war, perhaps within weeks.
In the face of that, the only strong voices in the Senate that have spoken out against the rush to war are those of Democrats Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Sen. Byrd has called for full-scale Senate debate of the merits of going to war. He acknowledges the pre-election House and Senate votes in support of President Bush's policy, but says the situation has changed and that the Senate is shirking its appropriate constitutional role in not examining the question thoroughly anew.
Sen. Byrd, 85, obviously remembers the role of the late Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the Vietnam War. Sen. Fulbright held full-scale committee hearings on the war, providing a dignified forum for the presentation by American experts of a wide range of opinions.
It is noteworthy that Sen. Fulbright, a Democrat, had the courage to schedule hearings that would undoubtedly include testimony critical of the policy being pursued by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a fellow Democrat.
By contrast, Sen. Lugar has not yet stepped up to play the role normally played by the chairman of his committee when the country is engaged in a critical foreign policy debate. The list of upcoming committee hearings Sen. Lugar announced in a Jan. 27 Washington Post op-ed, "Beating Terror," is general and anodyne, with no mention of an Iraq war.
The fact that Sen. Lugar is a Republican and the Bush administration is Republican is no answer. The Foreign Relations Committee has the obligation to scrape down contentious American foreign policies in hearings, with no regard to party affiliation.
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