Lugar's StemwinderIs the mild-mannered senator a grenade-thrower or a Bush stalking horse?

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Lugar has always been at least a skeptic of the war. Back in late 2002, when Bush was lobbying Congress to pass a war resolution, Lugar and Sen. Joseph Biden, the foreign-relations committee's top Democrat, joined forces to draft an alternative resolution, which would have placed conditions on deploying troops to Iraq and required the administration to submit more evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. As George Packer reported in The New Yorker, Lugar had recruited 25 Republican senators to sign the bill; Biden was close to rallying the necessary number of Democrats to override a prospective veto—but then the White House undercut them both by offering a separate deal to Democratic Rep. Richard Gephardt, who in exchange agreed to give Bush unrestricted authority.

The White House politicos knew Lugar wouldn't snap back. An old-school Republican who takes bipartisanship seriously (for more on this, click here), he privately disdains the Bush team's harsh tactics. But he is also mild-mannered, averse to confrontation, and timid in the face of hierarchy. He could be counted on to roll over—and he did.

In this scenario, Lugar gave his speech Monday night because, finally, he'd had enough. Democratic Sen. John Kerry, who talks frequently with Lugar, said in a phone interview Thursday that the speech reflected "an exhaustion of patience … a genuine frustration with where we are and where we're headed."

And yet, Lugar was not acting entirely on his own. According to others who are close to him, Lugar has met with Bush officials several times this year, raising his problems with the surge, encouraging them to change course. There are factions within the administration—including very senior officials in the State Department and the Pentagon—who agree with him, and they encouraged him to keep talking.

Lugar was particularly struck by reports that the Iraqi government, such as it is, may never reach agreement on key disputes and that, therefore, sectarian violence is likely to persist for many years, regardless of what we do. He was also alarmed by briefings from U.S. military officials that—as he put it in his speech—"the Army has exhausted its bench." Recruitment is down; standards in aptitude and fitness are being relaxed to ward off disastrous shortfalls. Polls show that, as a result of the war in Iraq, just one-tenth of eligible American youth—an all-time low in the survey's history—have any desire to serve in the armed forces.

The main reason Lugar gave his speech, according to this scenario, was to strengthen the hand of those administration officials who agree that the surge must be abandoned—to give them another political talking point ("Even Sen. Lugar says …") for the interagency quarrels.

But the question remains: What kind of new policy is Lugar endorsing? Clearly, not a clean pullout. Near the start of the speech, he said that "the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits." But toward the end, he noted, "A total withdrawal from Iraq also fails to meet our security interests."

A phrase he employs several times is "a sustainable policy"—meaning a policy that allows for a sustainable U.S. military presence in Iraq, albeit with fewer troops engaged in lower-profile activities.

In short, what he calls for, in his typical manner, is a middle course—a more modest mission of going after jihadist terrorists, training Iraqi security forces, and protecting U.S. personnel, while at the same time calling an international conference to try to settle the political and sectarian disputes or at least prevent them from spreading like wildfire.

This is what nearly every political player and senior military officer is calling for, privately or publicly. It's what the congressional Democrats called for this spring, as a condition to keep funding the war at all. Bush vetoed that bill—and the Democrats couldn't muster the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto.

Lugar may ultimately be worried that, if Bush keeps vetoing such measures, the voters will give the Democrats that two-thirds majority in the election of 2008. He may be also telling his Republican colleagues to step up and change Iraq policy now, even if their president won't, or risk facing not only a more ravaged Iraq, a more turbulent Middle East, and a more exhausted U.S. Army—but also the shattering of their party and the end of their careers.

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Fred Kaplan is Slate's "War Stories" columnist and author of 1959: The Year Everything Changed. He can be reached at .

Photograph of Sen. Richard Luger by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.

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