I have to hand it to Joe Lieberman -- seldom has a man been willing to
so publicly void his intellectual bowels in newsprint or to such
impressive effect. Lieberman's Wall Street Journal ode to a fictional
history of his fictionalized past party goes a long way towards
explaining his current psychology; like McCain and the other
Republican foreign policy uberhawks whose companion****p he now finds
solace in, he is not content with merely asserting that dissenting
opinions are wrong, but must declare them appeasers and collaborators.
Retroactively, if necessary.
Towards this end, Lieberman is willing to redraw history into a
Republican talking point, but he does it so badly -- so crudely --
that is comes across as the flashback-riddled rantings of a political
Willie Loman. He sees visions of peaceniks and hippies in his head at
night; they dance around his bed, preventing the proper dispensation
of justice. He sees visions of a modern Democratic Party cowing to
"activists", but cannot name any. He paints a history of a Democratic
Party plagued by foreign policy weakness, yet recites a litany of
Democratic foreign policy strengths to do so.
I will quote at length, only because the devolution of Lieberman's
capacity for logic needs to be shown at length to be appreciated.
- quote -
Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront
two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt,
Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was
principled, internationalist, strong and successful.
This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in =96 a party that was
unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to
make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a
party that understood that either the American people stood united
with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of
totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided. [...]
This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war
in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root
in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an
ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the
repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political
philosophy saw America as the aggressor =96 a morally bankrupt,
imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism"
represented the real threat to world peace.
It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not
because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally
hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global
conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked
them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down
and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold
War was mostly America's fault.
- end quote -
Lieberman recites a litany of strong foreign policies; then asserts
they all collapsed, come Vietnam. But on what Liebermanesque planet
did the Democratic Party -- or even substantial forces within the
party -- believe the Soviets to have been the good guys of the Cold
War? He offers no example, he merely asserts it. "It is argued", he
says, but Lieberman and the imaginary 1960s-era hippies cavorting in
his cortex are the only ones arguing it. Sup****t for Vietnam is given
as proxy for being sufficiently American; whether or not Vietnam was a
good idea, or well executed, or resulted in anything but fiasco is
entirely beside the point. A true American is willing to sup****t a
foreign policy fiasco of historic pro****tions; dissenters are simply
weak.
That's it. That is the entire assertion. Democrats were powerful
foreign policy figures throughout WW2 and the Cold War, but then
Vietnam came along and some people didn't like it, therefore Democrats
were weak.
- quote -
Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some
of us in the Democratic Party to reverse these developments, and
reclaim our party's lost tradition of principle and strength in the
world. Our band of so-called New Democrats was successful sooner than
we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were
elected. In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his
advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American
intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan
Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, Democratic attitudes
about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our
security began to change.
This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the
Democratic candidate =96 Vice President Gore =96 championed a freedom-
focused foreign policy, confident of America's moral responsibilities
in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to
increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican
opponent =96 and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that
the party's platform endorsed a national missile defense.
- end quote -
What is impressive here is that Vietnam is given as the sole example
of Democratic "appeasement" of enemies. Before then Democrats were
strong, and after then Democrats were strong -- Joe gives plenty of
examples for both periods -- and Democrats were only "weak" in for the
years between because a few unkempt activists had the audacity to
disagree with Joe "I am the voice of all Parties" Lieberman about the
merits of Vietnam. It is a comical premise -- it is the kind of addled
pseudohistory that the hawks of Vietnam have been obsessed with for
forty years, on the Republican side; to see it from Lieberman makes me
wonder if he caught the contagion from a senatorial toilet seat.
Lieberman does not mention Carter; presumably, he was weak too, for
not carpet bombing Iran when he had the chance, or for engaging in a
failed military action against Iran that was suspiciously narrow and
tactical, instead of one that was overwhelming and bloody and
patriotically escalatory. We can only presume Lieberman and McCain, if
given the chance, would rectify that error.
- quote --
Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched
positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on
September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook
President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw
September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack
on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it
was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity
and strength in the years after 9/11.
Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to
respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the
basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as
our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most
Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in
Iraq, the old voices of partisan****p and peace at any price saw an
op****tunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be
collaboration with the enemy =96 not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush =96 activists
have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than
it has been at any point in the last 20 years.
- end quote -
And there we get to the nub. America was united behind the President
immediately after September 11th, near-universal in sup****t for the
actions in Afghanistan. But then some (embarrassingly small number of)
Democrats took policy exception to Bush's expansion of post-9/11
action into an unrelated war at cross purposes to the first, under the
premise that it would be counterproductive and would weaken efforts in
Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world, thus playing directly into the
hands of extremists seeking that larger war. For that insight, they
are apparently leftists. The President bears no burden for shattering
the post-9/11 unity of the nation or the post-9/11 international vigor
against terrorism with his own badly planned, badly executed, badly
premised Rumsfeldian cluster**** of imagined op****tunity for forced
U.S. hegemony in the Muslim world; heavens, no. It is all the fault of
a passel of hippies and the activists for daring to speak up.
In this, let me be clear, I believe Lieberman to be exposed as the
intellectual equal of a worm-riddled, half-composted sack of ****, and
am not sorry in the slightest for the comparison. For Lieberman to so
willingly conflate any opposition to a war of occupation in Iraq to
the appeasement of bin Laden -- essentially asserting as weak and
cowardly all Americans who properly called out the ramifications of
the Iraq fiasco for what they were, shows him to be a political
charlatan, and a buffoon, and a McCarthyite hack besides. For not
carrying on the fiction that Iraq has made us safer, he asserts us
roundly to be fools or against our own country, so let the tired crank
whine about our own language if he dares.
=3D quote -
Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather
than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who,
contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not
been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single
significant national security or international economic issue in this
campaign.
In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has
shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks
is right =96 regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.
John also understands something else that too many Democrats seem to
have become confused about lately =96 the difference between America's
friends and America's enemies.
There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough
diplomacy with hostile governments. Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is
not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally
as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with
the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.
Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the
footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and
Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents
Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or
Chavez? I certainly cannot.
- end quote -
While I cannot personally imagine a more maddening fate than to be
constantly tormented by the fictional appeasers of Lieberman's war-
addled head, I find this whole section to be nearly, but not quite,
hilarious. Oh, to be Joe Lieberman, for whom all past events must be
packed into the frame of willing militancy or be dismissed.
Reagan did not meet with Khomeini; he did, however, meet with
Gorbachev. Are we to presume Reagan was, then, an unpatriotic coward?
He is simultaneously credited by conservatives with superhuman powers
in ending the Cold War, and recent evidence indicates he did not bomb
them into submission -- what are we to make of this? Kennedy never sat
down with Castro, but Nixon's talks with China are credited with
opening up the communist country to both diplomacy and, eventually,
capitalism. Was he too a traitor to his nation? If only Mr. Lieberman
could tell us, but he cannot, because for Mr. Lieberman "strength"
goes along with sup****ting his own foreign policy notions, and
"weakness" consists of not sup****ting them, and all history that does
not directly speak to his own imagined sense of strength and weakness
is discounted -- simply not even mentioned.
As for this notion of "unconditionally" meeting with anyone, it is a
Republican talking point, again eagerly swept up by Lieberman in
service to our cause. Nobody honestly believes any American president,
of either party, will "unconditionally" meet with anyone. It is a half-
baked talking point sloughed from the skin of Karl Rove's back.
As for the assertion of McCain as the politically courageous maverick
who will no doubt be a compassionate and bipartisan conservative, if
elected, let us not even touch that for now. There are too many words
here already.
There are another dozen things to mock about Lieberman's column --
deconstructing it would take chapters, not just paragraphs -- but in
the end Lieberman's very simplistic and fiction-touting assertions
boil down to his own simplistic and fiction-touting notions of foreign
policy. Lieberman's true problem (and the one that got him booted from
the Democratic Party in his own primary) is that for Lieberman, all
foreign policy "seriousness" is dependent on sup****ting the
cluster**** of Iraq and all related possible cluster****s in
neighboring countries. Not just before the invasion, but during the
occupation, during all the "reorganizations" and "surges" and turned
corners and imminent successes and plans for goddamned Green Zone
theme parks, now and in perpetuity, and now continuing into Iran, and
we're not supposed to talk about Pakistan because They Are Our
Friends.
If you don't sup****t indefinite action in Iraq, if you don't sup****t
the most aggressive of uberhawkish positions in the Middle East, Joe
Lieberman will declare you an appeaser, pure and simple. It does not
matter what other foreign policy positions you may hold: whether you
sup****t action in Afghanistan, or wish to see a non-nuclear North
Korea, or what your opinions may be about Sudan or Myanmar or Tibet or
Russia or Pakistan or the dozens of other crisis points around the
world; for Lieberman, Iraq is all. Sup****t Iraq, or you are not
"serious." Sup****t Iraq, or you are an "appeaser."
Here is a man unbalanced by the rage that can only come from a steady
stream of human failures. Foreign policy is a simple land, for Joe
Lieberman; it steadfastly consists of doing the most aggressive thing
at the most aggressive time, and all other options are weak to the
point of very nearly being anti-American. And yet as Iraq has shown,
such actions can be not just unwise, but catastrophically destructive.
For Joe Lieberman, asserting his opponents to be complacent or
unpatriotic or appeasers is the only possible rhetorical option
remaining, and he lacks the wisdom to leave it unused.
I can think of only one example of recent Democratic appeasement: the
way Senator Reid and others have constantly appeased Joe Lieberman, in
spite of Lieberman's constant and increasingly rabid attempts to
undermine his previous party. As has been amply demonstrated by Joe
himself, appeasement does not work.
|
