From Seattle writer and consultant Matt Rosenberg...: Joe Lieberman; Profile In Chutzpah

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Joe Lieberman; Profile In Chutzpah

December 09, 2005

The entire Democratic Party establishment is hosed off at U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) because he's standing firm with the Bush Administration on the Iraq War. In Saturday's edition, Lieberman tells the tut-tutting New York Times:

"We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril"......(he) noted that his positions on Iraq had not changed over the years, dating from 1991, when he supported the first Persian Gulf war. In 1998, he and Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, proposed the Iraq Liberation Act, which made the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein official American policy. "The positive and negative reactions may have less to do with the substance of what I said than with the fact that a Democrat is saying it," Mr. Lieberman said. "It reflects the terribly divisive state of our politics."

But here's the real come-uppance for Plain Old Joe: Howard Dean's brother lives in CT too, and is ready to go to the mat against Lieberman with....AN INTERNET PETITION! Hooo boy! And, just to underscore the drama, MoveOn. org is grumbling about Lieberman, too. We all know how effective is MoveOn.org. Lieberman must really be chomping the Maalox, now.

There's no mention in this very same Times piece - as there most certainly should be - that U.S. House Democrats who've been so stridently criticizing Bush on Iraq and calling for U.S. withdrawal spectacularly failed to muster votes for that objective when the question was called several weeks ago. Now, ah........let's see....why was that, anyway? I can conclude only one thing: they really don't believe themselves, or, lack the courage of their so-called convictions. Unlike, say, Bush; or Lieberman.

The ferment and desperate violence grow as next week's historic parliamentary elections approach, underscoring the revolutionary nature of change in Iraq, and undergirding the position of Bush, Lieberman and countless Americans and world citizens who understand the real stakes. Must the U.S. eventually scale back and leave Iraq to sort out its own affairs? Yes, of course. But not quite yet.

TECHNORATI TAGS: JOSEPH LIEBERMAN, IRAQ, DEMOCRATS, IRAQ ELECTIONS

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at December 9, 2005 11:12 PM

Comments:

The link you provide to the Washington Post article by Ellen Knickmeyer is informative. Readers would do well to ponder the meaning of what it reports.

Once again millions of Iraqis will troop to the polls to reaffirm their faith, not merely to choose a government. "If you give your vote to the wrong people," explains one Sunni cleric, "then the occupation will continue, and the country will be lost. Participation in the election is a must and it is a religious duty." This still looks like war by other means to me, and one must have far more faith in the reformative powers of electoral politics than I can summon at this point to believe that it will lead to the habits of liberal democracy or peace in the country.

Both the violence and the elections are part of the rearrangement of power within Iraq, an accommodation in which our role is becoming increasingly marginal. We should think long and hard about the costs and benefits of deploying our troops to protect any government that emerges from this conflict.

Posted by: Tom Rekdal at December 10, 2005 10:15 AM

I saw the same comments in the Post article, Tom, and they also gave me pause. However, I think to some extent this is the rhetoric that Sunni and Shiite religious leaders in Iraq will inevitably deploy as this election approaches. Obviously, the new political system will be subject to religious influence, but over time that will be leavened by the business of running the country and its regional and local governments - infrastructure, education, economy, international trade, etc.

Certainly public education, to pick one area, will be subject to tussles involving religion, but this is something they need to work through. Remember the past - Saddam and his Sunni thugs ran the whole show, and Saddam had about 300,000 politically inconvenient people buried in mass graves.

The future will hold more attempts by the freelance jihadists and Saddam loyalists to undermine Iraqi self-sufficiency (i.e. killing police recruits, teachers, random Iraqis) but I think when we look back, even just five years from now, the progress in Iraq toward stability and liberty will be impressive. Hell, it already is, in my view.

Posted by: Matt R. at December 10, 2005 10:46 AM

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