Craven Hawk

by digby

Atrios flags this piece by Spencer Ackerman which I also thinks is worth reading. Ackerman points out that Lieberman’s reputation for sophisticated foreign policy smarts is nothing more than knee jerk me-too-ism:

Lieberman’s judgment on defense questions is like that of a stopped clock: the hawkish position, applied consistently, has to be right sooner or later. What Lieberman is asking Connecticut — and the Democratic Party, and the country — to accept is that the only secure America is a bellicose America. And that position is a guarantee of future Iraqs.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Lieberman’s defense record is the difficulty of defining Liebermanism. On the central question of why a nation should or shouldn’t go to war, Lieberman’s answer is simply, “yes!” His Senate-floor explanation of his 1991 vote for the Gulf War wasn’t a ringing endorsement of the need to confront Saddam Hussein, or a defense of Kuwaiti sovereignty, or even a simple explanation of how the war served American interests – none of which were difficult cases to make. Rather, Lieberman contended that the war was necessary “because our president has asked us to vote to support him in this hour of challenge.”

This is not a matter of philosophy. It’s a lazy and craven purely political stance that was perfectly illustrated by Jacob Weisberg’s Slate piece the other day:

The Lamont-Lieberman battle was filled with echoes and parallels from the Vietnam era. Democratic reformers and anti-establishment insurgents weren’t wrong about that conflict, either. Vietnam was a terrible mistake for the United States. But like Iraq, Vietnam was a badly chosen battlefield in a larger conflict with totalitarianism that America had no choice but to pursue. In turning viciously on stalwarts of the Cold War era like Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Scoop Jackson, anti-war insurgents called into question the Democratic Party’s underlying commitment to challenging Communist expansion. The party’s Vietnam-era drift away from issues of security and defense—and its association with a radical left hostile to the military and neutral in the fight between liberalism and communism—helped push a lot of Americans who didn’t much like the Vietnam War into the arms of Richard Nixon.

Lieberman, a charter member of the DLC, learned the lesson so well that he does not discriminate at all when it comes to military action. If a war is on the table, he’s for it. And that’s pretty much what Weisberg prescribes as the proper Democratic position if they want to be taken seriously on foreign policy and national security.

You can be craven about a lot of things, but war is one issue you really should think twice about. Not only is it a moral question it is a most serious question of national security. Once you unleash the dogs of war, all kinds of unintended, catastrophic things can happen as we are now witnessing in Iraq. It should never be just a matter of politics.

I think that it’s quite clear from Holy Joe’s record that, in his case, it is. He’s voted enthusiatically for every military action that’s been proposed since he took office. I doubt there are many Republicans out there with that kind of record (although their reasons for voting against military action in the 90’s were completely partisan.) He clearly doesn’t even think about it.

What Weisberg and Lieberman and other DLC types have done is back Democrats into the corner by agreeing with the GOP that they must always follow the Republicans over the cliff or risk being called weak on security. This is political blackmail and it’s exactly what led us into Iraq. The Democratic caucus was terrified of the repurcussions (especially post 9/11) of their votes against the first Gulf War and I have no doubt that guys like Lieberman were fingerwagging in the cloakroom every chance they got.

Joe Lieberman has taken the easy route on national security time after time and it’s led to this horrible mess we’re in. The sooner he’s out of the Democratic party the better for everyone. This lazy, rubber stamping of GOP warmongering for political purposes has paralyzed the Democratic party on national security and it’s time the party rids itself of it.

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