This is a
follow-up to
my recent entry, two below, on Senator Joe Lieberman.
---------------------------------------------------
"Joe Lieberman is a Republican."
-
Sam Seder,
In These Times
"Joe Lieberman is not a liberal..."
-
CavalierX (
Joe Mariani) and
many others
"Lieberman is a staunch liberal on social and economic causes. He favors abortion, gay issues, big labor and unfettered government spending. Yet he is a moderate on national security..."
-
Mark Hyman,
The Point
THE LIEBERMAN LIE
Senator Lieberman is not a "conservative" or a "moderate." He is a
liberal internationalist - one of many
who supported the Iraq war,
just as many liberals and Democrats supported past "
liberal interventions"
during the Clinton administration.
Partisanship vs. Courage
When a Democrat is in the White House,
it is more likely that
Republicans will oppose his policies, while
fellow Democrats will
support them.
When a Republican is in the White House,
it is the opposite.
[See:
"Party Reversal Phenomenon" -
I was quoted in
Time Magazine regarding this, following the 2004 National Conservative Student Conference]
However, there are people in both major parties, who support their ideological principles, regardless of who is implementing them.
Many liberals and Democrats
supported the Iraq war,
in accordance with the same
leftist foreign policy principles -
LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM -
that they used to justify their
support of similar policies during the Clinton administration.
As the Iraq war has become
increasingly unpopular however, many of the war's supporters -
both liberals/Democrats, as well as
some conservatives and
Republicans - have softened or
backed off from this support.
Senator Lieberman has done some of this as well, in
making strong criticisms of the Bush administration's foreign and domestic policies - including
with regard to its management of the Iraq situation. However, he has chosen to continue supporting the Iraq war (along
with other liberals, such as
Billy Clinton, his
Lady MacBeth (a "
war godess"?), San Francisco leftist Congressman
Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA), former U.S. Senator
Bob Kerrey (D-NE), insufferable socialist
Christopher Hitchens, gay "sex columnist"
Dan Savage, Hollywood leftist
Ron Silver, Democrat Party activist
Lowell Feld, leading left-wing intellectual
Paul Berman, Democrat/Labour lifelong leftist
Sarah Baxter, and
several major
leftist Blogosphere members, such as
Oliver Kamm,
Michael Totten,
Jeff Jarvis,
Charles Johnson,
Alcibiades,
Democracy Guy (
Tim Russo), and
Roger L. Simon, along with organizations such as
Social Democrats USA, the
Progressive Policy Institute, and much of
The New Republic magazine leadership,
as well as many
others on the left.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
This makes Senator Lieberman a principled liberal, not a "moderate" or a "conservative." This is an issue of political theory and
intra-party,
intra-movement schisms... The fact that many people do not comprehend this is what I meant in
my remarks earlier this month on Mr. Lieberman. While "Gray Dog" and Bill Faith
may not be under said impression,
there are, in fact,
many who are.
Note: Senator Lieberman received an
ACU rating of
8% last year,
0% in 2004, and
0% in 2003. This makes him
one of the most liberal members of the United States Senate.
[Update (10/14/06): ...and here are Senator Lieberman's ratings from the major liberal and conservative interest groups. While some liberals (and of course, conservatives) have been duped, it's good to see that there are some liberals (and I wish, more conservatives as well!) who recognize that support of war does not a non-liberal make.]
Also: Where was the alarm and outrage when the excellent "Jews for Morality" website was hacked, months prior to the 2000 elections, and right after it started to expose "the Lieberman hoax"?
From 2000: || "The Lieberman Hoax" || The Lieberman Record || Lieberman Excommunicated || "Tax and Spend Liberal"
I wanted to re-post here, my comment piece, from
January 2004, in
this discussion thread at the
eTalkinghead weblog. (This is an edited version, with broken links repaired, and other minor changes made.)
-----------
Dustin,
I was just thinking about Lieberman earlier today, and I just saw him speaking when his debate clip was shown on Greta Van Sustren's Fox News show.
I would have to very much disagree with those conservatives, neoconservatives, and neoliberals who are praising Lieberman's positions, especially on an issue such as foreign policy, in which he takes a Clintonian stance. I wrote about Joe in my comment at this blogger's post.
As you can see in that column that I link to there, by Lt. Col. Oliver North, Sen. Lieberman supported the flawed, interventionist foreign policy of the Clinton/Gore & Albright administration, which was responsible for damaging our military and defense capabilities, creating problems domestically and overseas, and is partly to blame for many of the bad situations that we have faced since that administration left office. Lieberman's positions, on many domestic and foreign issues, are horribly wrong, and he would make a terrible president.
And with regard to the Iraq situation, Joe Lieberman, and many other neoliberals and neoconservatives, actually supported this type of war back in 1998, while many Republicans and foreign policy realists, such as the Bush 41'ers, likely opposed that plan.
That type of a war for regime change is inconsistent with conservative and Republican principles, as I've stated many times before. Throughout our nation's history of warfare and military intervention, there have been liberal wars, and conservative wars. The intervention in Afghanistan following 9/11 was a conservative war. But the war to "liberate Iraq" - which used to be a war to force Iraq to disarm, for which "we knew" it "was lying" when it said that it had already done, something that, if true, would have averted the war - this war did not fit those conservative criteria. (If you scroll down some in this blog entry, I updated that post with a compilation of items from conservative and liberal sources that explain what the conservative and liberal rules for the use of military intervention abroad are.)
Like Lieberman, The New Republic magazine strongly supported this war and several of the major pro-war bloggers have also been liberal. One of them, Michael Totten, has this article published in Front Page Magazine; it is a very good piece, pointing out why more liberals should be enthusiatically supporting the Iraq war. (Many more liberals and Democrats would be, if someone like Clinton, Lieberman, or a Democrat were in the White House, while more Republicans and conservatives would be opposing it, and would be demanding more accountability of the administration due to the numerous post-war controversies that have now arisen.) Lieberman is cited, towards the end of Mr. Totten's piece, as one of many liberal leaders who supported the Iraq war.
It is because of his neoliberal and statist political philosophy that Lieberman has been supporting this war for awhile - for longer than President Bush, in fact. Democrats and liberals are more interventionist than many Republicans... This is one thing that George W. Bush campaigned against when running for office. (Al Gore and other Democrats suggested that Bush was an "isolationist" - something that the Clintonistas had been saying about Republicans for awhile also - since most Republicans opposed Slick Willie's globalist, interventionist, "New World Order" agenda.)
Joe Lieberman said that Dean wants to return the Democratic Party to how it was before Clinton. Lieberman supports Bill Clinton, and his policies. Like Lieberman, Bill and Hillary Clinton were supporters of this Iraq war, and Bill Clinton has more recently been cited by some war supporters for his criticisms of anti-war Democrats, who have been blasting Bush's Iraq actions. (This is not surprising. It was Bill Clinton who signed into law the "Iraq Liberation Act of 1998," and, as even some conservative supporters of the recent Iraq war have stated, the philosophy of using pre-emptive war against a regime like Iraq is a Democratic doctrine... It is something that liberals should be backing, since they support it all the time in the domestic arenas).
So basically, the reason that Lieberman supports the Iraq war has to do with his support for a dangerous, neoliberal, statist, globalist agenda, which is based upon a Wilsonian vision. This utopian viewpoint is leftist in nature, so it is not surprising that many liberals and Democrats feel that they must support it. This is why Lieberman supports the Iraq war, and why he supported the interventionist, "perverse foreign policies" of "gunpoint democracy" and [what conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer rightfully condemns as] "foreign policy social work" - that was the hallmark of the Clinton administration, a policy which was roundly criticized by Republican (and some non-Republican) leaders, and by our military community, was responsible for running down our nation's defense resources and capabilities, leading to a dangerous decrease in military readiness, overall military morale, and lower recruitment and retention rates as well.
Joe Lieberman supported the horrific foreign policy of Clinton and Albright and the neoliberals, and his flawed foreign policy vision is the reason that he has long been supporting a war like this, in Iraq. He supported this war, at least in large part, for liberal reasons, not for conservative reasons. And that is nothing to be proud of.
----------- end of comment ----------
Original discussion (with blogger's response)
here.
Related Items
-
Liberals Support War, July 31, 2004
-
On Lieberman and the Pro-War Left, January 19, 2004
From
The New Republic, Oct. 21, 2002:
-
The Liberal Case for War - This war is justified exclusively on liberal grounds, Jonathan Chait
-
Slave State - Where are all the liberal humanitarian interventionists now?, Robert D. Kaplan
Trackbacked on October 1st to Conservative Culture and to Pirates, Man Your Women!... and on October 14th 16th to Church and State and Point Five and Adam's Blog and Woman Honor Thyself.
posted by Aakash at 11:53 PM
Neoliberals Under My Skin
...and stones in my - I had wanted to get this 'stub'-type entry quickly published, before the results of the Connecticut U.S. Senate Primary (
the contest that highlighted yesterday's elections on the national scene). Perhaps during lunch break [which is supposed to only be half an hour...], but that didn't work out, so I thought I could perhaps do it quickly when I came home from work yesterday, before scurrying to my first ever
County Board meeting.
(After being intrigued by the hot talk about it
in the media and the [early] morning
local news, I went to my first-ever
City Council meeting last week [fun!]. After attending a fundraiser for a new local GOP candidate (Brad Jones, who's running for Sam Cahnman's now-open seat) two days later, a member of the
County Board incidentally recommended I come to the next
Sangamon County Board meeting, also
expected to be a
barrel of excitement...)
[Mayor Davlin's shady fiasco (re: the CWLP & Sierra Club deal) for the former, the highly-contenscious smoking ban (only for the unincorporated areas of this County) in the latter event, which was last night.]GrassrootsI guess I should have been taking a greater, direct interest
in local politics and policy-making, during these past years. I have been focused on
national political issues and elections for many [!] years, but when I started my
A.S.T. internship with
my state representative, I had to become oriented with
state-level politics and legislation. Now, I guess I'm finally starting to do this at the
local [most important, perhaps]
level.
Update: Interesting item from ePolitics.
[Near] Real TimeIn the past - even last summer, while being a full time worker - I have in fact been able to publish quick 'stub'-like entries, based upon impending results (on issues being watched by the nation).
One year ago, I
was able to publish this entry, even though I had found out only earlier that day about that election race [on
Hush Bimbo's show, which I had started listening to at my desk]... That wasn't nearly as successful of an entry as my
post the previous month on the Supreme Court vacancy.
And on the night before this job [re-]began for this summer,
I reported on conservative [and
CR]
Mark Harris's refreshing victory against the GOP Establishment in Pennsylvania... complete with a pre-finalization [of results] report from a field contact. (If you're on
Facebook, you can join the Group for his campaign
here.)
In a RutThat was not doable yesterday however... I wanted to do a post like that before going to bed, but I was too worn out for that either. That sucks, because I haven't published a new entry for awhile... I have a
draft space saved, from the day, last month now, when I had an
emergency room experience, which ended up being a case of
nephrolithiases [warning: bad language]. That was taken care of within a week, but other problems have arisen since then. I still haven't published - or written most of - that entry. Darn it.
Update:
Some comic relief (for once
the pain has passed)...
posted by Aakash at 8:48 PM
Finally, the Stub [a day late]Now, here is what I wanted to quickly say, in the few moments of available time that I now get (for these types of things).
No Tears for JoePeople such as Zell Miller, Christopher Hitchens, Tony Blair, and yes... Joe Lieberman, are more irritating that many others on the Left. The reason is that with liberals such as Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Dennis Kucinich, they are clearly recognizable as liberals, and are treated as such by those of us on the Right. What makes people like former Senator
Zell Miller, former [hopefully] Senator Joe Lieberman, 'Tony the Tyrant' from Perfidious Albion, and the insufferable socialist Christopher Hitchens
even more dangerous than other leftists is that
so many of my fellow conservatives and Republicans have been duped - due to a misunderstanding of the intracacies of political science and [even-recent] history - into thinking that those people are not liberal, or even, that they are 'conservatives'.The Divide on the LeftOn the Left, there are
1) the consistently anti-war liberals [like Congressman Kucinich and
Congresswoman Barbara Lee],
2) the party hacks - who are anti-war/pro-war
based upon what party controls the White House [
like Congresswoman Pelosi], or
based upon what suits their current interests and political ambitions [
like Sen. John Kerry], and
3) those who are consistently pro-war and pro-interventionism [like Senator Lieberman,
Congressman Tom Lantos,
Bill and
Hillary Clinton,
Christopher Hitchens,
Paul Berman, and
The New Republic magazine].
Past CommentaryI wanted to quickly end my post, about this, by linking to a comment that I left a few days ago, at a GOP weblog, that was commenting on Joe Lieberman, and his impending possible defeat. In it, I linked to my past writings which addressed the issue of liberal internationalism, and pointed out that
Sen. Lieberman's support of the Iraq war - and his past support for liberal interventions - is based upon a statist, globalist philosophy, not a conservative (or "moderate") one.
I am kicking myself for not being able to find that comment that I left a few days ago... But it was a reference to
this discussion thread, from January 2004, in the midst of the Democratic presidential primaries.
Similarly, in response to
this entry by another young conservative [and pro-war] blogger, I
wrote this commentary, on how Congressman John Murtha may actually be more conservative than Senator Lieberman... That caused Jason to update
that entry, correctly pointing out that there is a sharp divide on the Left, regarding the Iraq war.
PLEASE read those comments -
here and
here.
Senator Lieberman IS NOT "
the black sheep of the Democratic Party." He IS NOT (by far) "
the last moderate Democrat." (He
isn't even a moderate!)
He is simply a strong [and
unwavering] example of leftist category
#3 (listed above), a position that is naturally becoming increasingly unpopular, due to the fact that there is a Republican in the White House [making it more likely that
Democrats will reflexively oppose executive decisions and policies], and especially due to the fact that this war
has become increasingly unpopular, as has the current administration.
But many
Republicans and
conservatives [and now,
even some of the pro-war Blogosphere!] have been going
the same direction as well.
If only more of them had been where some of us were,
from the start.
posted by Aakash at 8:46 PM
