Letters to the Editor
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The Soft Sadism Of Senator Joe
Senator Joe's behavior is characteristic of a mean control freak who flirts and fawns outrageously in public, while insisting that his faithful spouse not only watch, but carry on afterwards, as if everything is peachy. This is how they get their rocks off. Ayn Rand used to pull stunts like this on her doormat husband by insisting that her lovers have home access.
The Dems are behaving like similar doormats. With the polls showing a huge anti war bias, its time to give this political Eddy Haskell the flick. For the good of the Party, of course.
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Jolting Joe
I'm surprised nobody has suggested the real reason for Senator Lieberman's support for the conquest and occupation of Iraq. The fact that he is an Orthodox Jew and ardent Zionist with absolute loyalty to the state of Israel.
According to the Jewish Virtual Library:
"Joe Lieberman has rallied bipartisan support for Israel during his 15 years in the United States Senate. He has consistently supported increased foreign aid to our ally, including Israel's recent request for $12 billion in new aid, and opposed efforts to cut this wise investment in security. More than that, Lieberman has led his colleagues in offering support for Israel during difficult times. In the spring of 2002 when Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield to root out Palestinian terrorists, President Bush insisted that Israel withdraw "without delay." Joe Lieberman, in contrast, led the Senate in passing a resolution expressing solidarity with Israel."
What a hero.
Since Saddam's Iraq was implaccably hostile towards Israel, Liberman took a strong lead in making a case for the war. Here's the Jewish Virtual Library once again:
"Joe Lieberman has been a leader within his party and the Senate in ridding the Middle East of the threat of Saddam Hussein. In 1991, he was the lead co-sponsor of the Gulf War resolution, and over the years, has been the Senate's leading voice for removing Saddam from power. In 1998, he co-sponsored the Iraqi Liberation Act, which made a change of regime in Baghdad official United States policy and provided assistance to forces within Iraq seeking to depose Saddam's brutal dictatorship. In 2002, Lieberman worked with the Democratic leadership to pass the bipartisan resolution giving the President the authority to use military force, if and when diplomacy failed, to disarm Saddam."
What a hero.
You can see both those extracts and much more at the Jewish Virtual Library:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/lieberman.html
Like all fanatics, Lieberman has a tenuous relationship with reality. His current hallucinations are best described by Time Magazine Baghdad bureau chief Michael Ware, who recently said:
"I and some other journalists had lunch with Senator Joe Lieberman the other day and we listened to him talking about Iraq. Either Senator Lieberman is so divorced from reality that he's completely lost the plot or he knows he's spinning a line. Because one of my colleagues turned to me in the middle of this lunch and said he's not talking about any country I've ever been to and yet he was talking about Iraq, the very country where we were sitting."
Source:
http://www.counterpunch.org/zeese11302005.html
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god, he sucks
I too am sick of Senator Joe's grandstanding as a man of 'principle' and 'wisdom', but the other posters are complete right in saying the BIG problem with him is in his consistant political failures and amazing tone-deafness to where not only people in the party are, but where people in the country are.
All those ridiculous things he has done, the terrible VP debate where it seemed he wanted to make out with Cheney, the rolling over on illegal ballots, the ridiculous call for censorship of "HOLLYWOOD", the inexplicable two years he spent running for President in 2004 with no sign of any type of consituancy that was actively for him, all of those decisions and actions have lead him to total, embarrasing defeats. Now a clear majority of the country has come to the conclusions: (1) we are fighting a pointless war in the name of a people who want us to leave, (2) our leaders are lacking basic competency to complete their jobs, (3) nothing happening in Iraq is actually making us safer from international terrorism and might in fact be making it worse, (4) the entire justification for the war was a lie, and most importantly, (5) Bush knowingly decived the nation to get his war. And now, NOW, Lieberman comes out to say the first three things aren't true and the last two aren't important.
And then he wonders why grassroot Dems, the people who have been called enemies, nuts, and unconsiderate of our national security by the President of the United States, just don't support him.
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Move On Plays into Republicans' Hands
I don't doubt the sincerity of MoveOn, any more than I doubt the sincerity of the Far Right. But MoveOn is starting to take over exactly the role that Ralph Nader so aptly played--the destroyer of the middle, and thereby the tool of the Republicans to deny yet another democrat victory.
I mean, think about it. You've got so-called Democrats who, because Lieberman happens to have a relatively different view on this one issue, are willing to toss him out of the party--inevitably in exchange for a Republican.
This is what single-theme politics does to a valid political center. MoveOn is becoming as shrill and mono-focused as the anti-abortionists; as the greedy tax-cut blind so-called supply-side pseudo-economists; as the "government is the problem not the solution" Reagan-clones; and maybe as manic as the creationist morons.
This nation is getting ground to pieces for lack of a center. Do the anti-Lieberman people perceive no difference between a Democratic presidency and Congress and the disaster we have now lived through for 6 years? God save us from the multitudes of people who'd rather be right than be president, who'll drag us all down for the sake of their particular set of principles.
Lieberman is one of the few people in congress who understands the criticality of the middle in politics. The others are pretty impressive politicians too (if that's not an oxymoron)--they include McCain, John Warner, Robert Byrd. They understand principle--look at what McCain is doing against Bush on torture--but they also understand politics is the art of the possible.
Do we really want to continue just hearing Harry Reid and Bill Frist go about their shrill vs. manic routines?
I dread the thought that the democrats might not be able to come up with anyone between to run for office who falls between MoveOn and George Bush--but that's exactly where MoveOn, as well as the Idiot Right, are taking us.
I increasingly don't see the difference between the Taliban, George Bush, and MoveOn. Every one of them claims some god-given unique insight to the moral high ground. I don't think any of them do. I'd rather put my trust in people who aren't afraid to continually explore ideas, and to work them out with other people.