In describing Joe Lieberman’s op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal today on the war in Iraq, Glenn Greenwald said, “When historians endeavor to understand how America embarked on this dark and disastrous period in our history — how we not only collectively made our worst strategic mistake by invading Iraq on multiple false pretenses, but also proceeded to re-elect the President who did that and long embraced the obvious delusion that the chaotic occupation was going well — they can begin with this Op-Ed.” Is it that bad? I’m afraid so. Let’s look at some of Lieberman’s claims, one a time.
Congress thus faces a choice in the weeks and months ahead. Will we allow our actions to be driven by the changing conditions on the ground in Iraq — or by the unchanging political and ideological positions long ago staked out in Washington?
Lieberman seems to be talking about himself without realizing it. He doesn’t care whether his favored policy produces disaster; he’s staked out his ground and refuses to budge.
What ultimately matters more to us: the real fight over there, or the political fight over here?
Has it really not occurred to Lieberman that maybe, just maybe, opponents of the fiasco in Iraq reject Bush’s policy because it’s a failure, and not because of politics?
If we stopped the legislative maneuvering and looked to Baghdad, we would see what the new security strategy actually entails and how dramatically it differs from previous efforts…. Where previously there weren’t enough soldiers to hold key neighborhoods after they had been cleared of extremists and militias, now more U.S. and Iraqi forces are either in place or on the way.
But that’s not “dramatically different” at all. It’s exactly what we’ve been told, repeatedly, since the fall of 2005, and it’s been wrong every time.
There is of course a direct and straightforward way that Congress could end the war, consistent with its authority under the Constitution: by cutting off funds. Yet this option is not being proposed.
We don’t have the votes for it, thanks to senators like Lieberman.
Critics of the war instead are planning to constrain and squeeze the current strategy and troops by a thousand cuts and conditions.
Yeah, Pelosi and Murtha believe troops who lack the training and equipment they need shouldn’t be deployed. What monsters.
I understand the frustration, anger and exhaustion so many Americans feel about Iraq, the desire to throw up our hands and simply say, “Enough.”
Wrong. As Jonathan Chait explained, this isn’t about being tired; it’s about reasoning. “[S]ome people oppose Bush’s strategy not because they’re angry or exhausted but because they think it won’t work,” Chait wrote. “Not only that, it will make things worse.”
And I am painfully aware of the enormous toll of this war in human life, and of the infuriating mistakes that have been made in the war’s conduct.
Which is why he’s standing behind the president and vice president, who’ve made the infuriating mistakes?
Many of the worst errors in Iraq arose precisely because the Bush administration best-cased what would happen after Saddam was overthrown. Now many opponents of the war are making the very same best-case mistake–assuming we can pull back in the midst of a critical battle with impunity, even arguing that our retreat will reduce the terrorism and sectarian violence in Iraq.
I think Lieberman has it backwards. His entire argument is based on a series of assumptions — that Bush’s policy that failed before will work now, that redeployment would fail, that terrorists would “follow us home,” etc. All of his previous assumptions have proven false; what makes him think he’s credible now?
Gen. Petraeus says he will be able to see whether progress is occurring by the end of the summer, so let us declare a truce in the Washington political war over Iraq until then.
And there we have it. Bill Kristol recently insisted that critics of the war should just “be quiet for six or nine months.” Lieberman effectively said the same thing in his op-ed, with slightly more diplomatic language.
Democracy doesn’t work this way. The majority of Americans oppose the existing policy. The majority of the House opposes the existing policy. The majority of the Senate opposes the existing policy. Lieberman wants all of them (us) to simply shut up until the end of the summer, suggesting our silence in the face of his reckless misguided policy would be a “truce.”
It would actually be a betrayal. Lieberman is entitled to his opinion, but to suggest that Americans and their representatives should sit idly by, without saying a word, while Bush and his irresponsible allies in Congress pursue a failed policy is unconscionable. Under Lieberman’s vision, why even have a Congress? Why even have elections through which Americans can elect lawmakers to help change course?
If this Wall Street Journal piece was Lieberman’s way of helping persuade people to his way of thinking, the senator understands the art of persuasion about as well as he understands foreign policy.