It's far and away the best reasoned and most damning indictment of Joe Lieberman and his incestuous relationship with the morally bankrupt Bush regime that has appeared in the so-called Mainstream Media to date. And it's a persuasive endorsement of Ned Lamont.
After sketching in the history of the Vietnam era, itself a valuable contribution to the dialogue, Burris turns his attention to what's happening today. (Emphasis added)
So once again there is a peace movement in America, albeit a quieter one. The war in Iraq has brought a lot of us home - back to the presumption that you think before you bomb; back to rational skepticism about those who have power; back to the doctrine of accountability.
In a constitutional democracy, the people, under law, are sovereign, and the people can take the government back. When the government goes wrong, we need not sink into cynicism and despair. We can change the government. We can change its direction and change the personnel. This is not a goofy "leftist" idea, but a profoundly conservative and American one. It derives from the Federalist Papers, Jefferson, and Paine.
There is an alternative to helplessness or nihilism. It is possible to take action.
And, interestingly, in this peace movement, as during the Vietnam peace movement, some of the most articulate and passionate voices are essentially conservative ones - calling America back to its principles.
We begin with a simple core principle: That our government must remain a democracy during war. And there is a corollary: The president is not a king during war.
Even if the current fight against terrorists, and against the new enemies we have made, is a war, and not a matter of policing, intelligence, and diplomacy, our country must remain a Republic. Dissent must not only be allowed but treasured. Wiretaps require warrants. Intelligence analysts must not be pressured to "cook" their work to fit an ideology, or a whim.
Last Friday, some of us at the JI spent 90 minutes with Ned Lamont, a former Democratic selectman from Greenwich, who is challenging Joe Lieberman for the Democratic Senate nomination this year. Lamont is for real. Believe it. But he's not running against Lieberman so much as he is running for the Republic - for the proposition that we retain our citizenship and adhere to the Bill of Rights, even if bad guys attack us.
Of course, Joe Lieberman is to Connecticut politics what Toyota is to the auto industry. He has rolled along, flawless, unperturbed, and inviolate for so long that it is hard to imagine that he could ever really be challenged.
And yet something is happening.
There is a rumbling out there, and Lieberman himself hears it. Indeed, he has become uncharacteristically petulant and defensive.
And I think the reason for the rumble and the senator's ire is the same: Lieberman cannot make sense of his own defense of U.S. government policy in Iraq.
Read it. Clip it. Print it out. Photocopy it. Email it. Share it with your friends and neighbors.
MLN is powered by