Lieberman would put us in still another war

by: saramerica

Tue Oct 02, 2007 at 07:45:58 AM EDT

The dogs of war have been let slip once again, with Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman leading the cry of "Havoc." Last week, the Senate passed the Lieberman-Kyl amendment to the defense authorization bill. Fortunately, the two most egregious paragraphs, which called for the Senate "to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph 3 ("to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators ... and its indigenous Iraqi proxies"), which would have been seized upon by the neocons in the Bush administration as congressional assent to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," were removed from the final amendment.

Sen. Lieberman has made no secret of his lust for war with Iran. June 10 on CBS' "Face The Nation," he said: "I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq. And to me, that would include a strike ... over the border into Iran, where ... we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

At the Senate hearings with Gen. David Petraeus on Sept. 11, Sen. Lieberman was practically begging for an excuse to engage the Iranians militarily. "Is it time to give you authority in pursuit of your mission in Iraq to pursue those Iranian Quds force operations in Iranian territory in order to protect America's troops in Iraq?" he asked.

Unfortunately for Joe, Gen. Petraeus didn't play along: "I think that ... the Multi-National Force Iraq should just focus on Iraq, and that any kinds of operations outside the borders of Iraq would rightly be overseen by the Central Command, the regional combatant command."

The prospect of a nuclear Iran doesn't make anyone happy. But with our economy already straining under the weight of the cost of the Iraq war (expected to run at $3 billion a week for 2008) and a military that is already under strain from repeated, lengthy deployments, I'm curious why Sen. Lieberman is so anxious to push us into another war.

Has he learned nothing from the Iraq debacle? Oh, wait -- he still thinks the war is going swimmingly. Now, at least. Right before last November's election, though, he seemed less sure: "None of us wants more war; certainly not me. ... I want to bring our troops home."

He wants to bring the troops home so badly he voted against the Webb-Hagel amendment to the defense bill, which would have required that active duty troops deployed abroad have the same period of time at home with their families. Yes, Mr. "Support the Troops" Lieberman voted against a bipartisan amendment that would have given much needed respite to our soldiers and their families.

Although the chickenhawks are banging the drums for military strikes on Iran, a retired Centcom commander, Gen. John Abizaid, said recently that if worse came to worse, the U.S. could live with a nuclear Iran. In remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Abizaid said: "We need to press the international community as hard as we possibly can and the Iranians to cease and desist on the development of a nuclear weapon." He added: "I believe nuclear deterrence will work with the Iranians. ... Iran is not a suicide nation. They may have some people in charge that don't appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon ... I believe that we shouldn't throw deterrence theory out the window because of unstable leaders."

Fortunately, there are still some sane people in the Senate, most notably Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., a former Marine with a son who recently returned from Iraq, who said during the floor debate on Lieberman-Kyl: "Those who regret their vote five years ago to authorize military action in Iraq should think hard before supporting this approach. Because, in my view, it has the same potential to do harm where many are seeking to do good."

A recent Research 2000 poll of Connecticut voters found that if they could vote again for U.S. Senate, Ned Lamont would win. Perhaps voters realize that instead of bringing the troops home, Sen. Lieberman is agitating for another military engagement.