If it's Sunday, Joe Lieberman is fear-mongering

7/08/07
Joe Lieberman has something in common with the terrorists.
No, he’s not blowing up any buildings, but their goals are the same. They both want us to be scared.
Terrorists know they can’t kill every person they want to kill, so they plan their acts for maximum effect. It’s not just about exploding a bus, it’s about making people think twice about getting on a bus. It’s about changing the way people live their lives.
Lieberman, just as surely, wants us to change our ways. He wants us to be scared. He says it’s in the service of opening our eyes to the dangers of terrorism, but there is no one who thinks the world is a safe place. We all remember 9/11. We haven’t forgotten. He’s not the only one with a license to recall atrocities.
But not everyone wants to sacrifice our way of life based on those threats. Not everyone is ready to throw away liberties and launch more unnecessary wars on Lieberman’s word.
He’s about four years too late. These days, no one but the 28-percenters is supporting war based on fear and lies. It may have worked once, but people are, at last, warier.
He remains a master of the non sequitur. He said on a Sunday morning talk show last week that the foiled car bombings in England should make people stop asking our government to follow the law.
“I hope these terrorist attacks in London wake us up here in America to stop the petty partisan fighting going on about … electronic surveillance.”
To call a desire for the president of the United States to kindly stop ignoring the law as it relates to domestic surveillance “petty” and, God forbid, “partisan” would be laughable if the man saying it wasn’t a United States senator. But he is, which makes his commentary frightening — and un-American.
Tapping phones had nothing to do with the England plot’s failure, and no one in this country is arguing against using electronic surveillance. People are making the uncontroversial claim that the president shouldn’t get to decide unilaterally who will be monitored, without any oversight from the courts or anyone else. This is not a “petty” concern.
It’s similar to his claim during his re-election campaign last year that his opponent’s call for withdrawing American troops from Iraq provided a victory to people who wanted to blow up a plane in England. Not only is it offensive, it doesn’t even make sense.
Lieberman wants to lump everyone in the world who doesn’t like us into some all-encompassing mass of evil-doers. “If we pull out of Iraq,” he says, “Iran and al-Qaida are the victors. … Because if Iran and al-Qaida take over Iraq, they will destabilize the entire Middle East, and they will strike at us here at home.”
That statement is, to put it mildly, ridiculous. Sunni al-Qaida and Shiite Iran are not allies. Maybe Lieberman has seen the news from Iraq over the past few years. They’re having quite a war over there based on just these issues.
Surely, he knows this. But just as clearly, he doesn’t care. He wants us to be scared. Scared enough to give up our rights in search of some fantasy of absolute safety. Scared enough to support yet another war, at a time when we’re already fighting two that we can’t win. Scared enough that we won’t question what our leaders are doing, and how many people have to die while they do it.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg won a lot of fans recently when he became maybe the first public official since this all started to put things in perspective. After the arrests of some people who wanted, but lacked the means, to kill a lot of people at Kennedy Airport, Bloomberg struck a cord.
“There are a lot of threats to you in the world,” he said. “You can’t sit there and worry about everything. Get a life.”
He didn’t deny that there are people who want to kill us. He didn’t say terrorism is not a threat. But he also refused to let that threat dictate the way the city goes about its daily routines. No one ignores terrorism, but we’re not about to rewrite the Constitution to fight it, either.
At least, most of us aren’t.

Hugh S. Bailey is assistant editorial page editor at the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6233 or via e-mail at hbailey@ctpost.com.