September '08, Lieberman has a date in Minnesota

9/16/07
It’s nice of Joe Lieberman to tell us what he finds unacceptable.
An advertisement paid for by an online political action committee was called “an outrageous and despicable act of slander that every member of the Congress — Democrat and Republican — has a solemn responsibility to condemn.”
It must be serious to get him all worked up like that. Whoever did it must be responsible for thousands of deaths and a war without any end in sight, or even a discernable purpose.
But no, it was just an ad, paid for by MoveOn.org, attacking the credibility of Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq. In the eyes of Lieberman and his fellow travelers, then, it’s OK to lie the country into war and continue lying to keep our troops there. But question the motives of the war’s designated spokesman, and you’re in big trouble.
That Lieberman’s ire is not directed at the failed policy is unsurprising. For Joe, like President Bush, it’s only about staying in Iraq for its own sake. There is no goal, other than to stay. There is no purpose, other than to make sure we’re exactly where we are right now when Bush leaves office in January 2009.
Why anyone else should want this is the real question.
As the general gave his testimony on the state of the war last week, the ad in question, placed in The New York Times, took issue with the military’s selective use of hopeful statistics. Other, independent reports showed conditions in Iraq, including civilian deaths and political progress, at far worse levels than the general’s own, unsourced data. (The ad also used an apparently heinous pun on the general’s last name.)
So Lieberman knew who to blame. Anyone questioning the word of the general must be condemned.
But what, really, did anyone expect Petraeus to say in his testimony? He said conditions in Iraq were improving, but not so much that we could leave anytime soon. He recommended putting off a decision on any real troop withdrawal for at least — of course — six months. Since the war started, it’s been one official after another kicking the big decisions another six months down the road.
The hype surrounding Petraeus was well planned. By putting his credibility, and not Bush’s, on the line, critics were urged to once more give the new plan a chance and hear the man out. He gave the president exactly the immunity he needed to again put off doing anything of substance.
Petraeus proved himself a politician first and foremost. He was there to defend the president and the president’s war, and opened himself up to exactly the kind of criticism the ad directed at him. No one expected disinterested analysis — he was there as a salesman, and criticizing the salesman of a war people hate ought to be expected.
So no one should have expected Petraeus to declare our military efforts — and by extension, himself — a failure. He said what war backers, like Lieberman, have been saying for years now: Times are tough, but we’re starting to see some progress, and whatever we leave behind in the event of a withdrawal would be infinitely worse than what we see now.
Funny how they can never predict when good things will start to happen, but they know exactly when all the bad stuff will start — as soon as we leave.
Lieberman, the No. 1 war-backer in the nation’s capital, has been singing this tune for years. But it’s beyond question that he and his ilk have lost the American public. By 59 percent to 34 percent, more people in a recent poll said they believe history will judge the Iraq war a complete or partial failure.
We don’t, of course, make policy by taking a show of hands. But our representatives our supposed to, at the very least, represent us.
Instead, we get a senator who says this: “… that unity that we felt after
Sept. 11, we have to find a way to get it back because we’ve descended into terrible, partisan political sniping. The fact is, al-Qaida, the al-Qaida that attacked us on 9/11 six years ago today, the al-Qaida that we’re fighting in Iraq today, they don’t distinguish between Republicans or Democrats.”
Arguing about a war we never should have started is not “partisan.” Saying our troops should stop dying for a fight we can’t win is not “political.”
Lieberman knows there was no al-Qaida in Iraq before we invaded. He knows the people who attacked us on 9/11 have nothing to do with the people we’re fighting now. But he will say anything, no matter how outrageous, to stick up for his pet war. He has no limits.
The odds of Joe being named keynote speaker at the 2008 Republican National Convention get shorter all the time.

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.