Joe Lieberman: Patriot

This will probably kill his career, but I rise to praise Sen. Joe Lieberman, the independent Democrat from Connecticut.

In a speech last week before Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Lieberman said, “Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.”

Dictionary.com defines “patriot” this way: “a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.” The key words are “defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.” By this definition Joe Lieberman is a patriot.

Is it in America’s interest to lose in Iraq? Is it in America’s interest not to have a strong enough military — in personnel and in weapons — to defend us against the myriad threats confronting the country now and those that will likely confront it in the near future? Is it in America’s interest to see Democratic politicians dedicated to making a lame duck president a dead duck, not supporting him in any way for partisan political reasons just to win the White House?

Lieberman doesn’t think so, but he stands virtually alone among leading members of his party.

If you consider history, there were many Democrats who supported a vigorous foreign policy dedicated to protecting American liberties and encouraging them in other countries. Those Democrats rarely, if ever, criticized a president of either party for his foreign policies and ex-presidents mostly held their tongues when it came to criticizing their successors. Those days are gone.

The late Sen. Henry Martin “Scoop” Jackson, a Democrat from Washington State, was among the last of the modern leaders of his party to believe such things. Jackson, who died in 1983, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984.

At the awards ceremony, Ronald Reagan said, “Scoop Jackson was convinced that there’s no place for partisanship in foreign and defense policy. He used to say, ‘In matters of national security, the best politics is no politics.’ His sense of bipartisanship was not only natural and complete; it was courageous. He wanted to be president, but I think he must have known that his outspoken ideas on the security of the nation would deprive him of the chance to be his party’s nominee in 1972 and ‘76. Still, he would not cut his convictions to fit the prevailing style. I’m deeply proud, as he would have been, to have Jackson Democrats serve in my administration. I’m proud that some of them have found a home here.”

One searches in vain for similar sentiments among leaders of today’s Democratic Party. When Jackson died, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, another Democrat of the old school, said of his friend and colleague: “Henry Jackson is proof of the old belief in the Judaic tradition that at any moment in history goodness in the world is preserved by the deeds of 36 just men who do not know that this is the role the Lord has given them. Henry Jackson was one of those men.”

In his Johns Hopkins speech, Lieberman said of Senate colleagues who voted against his resolution to declare Iran’s revolutionary Quds Force a foreign terrorist entity (privately telling him they agreed, but don’t trust Bush): “There is something profoundly wrong — something that should trouble all of us — when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.”

Exactly. God bless Joe Lieberman, a true patriot.

©2007 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Let's check this patriot's word:

Submitted by AF A-10 on Wed, 11/14/2007 - 3:46am.

"Although no one desires a conflict with Iran, the fact is that the Iranian government by its actions has declared war on us," Lieberman wrote, while urging the United States to keep "open the possibility of using military force against the terrorist infrastructure inside Iran."

So this patriot is grooming us for war with Iran by stating for them that they've declared war on us.

"These revelations should be a wake-up call to the United States about the threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran," Lieberman continued, "as well as a reminder why Iraq is, in fact, the central front of the global war on terror."

So let me get this straight. Because IRAN has "declared war" on us by their actions, this proves that IRAQ is the "central front" in the war on terror. Did I get that right?

Let's remember, Joe told us that the tide had turned in Iraq in 2004, then again in 2005, and now, once again, in 2007 (the year that has yielded the most US deaths in that country's civil war than any previous year ever in the history of this planet!) And all of these patriotic statements fly in the face of national will. Remember, he is a REPRESENTATIVE of the people. The people have wanted for a very, very long time to reduce our footprint in Iraq. It seems there is a group in the minority party aided by mister independent that will support a policy regardless of the human cost, dollar cost, or national will. Bankrupting America. Now that's patriotism!

To all of the "don't you want victory in Iraq" crowd: Ponder this: How can the United States have a "victory" in a fight that is not ours? A fight between Shiite, Sunni, and kurd? How will any of you win a fight between my wife and I? It isn't your fight? And Iraq is sovereign, is it not? So how do we win a fight in a sovereign nation fighting over its division of assets and political power? And how many trillions should we spend figuring this out?

Kevin "Hack" King

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Patriotism?

Submitted by Fyt35 on Wed, 11/14/2007 - 6:14am.

At this point, what will it take to end the “war mongering”? Is staying the course synonymous to “we might as well stay”, because we are in it too deep? I consider my self a moderate conservative, but even this war is wearing on me. How long to we have to use the shield of patriotism to continue to make bad decisions?

My father served in the army for 22 years, retired; served in Korea and Viet Nam. I talk to him about this on occasion; a man that holds his devotion to this country and his President close to his heart is questioning the current polices. Our spending is in the trillions and Iraq is Iraq; its not Georgia or Indiana. Let’s bring our troops home and shore up our borders; let’s start a bipartisan effort to fix our economic woes; let’s look for fuel alternatives to end the dependence on foreign oil.

I agree with you Hack, bankrupting America is NOT patriotism; making smart decisions and smart policy to help our country is patriotic! I am not concerned so much about foreign threats as I am about the threats of bad decision making by our politicians.
Washington has to start listening to the people and the people need to speak up louder and louder

Bring the troops home, lets take care of our own neighborhood first!

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Fyt35

Submitted by AF A-10 on Wed, 11/14/2007 - 1:20pm.

Imagine the border security measures we could have purchased for a mere fraction of Iraq. The dollar amounts have become mind boggling, and that's before you factor in the long term care for our 18-23 year old disabled vets. I can't figure out why it is only patriotic to support what is seen by and large as a bad decision wrt Iraq.

Kevin "Hack" King

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