Joe Lieberman Needs A Lesson: Henry Kissinger Can Help

This week Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, blinded by his fanatical support of the Bush war in Iraq, errantly suggested, as reported by the AP, Lieberman irks Democrats by criticizing Obama

"If Israel is in danger today, it's not because of American foreign policy, which has been strongly supportive of Israel in every way," he said. "It is not because of what we have done in Iraq. It is because Iran is a fanatical terrorist, expansionist state."

Unfortunately Lieberman denies the consequences of creating a power vacuum. He need only look to right wing foreign policy and military analysts like Henry Kissinger and Herman Kahn to know that the United States' incursion and subsequent decimation of Iraq not only endangered Israel but the rest of the world.

I have sympathy for what they’re intending to do. First of all, if we don’t get Iran out of the nuclear business, we have lost this ground, and more. They’re either going to be out in a year or so, or they’ll be in forever. And if they’re in forever, that means Turkey, Egypt, everybody will be in. And then we live in a world that is uncontrollable.

Assuming that Iran can be brought to the point where it behaves like a nation and not like an empire, and we get into a negotiation with them, the worst outcome is a nuclear Iran and a vacuum in Iraq.  So we have to try to fix the vaccum in Iraq. That’s a rough business that has to be done. Iran needs to know that it has the option to negotiate. But in the meantime, we have to work on the incentives to negotiate, and that means again, we do several things at the same time.April 18, 2007 The Atlantic, A Conversation with Henry Kissinger. (emphasis added)

That the crushing of Saddam Hussein and the dismantling of the Baath Party created a power vacuum was reported throughout the war. Even such popular publications as The Guardian, Power Vacuum has taken US by surprise, April 11, 2003 or Time Magazine,A Power Vacuum in Iraq?, May 29, 2005  acknowledge that the Bush War in Iraq destabilized Iraq and endangered the entire region.

The issue is not the power vacuum, but Lieberman's inability to comprehend or acknowledge the fatal consequences of the war.

It is going to be very difficult for the next Congress and administration to bring peace and stability to the area. It is going to next to impossible if a United States Senator with Lieberman's stature refuses to acknowledge the impact of the war.

Comments

[Jon]

If the Democrats continue to caucus with that Republican-wanna-be Lieberman, they are idiots. I predict that Lieberman will be McCain's VP candidate....