Thursday, May 22, 2008

Sen Lieberman in Wall Street Journal

Yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut wrote about Democrats and Our Enemies. He mostly discusses why his party and the party of Roosevelt, Kennedy and Truman drifted so far from a strong foreign policy agenda catering to national interest to its current flirtations with appeasement of autocrats.

He identifies a "rival political philosophy," its left-wing in common parlance, as the one which cam e to dominate the Democratic Party view. What it did was to pin the blame on America for being inordinately afraid of Communism creating problem for world peace. Carrying this leftward lurch further,
[it] argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.
After receding during the Clinton years, Lieberman says, the left-wing "peace at any price (partisans) saw an opportunity to reassert themselves."

After lamenting the kowtowing nature of present Democratic leadership to its resurgent left-wing, he observes that Obama too is guilty of this flaw.
"...[This]unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.
Many have pinpointed this chink in Obama's soaring rhetorical armor. The war fatigue and its economic toll has converted many hawks into peacemongers. Obama might well cash this resentment all the way to the White House. This larger malaise, though, runs deep, and is not restricted to Obama alone.

The parallels, even wider. All the way close to home.

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