Joe Lieberman is clueless

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And delusional.

Consider the last line of his horrendous op-ed in yesterday's increasingly rightist WaPo:

To me, there is only one choice that protects America's security -- and that is to stand, and fight, and win.

Fantastic. And how exactly will this lost war be won? It's the McCain argument: We're there, give Petraeus a chance, the surge is working...

But the evidence would seem to undermine Lieberman's flimsy case, which means that all he really has is hope. But hope is not a strategy.

Ah, but it's a war against al Qaeda? Right, which wasn't in Iraq before the war but which is there now. Go figure.

But it's not all al Qaeda. This is how defenders of the war defend the war. By linking it to the larger war on terror. If we pull out of Iraq, the terrorists win -- and will bring the war to America's shores. This is their justification for endless war, an endless war that can't be won.

And if you're not with him, if you're not for the war as Bush wages it, you're with the terrorists.

This is an "increasingly anachronistic tune," says Ezra Klein. "What sets Lieberman apart from the pack is not his support of Bush administration policies," says Scott Paul, "it's his adoption of its fear-based rhetoric, his intentional simplification of a complex situation into victory versus surrender, and his demonization of those who hold alternative views." "And speaking of doing exactly what al Qaeda hopes we'll do," asks the Anonymous Liberal, "what do you think we were doing when we decided to invade Iraq in the first place? Is there any conceivable course of action we could have taken that would have done more to advance al Qaeda's cause?"

Perhaps not, but Joe Lieberman doesn't get that, just like he doesn't get so much else. The war is not and never has been what he thinks it is, the world has passed him by, and yet he still has some prominent media soapboxes from which to spew the latest warmongering talking points from the GOP.

Fantastic indeed.