Lieberman's Problem, and Ours

I have reluctantly gotten sucked into caring about the fate of Joe Lieberman's quest to hold on to his Senate seat. What interests me is how the contest ties into a larger debate underway about how big the progressive tent should be when it comes to foreign policy: where should boundaries be drawn so that we can compete in moderate and even conservative strongholds, yet still energe the base and stand for something that is clear to voters. This is shaping up to be one of the principal dilemmas progressives will face leading up to 2008.

Reading through the transcript of Lieberman's debate last Thursday with challenger Ned Lamont, here's where I come out: Lieberman's problem is not that he supported the Iraq invasion, nor that he thinks we need to stay in and finish the job. He has lots of mainstream Democratic company in both those positions. Kiss aside, his problem is also not simply being too close to Bush or disloyal to the Dems. As he points out, he's voted the Democratic party line 90 percent of the time.

The crux of Lieberman's problem is his unwillingness to acknowledge the severity of what's happened in Iraq, and to demand accountability for it. Iraq has now replaced 9/11 as America's "prism of pain" - - the trauma-tinged lens through which everything else is viewed. Everyone from Chuck Hagel to Richard Holbrooke to Ret. General William Odom has judged Iraq worse than Vietnam. Against that backdrop, its just not enough for Lieberman to quickly state that he's previously been "critical" of the Administration's post-invasion errors, and then move on to an impassioned plea about why we can't leave Iraq now.

No matter what they believe we must do next, any candidate who doesn't come to grips fully with the folly of Iraq risks political oblivion. While the public may be over debates on the manipulation of pre-war intelligence, they know that things went badly wrong en route to and in Iraq, and that no one has paid for these avoidable and costly errors. Given the severity of the consequences of the war, the public is right to demand a sharp focus on what went wrong, why and who bears responsibility.

Lieberman professes no interest in these questions, seeming to believe they should all be subsumed by overriding loyalty to the president amidst the threat of terror. The public may have believed that for a year or two after the 9/11 attacks, but their trust has been exploited too many times by the White House, and they simply no longer do.

In Thursday's debate, Lieberman tried valiantly to tar Lamont with flip-flopping over what ought to happen in Iraq next. It didn't seem to work, and is also a dangerous tack for any politician to take. For the first few years of the Iraq conflict progressives offered Bush advice galore - don't disband the Iraqi military; solicit more international troops; turn the reins of reconstruction over to the UN.

Most of this was ignored, and by the time Bush acknowledged some of the guidance was sound, conditions on the ground had worsened to the point where it was unimplementable.

At this stage in the game, nearly anyone thoughtful and honest admits to real qualms about what makes sense in Iraq. Under these conditions, forceful and unequivocal game plans are not just elusive, but probably dangerous. The public recognizes this, which is why there was no political price for the June Congressional debates that showed the Democrats divided over what to do next.

When asked in the debate about what it means to be a Democrat, Lieberman cited JFK and intoned:

America's mission is to pay any price, bear any burden, support any friend, and oppose any foe to assure the success and survival of liberty. In our time, the Democratic Party has been the great hope of people rising in our country, and it remains that way.

The words are great, and progressives do need to reclaim a lofty sense of vision along the lines of what Kennedy offered. But we won't succeed in doing so without acknowledging the grievous errors of Iraq, and the years of effort it will take to undo the damage. No one - not in America and not abroad - would support an expansive definition of Lieberman's first sentence above right now: we're simply too over-extended, too unpopular, and too internally divided to boldly and assertively take on the foes of liberty right now. It's frightening to acknowledge that, but most Americans have done so and Lieberman needs to as well. Wishing Iraq out of the way doesn't make it so.