Joe Lieberman this week announced his involuntary retirement from the Senate -- compelled by humiliatingly high disapproval ratings in his own state and the 2006 ejection from his own party -- and Beltway denizens are now rushing to heap praise on this Deeply Principled, Civil, and Decent Man of Conscience. The New York Times' spokesman for establishment wisdom and entitlement, David Brooks, today hails Lieberman as "A Most Valuable Democrat" and gushes over his "courageous independence of mind"; Brooks also quotes several leading Democrats venerating the four-term Connecticut Senator, including John Kerry ("a terrific senator" who is "defined himself by his conscience and beliefs"), Harry Reid ("an integral part of the Democratic caucus") and Joe Biden ("Joe’s leadership and powerful intellect" are overwhelming but "it is his civility that will be missed the most"). Brooks also approvingly cites a post from The Washington Post's Ezra Klein suggesting (not without qualification) that Lieberman is a "Democratic hero" because he voted for most of Obama's domestic agenda over the last two years.
Conspicuously missing from any of these paeans is the issue most responsible for the contempt in which many liberals (and anti-war conservatives) hold Lieberman: his vigorous, ongoing support for the attack on Iraq. Why allow the small matter of a decade-long, brutal occupation that eradicated the lives of hundreds of thousands of human beings to negatively affect the reputation of a Washington official? To bring any of that up is so very uncivil and past-obsessed. Like torture, illegal eavesdropping, CIA black sites, the systematic denial of due process in a worldwide prison regime, and the ongoing Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning acts of war entailing things like this (all of which Lieberman also supported), the Iraq War is written off -- flushed down the memory hole -- as nothing more than one of those garden-variety "policy differences" about which reasonable, decent people disagree.
<snip>
Then there's the bill introduced last year by Lieberman and McCain -- the so-called "Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act" -- which is probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the U.S. Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act. It would literally empower the President to imprison anyone he wants in his sole discretion by simply decreeing them a Terrorist suspect -- including American citizens arrested on U.S. soil. The bill requires that all such individuals be placed in military custody, and explicitly says that they "may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners," which everyone expects to last decades, at least. It's basically a bill designed to formally authorize what the Bush administration did to American citizen Jose Padilla or what was done to Japanese-Americans during World War II -- arrest them on U.S. soil and imprison them for years in military custody with no charges.
This is all just the small illustrative tip of the iceberg that is Joe Lieberman's hideous, destructive political career. It leaves out his alliance with the worst religious extremists in the country, such as Rev. John Hagee, his steadfast refusal as Homeland Security Chairman to investigate some of the Bush administration's worst failures and abuses, and -- of course -- his overarching, unyielding, blind support for anything and everything Israel does, even trying to construct similar absolute allegiance to Israel as a litmus test for American politicians. In a 2008 report, Think Progress compiled all the ways that this Democratic Hero has not only failed to support progressive values, but led the way in waging war on them, and this amusing Gail Collins column from yesterday perfectly captured Lieberman's rotted "character."
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
