All this has created anger among Democrats who saw the American public’s predictable impatience with a long-term overseas military commitment as an issue to ride to victory.
Earlier this month, Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean proclaimed the American cause in Iraq to be “unwinnable.” Dean’s brother James was reported by The New York Times to be leading a group in Lieberman’s home state that was working to foster criticism of the senator. Other Democrats,
including the leaders of the extremist Moveon.org group that helped generate so much support for Howard Dean’s presidential bid, are vowing to support a challenger to Lieberman’s bid for re-election to the Senate next year.
They may find a candidate in Lowell Weicker, the venerable liberal Republican who was ousted by Lieberman from the Senate in 1988. Weicker is ardently opposed to the war and Bush. He has vowed to ensure Lieberman “doesn’t get a free pass” over his support of the war and may run as an independent, a stance that earned him a term as Connecticut’s governor subsequent to his time in the Senate.
At the same time, rumors have been floated that Lieberman will be asked by the president to succeed Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. Lieberman has dismissed this idea as a “fantasy,” but there’s no denying he’s an attractive possibility and that he would do well in that role.
It’s hard to imagine Lieberman giving up his place in the Senate. It’s also difficult to see a man who is a reliable Democrat on domestic issues handing the GOP a Senate seat since, if he resigned, Connecticut’s governor would appoint a Republican who would serve until next November.
But whatever the intentions of the president or the senator, such a move would be a mistake. The best thing Lieberman can do for the country is to stay right where he is and spend the coming year fighting both for his seat and for the soul of his party.
As Lieberman rightly says, setting a timetable for an American pullout (a position now embraced by the Union of Reform Judaism) only gives the terrorists courage to persevere. The consequences of defeat in Iraq, an issue that anti-war forces rarely address, would be catastrophic for the Iraqi people, for American interests, the stability of the region, and, yes, for Israel, whose own Islamist foes would be greatly encouraged by an American retreat from Iraq.
Given the stakes involved in maintaining bipartisan support for the war effort, the nation needs Joe Lieberman in the Senate, not the Pentagon. Having him carry on his advocacy for patience on Iraq from within the Democratic caucus is vital not just for winning that debate, but for the health of our political system. Our enemies need to see that as divided as we may be, there are still powerful voices within the Democratic party that believe not only in the justice of our cause but in its eventual triumph.
As a senator and national candidate, Joe Lieberman has already achieved far more than he could have hoped, though perhaps less than he dreamed. But his efforts to keep our nation united and focused on the war against Islamist terrorists may well prove to be his finest hour.