Note to Democratic Senate Leadership: Dump Lieberman
We come to expect this from a political huckster like George W. Bush. The fact that he recently compared Democratic plans to deal with terrorism to that of "Nazi appeasers" no longer shocks the sensibilities as something so clearly over the line of good taste should. That is the legacy of the Bus/Rove style of slash and burn politics.
But when it comes from someone who presumably knows better, someone who used to in fact identify himself as a Democrat, and someone who is Jewish (!!!!), well it just gets the blood boiling and the fists clenched.
Today, "Independent Democrat" Joe Lieberman endorsed Bush's implication of Barack Obama's strategy of talking to "enemies" as being on par with appeasement.
President Bush got it exactly right today when he warned about the threat of Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is imperative that we reject the flawed and naïve thinking that denies or dismisses the words of extremists and terrorists...
Of course, neither Barack Obama nor any other fucking Democrat has suggested "appeasing" terrorists or anyone else. What Barack Obama has suggested is the same thing John Kennedy suggested 45 years ago, and it's the same policy that allowed us to avoid WWIII over Cuban and East Berlin: Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
It only makes sense that you have dialog and negotiate with parties with which you disagree. What, do you negotiate with those you already agree? Foolish. But that is not the same as giving in to demands or bending to the will. As Kennedy knew when he entered into discussions with Krushev in Geneva in 1961 (which went poorly) and then throughout his presidency (which enabled Kennedy to keep an open dialog with who was then the United States' biggest adversary).
(You can read the official Kennedy-Kruschev exchanges here.)
But we're free to disagree on policy; that is one of the most cherished liberties we have in this country. What should not be tolerated by the voters, nor by the Democratic leadership, is Joe Lieberman's ability to tar a Democrat as a weak-kneed appeaser. He knows full well what that implication means to people and he knows how morally bankrupt it is. The Senate leadership should strip Joe Lieberman of his committee appointments and let him caucus by himself as an "Independent." Fuck him.
