The saga of the Lieberman endorsement continues at the New Republic. And it has entered a new phase. As opposed to merely acting as willful surrogate for the Republican National Committee, Lawrence Kaplan has taken to channeling the man himself, President Bush. How so? By lying.
"Never mind that, of all the candidates, only Gephardt and Lieberman have unambiguously committed themselves to winning the peace in Iraq--by supporting the actual funding for ongoing operations there."
I have hashed out TNR's insistence that anyone who opposed the $87 billion package opposes the occupation of Iraq before. But never mind that. Dean was unable to vote one way or another on the package. Therefore he wants to withdraw from Iraq.
But is it really so wrong to make Iraq a litmus test? Leaving aside that Iraq is the most important issue of our day by virtue of the fact that America happens to be at war there--which, contrary to [Jonathan Chait's earlier] suggestion, we were not on the eve of the 1992 election--our involvement in Iraq is particularly significant because it is so clearly about more than Iraq. It is about more even than the future of the Middle East or the war on terror. For better or worse, it is about what sort of a world Americans intend to inhabit--a world of civilized norms that is congenial to the United States or not--and how we get from here to there.
I guess we've established that I do not share Lawrence Kaplan's view of the world. Invading another country on the basis of lies, then royally punting the reconstruction and democratization of that country is not a reflection of the world I want to live in. As I have attempted to prove before, every lie by an elected official is an abrogation of democracy. If our policy in Iraq is a supposed reflection of our worldview, then that amounts to an endorsement of a political system where the electorate doesn't need to know what's going on.
Furthermore, if Kaplan's conception of the world we want to live in is supposed to mean that Americans have an interest in tyranny destroyed generally and people living in freedom, it is interesting that he so loudly supports a candidate who opposed involvement in Liberian tyranny. The main answer of the pro-war crowd to the question of "why Iraq?" is most properly "why not?" But that requires support for overthrowing tyranny wherever it appears, so long as we Americans have the means to do so. Lieberman will not go that far. Paul Wolfowitz will not go that far. Dick Cheney will not go that far if it means any discomfort to Saudi royalty. And the New Republic is left standing all by itself, the sole defenders of a world without tyranny. Give me a fucking break.
"Whether it's John Kerry railing about America being taken "down the false road of empire," Wesley Clark recommending "engagement" and "soft power" as an adequate response to the war on terror, Dean pledging to seek "permission" from the United Nations before resorting to force, or the rest of the field trotting out worn clichés about "multilateralism," "interdependence," and the "will of the international community"--rather than claim the mantle of John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman, or even Bill Clinton--the presidential contenders (again, with the exceptions of Gephardt and Lieberman) seem to be taking their foreign policy cues not from Europe, but from The New York Review of Books."
If two dead Presidents shriek at the top of their lungs, does it make a noise? How dare you, Mr. Kaplan, suggest that Harry Truman shares your scorn at the will of the international community? Harry Truman created the international community. He saw that pointless conflict could be relieved without force, that the people of the world have much in common, and that their governments will not jump to war if they do not have to. You, Mr. Kaplan, cannot decide whether you want a world of liberal harmony or endless war. Harry Truman realized that those two ideas are incompatible. And as his foreign policy thinking, along with the other past Democratic Presidents you name, is so far beyond your own, it would have been better for you to keep your hands out of the Democratic primary.
Interdependence, community: those are what keep my generation out of the trenches of Paschendaele. No thanks to you, Mr. Kaplan.