Joe Lieberman cordially invites you to another war

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Joe Lieberman was one of the most vocal supporters of invading Iraq after the attacks of September 11, 2001. He also harbored fantasies of being John McCain’s Secretary of Defense and can barely restrain his enthusiasm when the bad guys get what’s comin’ to ‘em (even if it’s only in a Hollywood film).

Lieberman likes expressions of American power. A few years ago, I was in a movie theatre in Washington when I noticed Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, a few seats down. The film was “Behind Enemy Lines,” in which Owen Wilson plays a U.S. pilot shot down in Bosnia. Whenever the American military scored an onscreen hit, Lieberman pumped his fist and said, “Yeah!” and “All right!”

Armchair General Joe, who has never served in the military (but he’s seen lots of films!) is always the first to advocate the use of military intervention, and yet he has been wrong about pretty much everything.

Lieberman qualified for a family deferment from Vietnam because he was already married and had a child. However, that moving tribute to family devotion has not stopped Lieberman from fiercely advocating the deployment of other husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers into wars zones.

Evan Bayh, Jon Kyl, Lieberman, and the rest of the Always Ready For War (As Long As They Have To Sacrifice Absolutely Nothing) Crew, all supported the Iraq invasion. They also contradicted the 2007 NIE and declared as an “inescapable conclusion” that “Iran is determined to acquire nuclear weapons.”

[T]hey favorably cite a “bipartisan” report from former Senators Chuck Robb (D) and Dan Coats (R) which urges the President to begin preparing for military action against Iran, and lays out a detailed plan for what it would entail, beginning with a naval blockade and extending to “devastating strikes” against “assets” inside Iran that “would probably last up to several weeks and would require vigilance for years to come.” That’s what three key U.S. Senators are explicitly threatening.

But this isn’t enough blood for Warmonger Joe.

During a recent interview with — you guessed it — Fox News, Lieberman discussed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian accused of attempting to explode a plastic device aboard a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Abdulmutallab told authorities that he traveled to Yemen to link up with al-Qaida operatives. During the Fox interview, it became clear that Lieberman is itching to invade yet another country.

Lieberman admitted that in a Fox New interview that he was “not sure” whether the Nigerian succeeded in making contact with the individuals he “reached out to” in Yemen.

But “not sure” is good enough for Lieberman.

So, he says, it is time to start lobbing bombs — lots of them. (Presumably, Lieberman is talking about more attacks than have already been taking place as part of a U.S./Yemen partnership that has seen Washington spend $66 million this year on security and military assistance to Yemeni counter-terrorist forces — a project that most observers believe has included the use of U.S. warplanes, drones and/or cruise missiles in recent strikes against al Qaeda targets.)

Referencing his own travels to Yemen, and meetings with unnamed U.S. officials, the senator chirped: “Iraq was yesterday’s war, Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war.”

Hm, the use of preemptive action. Where have I heard that before?

And so we’ve reached the limits of Joe Lieberman’s usefulness. A typical Lieberman-esque response to conflict entails some kind of combination of cowardly inaction (while beating his chest in a manly way and sending others to die,) political party betrayal, and/or full-scale military invasion. He sees the world in terms of “good guys,” and “bad guys,” and is incapable of recognizing that what is happening in Yemen involves water shortages and blowback for US and Yemeni army attacks on Maarib.

Lieberman has a history of being wrong on the topic of military intervention, and yet he is consistently paraded onto national television as a so-called expert. I wish I could blame this on Fox News, but beyond the neoconservative propaganda channel, Lieberman has appeared on the Sunday Morning bobblehead shows (on so-called “mainstream channels”) enough times to officially rename David Gregory’s hour of beltway platitudes Meet Joe.

Lieberman has blood on his hands, and yet people still listen to him when it comes to war. I’m not sure why. Maybe he’s telling the right people what they want to hear: the world is a place full of bad people, who inexplicably do evil things, and we need to build and buy more of those expensive weapons, which are some of the only products the US still produces on a consistent basis.