Remarks of Senator Joe Lieberman: Successful Strategy in Iraq

Remarks of Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment Forum on Next Steps for Successful Strategy in Iraq.

Accepting this reality and the urgency of the moment in Iraq calls us, I believe, to remember the famous counsel of Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Republican of Michigan that “Politics must stop at the water’s edge.”

Vandenburg of course, played an instrument role in the post WWII period in building bipartisan support for Presidents Truman’s post WWII, early Cold War foreign policy. The full, actual statement of the imperative that Vandenburg stated, that politics must stop at the water’s edge, is altogether relevant to our current circumstances:

“To me, bipartisan foreign policy means a mutual effort under our indispensable two-party system, to unite our official voice at the water’s edge so that America speaks with maximum authority against those who would divide and conquer us and the free world.”

Those last words of Vandenberg’s exactly describe the goals and methods of the Islamist terrorists who attacked us on 9-11-01 and fight us in Iraq today. They aim to “divide and conquer us and the free world.” Vandenburg’s preceding words defining a bipartisan foreign policy should remind us of how much stronger we would be in this critical fight if we “seek national security ahead of partisan advantage.”

Senator Lieberman your remarks are your views and most all Americans would agree. However, your Democrat colleagues opposition to the war is not about the war it's about destroying President Bush. They know when America wins they lose. It's all about them.

The Democrat's great leader, Howard Dean: "I wish the president had paid more attention to the history of Iraq before we had gotten in there. The idea that we're going to win this war is just plain wrong."

Michael Reagan: "Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war!"