Totalitarianism and History

Not that I'm incredibly surprised about any of this, but if Larry Kudlow's account of a recent Joe Lieberman talk is even vaguely accurate, the man has some odd ideas about American history:

Mr. Lieberman talked at some length about how the Democratic party has completely departed from the strong national-security principles of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy. He said those leaders clearly understood the need to fight totalitarian dictators and regimes, and that they possessed the moral clarity that can separate friends from enemies in the long-run battle to promote freedom and democracy.

The the Lieberman/McCain/Bush/NRO line on current foreign policy issues, you would think from this description that FDR wisely saw that Hitler and Stalin were just two sides of the same totalitarian coin and determined to fight them both simultaneously. Or that Harry Truman recognized that the U.S.S.R. was a new kind of threat that could not be deterred and launched a preventive strike against Soviet positions. Or that John Kennedy recognized that there was no chance to strike a deal with a butcher like Khruschev over Cuba and we had no choice but to go to war.

It's certainly true that Liebermanism has some affinities for the Kennedy administration's screw-ups -- its over-enthusiasm for getting the United States more deeply involved in Vietnam or its decision to greenlight the Bay of Pigs fiasco, but those hardly seem like comparisons one wants to draw.

Comments

I can see Joe being McCain's Veep. He's deluded enough to accept that position.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Posted by matt | May 20, 2008 8:34 AM

I can see Joe being McCain's Veep. He's deluded enough to accept that position.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Posted by matt | May 20, 2008 8:35 AM

sorry for the double post...

Posted by matt | May 20, 2008 8:36 AM

More of this "Scoop" Jackson worshiping bullsh*t.

Posted by El Cid | May 20, 2008 8:46 AM

Ah yes, the moral clarity that propped up Mobutu and Osama and fought to bring down Allende and Moussadegh.

One can, conceivably, defend the alliances the US made during the cold war as the compromises that must be made in the name of national security. (I'm skeptical on pretty much all of the above fronts, but it's an argument that intelligent people can have.) The idea that this was done with "moral clarity" premised on shared support of "freedom and democracy" is blitheringly idiotic.

Posted by DivGuy | May 20, 2008 8:50 AM

I just read Packer's article in the New Yorker. It doesn't break too much new ground, but this account of Lieberman's talk really, honestly makes Lieberman out to be the most orthodox Bushite Republican around right now, certainly in comparison to the folks in Packer's piece.

Posted by Marshall | May 20, 2008 8:54 AM

It is easy to picture people such as Lieberman applying electrodes to a prisoner's testicles, waterboarding or slamming them upside the skull with a phone book. Their contempt and rage for perceived enemies is barely contained and given the chance to induce a bit of pain and agony they'd be willing torturers. Funny how the most vociferous "defenders" of the homeland missed multiple conflicts and several chances to join the fray by enlisting. Now they want to denigrate even the most cautious diplomatic entreaties in favor of "Do as we demand or suffer deprivations and eventual death for your evil ways". Face it, most of them are clinically insane. Columbine Kids elected to public office.

Posted by steve duncan | May 20, 2008 8:58 AM

this account of Lieberman's talk really, honestly makes Lieberman out to be the most orthodox Bushite Republican around right now, certainly in comparison to the folks in Packer's piece.

That's because Lieberman is one of the few Bush-supporting politicians who doesn't have to worry about his job and doesn't have to worry about the future viability of the Republican party's "brand." The rest are busy trying to paper over the unpopular policies they've been supporting for the past 7 years to avoid being tarred with the stain Bush for the next generation.

Posted by Tyro | May 20, 2008 9:01 AM

steve duncan: "It is easy to picture people such as Lieberman applying electrodes to a prisoner's testicles, waterboarding or slamming them upside the skull with a phone book."

Naw, he probably doesn't have what it takes to actually do the dirty work himself. A lot easier to talk about torturing terrorists from the safety of the Senate chamber without having to actually grapple with the horrifying consequences of his positions.

Posted by Korha | May 20, 2008 9:15 AM

"That's because Lieberman is one of the few Bush-supporting politicians who doesn't have to worry about his job....."
Posted by Tyro | May 20, 2008 9:01 AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't pretend to know much about Connecticut politics. A large number of people wanted to see Lamont in the Senate. Lieberman has a job in the Senate for 4 more years. Beyond that I'd hope even some of his supporters see him for the craven opportunist he is.
During an Obama term there's also hope Democrats will have enough support and momentum in Congress Lieberman is rendered impotent and irrelevant. God forbid Dems have 59 Senators and united opposition from Republicans on the most important votes. Maybe Obama should offer several Republican Senators from "purple" states cabinet positions? Especially if there are any with Dems guvs having appointment power.

Posted by steve duncan | May 20, 2008 9:19 AM

Korha, I agree with you that Lieberman might not personally get his hands dirty. Hence the qualifier "people such as". I do think as a group many on the right would leap at the chance to spend a few days in our rendition houses of horror. Can't you picture Sean Hannity, Gordon Liddy, Michael Savage and others of their ilk eagerly letting loose of the leash holding back a mad dog? They dream of these things.

Posted by steve duncan | May 20, 2008 9:32 AM

Or that Harry Truman recognized that the U.S.S.R. was a new kind of threat that could not be deterred and launched a preventive strike against Soviet positions.

I've long thought that the best explanation for the Bush / Cheney policy is that it is a direct descendant from that which would have beem implemented by Douglas MacArthur.

I'm a little puzzled that more has not been made of this. Bush and Cheney basically want to strut around the Mac did.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | May 20, 2008 9:33 AM

"Beyond that I'd hope even some of his supporters see him for the craven opportunist he is."

I guess that one should elaborate. The position Lieberman takes are nutty, not opportunistic. The skill displayed when he was downplaying this nuttery during election campaign qualifies as "craven opportunism", but perhaps it was "unmitigated gall and duplicity" instead? Perhaps it deserves a poll.

In particular, he insisted that war is only one of many issues and there are so many important issues on which he is a total Democrat, dare I say, liberal, and now he insists that the war is the only important issue, because he did not articulate any other reason to support McCain.

By the way, this bunch, Bolton, McCain, Lieberman, have such twisted world view that it is hard to unscramble. As when they advocate democracy in Arab countries, with a modest exceptions made for parties that could actually get a majority. So we prop dictators as a necessary interim measure, and since they are there, and experience, we ask them to do some odd jobs for us torturing people. Someone has to attach electrodes to genitals within a larger war against the evil, after all.

Posted by piotr | May 20, 2008 9:47 AM

Don't forget Kennedy having Diem assassinated. If Joe becomes McCain's VP, if I were Maliki, I wouldn't sleep with the light off.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Diem_dead.jpg

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | May 20, 2008 10:02 AM

piotr, much of what our politicians do is because we "swing a big bat". Were we on the losing end of a war (see Keitel, Wilhelm--Kaltenbrunner, Ernst--Frick, Wilhelm--Streicher, Julius, et al) Bush, Cheney and a slew of others would stand trial for war crimes and suffer appropriately for their transgressions. Since the U.S. makes the rules (for now) Bushco is immune to justice.

I'd like to see an auction for the nails it would require to erect their gallows. I'd pay a tidy sum for but one if winning the bid allowed you to personally drive it home. There'd have to be several millions realized for such a venture.

Posted by steve duncan | May 20, 2008 10:06 AM

What's the issue here? Lieberman is a "Scoop Jackson Democrat", in the sense of "notorious apologist for Maoist China".

Posted by dsquared | May 20, 2008 10:17 AM

Sublime commentary. Perhaps it should all be common sense but you have a way of deftly knocking out the keystone of these utter and dangerous idiocies.

I still want to know whether you think Iran represents an existential threat to Israel.

Posted by Chris Dornan | May 20, 2008 10:25 AM

Don't forget Kennedy having Diem assassinated. If Joe becomes McCain's VP, if I were Maliki, I wouldn't sleep with the light off.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Diem_dead.jpg

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | May 20, 2008 10:35 AM

but if Larry Kudlow's account of a recent Joe Lieberman talk is even vaguely accurate,

Kudlow's about as good with foreign policy as he has been with economics, i.e. wrong most of the time. It's not surprising that he's post some nonsense from Jokin' Schmoe.

Posted by LFC | May 20, 2008 10:45 AM

Joe's been doing the Peruvian nose candy with me lately.

Posted by Larry Kudlow | May 20, 2008 10:59 AM

Of course, Jeffrey forgets it was the liberals, Harriman, Jim's son Mike, Hilsman, et al; who were all for Diem's removal. The Kennedy admin.
relying on Halberstam, forced John Richardson's
'burning' and removal from Saigon Station. Interestingly, this was all of a piece with Kennedy's plan to withdraw advisors from Vietnam;
you see how well that worked out. An analogue can be seen in last year's futile lobbying campaign on behalf of Allawi; whose party is the Iraqi branch of the Moslem Brotherhood. So if Obama were to get it, Maliki would be right to
'sleep with the lights on'. Of course, if we had followed Matthew's advice, Basra would still be firmly in Sadr's hands, and Anbar/Dulaimi would still be in Salafi/Wahhabi hands.

Posted by narciso | May 20, 2008 11:05 AM

Re Diem

Interestingly enough, it was none other then Ho Chi Minh who, in an interview given shortly before his death, said that he failed to understand why the US connived in the removal of Diem who he considered far more competent then the latters' replacements.

Posted by SLC | May 20, 2008 11:15 AM

This bit from Kudlow's article is just too much:

Interestingly, Lieberman noted that in the 2000 presidential campaign George W. Bush was closer to the isolationist position while Al Gore was the internationalist. Of course, that has gotten completely reversed over the last seven-and-a-half years: Bush has become the great internationalist while the Democrats have sounded more and more isolationist.

Memo to the conservatives: "internationalist" does not mean "eager to invade other countries at the drop of a hat." And willingness to engage in diplomacy does not make one an isolationist.

Posted by My Alter Ego | May 20, 2008 12:00 PM

"I've long thought that the best explanation for the Bush / Cheney policy is that it is a direct descendant from that which would have beem implemented by Douglas MacArthur.

I'm a little puzzled that more has not been made of this. Bush and Cheney basically want to strut around the Mac did.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | May 20, 2008 9:33 AM"

I've never thought of that. There's probably something to that. After all, Buckley founded the National Review as a direct rebuke to Eisenhower-style Republican conservatism in favor of the likes of McCarthy. MacArthur wanted to have the Republican presidential nomination but luckily Republicans were smart enough back then to pick the smart, competent, sane general instead of the crazy, egotistical asshole general. The National Review helped to intellectually shape a generation of conservatives (especially those who were imbued with the loud and immature moralism of vulgar Marxism before turning to conservatism like NR writers Kirk and Burnham) in a more radical, anti-intellectual and crazy direction.

Posted by Reality Man | May 20, 2008 12:04 PM

Kennedy is the last Democrat that is percieved by the public to have been good at Foreign policy. At one time some people believed that the Democratic party had to support the Iraq war in order to once again be a party trusted by the public of national security. The war turned out to be a huge mistake and it now appears that Obama will restore the party's image by having opposed the Iraq war and by hopefully doing a good job as president.

Posted by Craig | May 20, 2008 12:08 PM

narciso, I don't think you've understood the thread. (Or I haven't. That's always possible.) The thread is about a purported sea change between some dim and distant competent foreign policy liberal past and today. Examples abound of how what was left behind wasn't all that hot, security-wise.

Kennedy has been painted as the last great liberal president in foreign policy. The thread has mentioned some of his not so great actions.

Averell Harriman was a liberal the way pole cats are cats.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | May 20, 2008 3:33 PM

Joe Lieberman is a great American, and one who has more foreign policy sense in his fingernail parings than resides in the brains of Matt and his amen corner.

Posted by Harry Truman | May 20, 2008 4:56 PM

The whiney guy has definitly gone to the Dark Side.

Posted by Danny C | May 20, 2008 8:52 PM

"I still want to know whether you think Iran represents an existential threat to Israel."

Me, too. But it's never going to happen, because Matt is an intellectual coward, like his mentor, Josh Marshall.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 20, 2008 10:20 PM

No I understood quite clearly. The liberals in the Kennedy administration (Bowles, Harriman, Stevenson) were quite willing to depose right wing figures; some like Trujillo certainly deserved it; Diem, less so. Ironically, that action led to a direct military intervention in a few years; as did the more obvious one in Vietnam. Yet they were unwilling to follow through in Cuba; so we ended up with the 'nuclear chicken' that was the Cuban missile crisis.

Posted by narciso | May 20, 2008 10:32 PM