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This is today's New Dem Daily (10/17/01) . Sen. Joe Lieberman is the immediate past chair of the national DLC. His speech is at http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=106&subid=122&contentid=3851. Please let us know what you think. Earlier this week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) made a thoughtful speech about the success of New Democrats in reviving their party's traditional commitment to a "foreign policy that was values-based and fully engaged, a defense policy that was muscular and modern, and an economic policy that was internationalist." Indeed, Lieberman suggested that the Bush Administration has moved in a similar centrist direction in its impressively unifying response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, eschewing its previous tendency towards unilateralism and a values-neutral "realism." But Lieberman made news in his address to the fall conference of the New Democrat Network by openly saying what many Americans have privately concluded during the last month: the logic of the President's well-articulated position on the scope of the war on terrorism means that we cannot necessarily limit military action to Afghanistan. In Lieberman's words, we must at some point become "unyielding in our demands that countries like Syria and Iran end their support of terrorism before we will contemplate working with them." Moreover, said Lieberman, "it should make us unflinching in our determination to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq before he, emboldened by September 11, strikes at us with weapons of mass destruction." Lieberman is one of the few elected officials from either party to publicly connect the dots between our proclaimed war on any form of terrorism "with global reach," and the obvious existence of a Middle Eastern rogue state that is sponsoring terrorism, pursuing weapons of mass destruction, continuing to threaten its neighbors, and is dedicated to the elimination of the U.S. presence in the region -- much of it necessitated, of course, by Iraq's continued behavior. The President has eloquently and repeatedly said any country that is not on our side in the war on terrorism must be treated as a "hostile power." By any measure, Iraq is a supremely hostile power that shares every anti-American impulse of both Al Qaeda and the Taliban, while having far superior means for attacking us. How can Iraq possibly be treated as irrelevant to this struggle? How can we possibly demand that friendly regimes in the region decisively side with us, while we ignore Iraq? Unfortunately, there have been several signals from the Administration that the U.S. might shrink from the broader task of fighting terrorism -- even to the extent of leaving elements of the Taliban in power in Afghanistan -- if the more immediate task of capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and other top leaders of Al Qaeda can be accomplished. The logic seems to be that removing the Taliban, much less Saddam Hussein, from power could create a dangerous "power vacuum" in those countries, while destabilizing the international coalition against terrorism. This line of argument is reminiscent of the reasoning behind the decision in 1991 to leave Hussein in power in Iraq, followed by an unsuccessful sanctions regime and the permanent stationing of U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf region. Whatever you think about that decision and its consequences, it's clear now that we cannot let excessive concern for political stability and coalition-building keep the United States from destroying the terrorist network and protecting our country from terrorist threats that continue every day. Surely we learned on September 11 that there are worse things in the world, and worse things in the Middle East, than "power vacuums." The Taliban, after all, was created in large part to bring order to Afghanistan, which led to its active sponsorship of violent disorder elsewhere, including our own country. As for the anti-terrorist coalition, we should remember that coalitions are a means to an end, not ends in themselves. A coalition that cannot accept changes of regime in terrorist states, whether in Kabul or Baghdad, is not a terribly useful coalition to begin with. As Lieberman put it, "if it becomes necessary, as we hope it will not, we could benefit from a dose of the Administration's previous preference for unilateralism." As New Democrats have always argued, multilateralism is the preferred means in a post-Cold War world for the vindication of Americans' interests and values. But especially in the case of an attack on the United States itself, multilateralism should not become an excuse for inaction. Does this mean we have to go to war in Iraq? No, but it does mean the matter must remain open so long as the terrorist network still threatens us. Non-military steps, including a different regime of "smart sanctions" that hit Saddam's thugs more than his already victimized citizenry, are possible. So, too, are military steps that could create truly autonomous Shiite and Kurdish regions in Iraq while leaving Saddam with a smaller domain. But the point to remember is this: we cannot treat the war on terrorism as a small skirmish in Afghanistan aimed solely at bin Laden and his closest associates. As Joe Lieberman rightly said: "Our fundamental principles are at least as much on the line in this war against terrorism as they were in our battles with Nazism and Communism during the last century." Lieberman performed a valuable service in reminding Democrats of the heritage of tough-minded internationalism that characterized Democratic leaders like Truman and JFK during the post-World War II era. It's a heritage whose time has come once again.
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