There has not been, to my knowledge, a lot of examination of the reason for Lieberman’s semi-suicidal embrace of the right’s Iraq war and that whole narrative (including the “undermining the President” bit). Juan Cole brings it up on his blog:
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Lieberman had bought into the Rove Master Narrative. Bush went to war electively, thus very conveniently making himself a war president and therefore above criticism. He got a second term that way despite having been among the worst presidents in history. Lieberman ceded to Bush a kind of invulnerability on the most important Republican Party SNAFU since its policies contributed to the onset of the Great Depression. Why would a Democrat do that?
The answer is that on foreign policy issues, Lieberman is a Neoconservative, and supports the Iraq project for the same reasons that Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz (then number 3 and 2 respectively at the Pentagon) did. He tried to put himself in the tradition of Hubert Humphrey, but he was more honest when he also listed Scoop Jackson. Perle and the rest started on Jackson’s staff.
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I would suggest further that the reason Lieberman is a neo-con on foreign policy is Israel.
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2 Responses
I see the parallel you are drawing here and it seems reasonable. However, why does Israel mean ‘neocon’? If I were to guess, means U.S. catspaw for geo-political reasons?
Doyle
Doyle,
I think in this case there is a commonality of goals. Lieberman, I suspect is a Zionist of the armchair warrior kind, and not a neocon in the tradition of the “Project for a New American Century”. He has thrown his lot in with them because their ambitions for mischief in the Arab world coincides with his desire for pursuing what the lobby believes is in the interest of Israel.
Of course there are Zionists among the neocons too.