Bill Clinton Admits It Wasn’t All About The WMDS + Bill On Lieberman

by John Hawkins | August 15, 2006 2:22 pm

These comments by Bill Clinton, about Joe Lieberman, have been getting some attention[1]:

“Lieberman has characterized his loss – and the need for his subsequent independent run – as liberals in the party purging those with the Lieberman-Clinton position of progressiveness in domestic politics and strong national security credentials.

“Well, if I were Joe and I was running as an independent, that’s what I’d say, too,” Clinton said.

“But that’s not quite right. That is, there were almost no Democrats who agreed with his position, which was, ‘I want to attack Iraq whether or not they have weapons of mass destruction.'”

“His position is the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld position, which was, ‘Does it matter if they have weapons? None of this matters. … This is a big, important priority, and 9/11 gives us the way of attacking and deposing Saddam.'”

First of all, it’s interesting to hear Clinton admit this, because it’s exactly the opposite of what liberals have been saying for years. At first, when it looked like we weren’t going to find any WMDs in Iraq, everyone on the left proclaimed, retroactively, that Bush told America it was only about the WMDs. Conservatives responded that yes, Bush had discussed WMDs extensively, but it wasn’t just about the WMDs. It was about WMDS AND Saddam’s hostility to America, his connections to Al-Qaeda, his support of terrorism, the danger he posed to the region, and spreading democracy — among other things. But now, after it has been revealed that yes, we did find more than 500 pre-Gulf War WMDS in Iraq, I guess Clinton thinks that meme no longer works. So, now it’s time to go in a different direction.

Of course, the real problem the Democrats have with Joe Lieberman has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. The real problem is that Joe Lieberman is one of the last of a dying breed: Democrats, at the national level, who are serious about national security.

The overwhelming majority of Democrats up on Capitol Hill are knee jerk, pacifistic internationalists, who aren’t inclined to support defending America unless they get permission from Kofi Annan and Company. That’s why, in most cases, when you see a Democrat taking a hawkish position these days, you start looking for the political angle because they’re sure not taking a tough stand on national security out of conviction.

Joe Lieberman isn’t cut out of that mold. He’s more like Scoop Jackson, John Kennedy, Zell Miller, and Harry Truman on defense. Whatever his other faults may be, when Joe Lieberman talks about going after the enemies of America, he means it in the same way that Republicans do. This is why the Kos crowd can forgive other ostensibly “pro-war” Democrats, but they can’t stand Joe. Joe doesn’t blame America first, he doesn’t sit around wondering why the terrorists hate us, he doesn’t compare the terrorists to the “Minutemen,” and he believes we should use force to defend ourselves if necessary. To have that attitude — and mean it — is becoming an unforgivable sin in today’s Democratic Party — and that’s bad for the country.