Liberals And Left To War Over Iran?

[Purveyor]

After noisy battles over federal bailouts, Supreme Court appointments and health care reform, Iran has emerged as the latest Rorschach test for an already politicized chattering class to stake out talking points. For Michael Steele and the Republican National Committee, Iran's holocaust-denying president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad no doubt offers a cartoon villain nonpareil to feature against the Democrats in the upcoming mid-term congressional election commercials. But file that one under coming attractions for 2010. If you're looking for more immediate entertainment, how about an intra-Democratic donnybrook, the likes of which may rival the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003?

After Iran formally acknowledged last week the existence of a previously undeclared nuclear enrichment facility, the hawks had a collective fit. Senators Joe Lieberman (D-Ct.) and Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) (along with Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona)got themselves a headline by firing off a joint call for the United States to "do whatever it takes to stop Iran's nuclear breakout." But support for taking a hard line approach included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as well as Rep. Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, Howard Berman, both liberal Democrats.

Richard Cohn of the Washington Post, gave voice to all of this liberal hawkishness when he suggested in a Tuesday column with the title "Time to Act Like a President" that the U.S. might need to obliterate Iran's underground nuclear enrichment facilities before it's too late.

"These Persians lie like a rug," he wrote. (Yes, he actually wrote that line.) "No one should believe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran seems intent on developing a nuclear weapons program and the missiles capable of delivering them. This -- not the public revelations of a known installation -- is the real crisis, possibly one that can only end in war."

When one of the Washington Post's (mostly) house liberals starts sounding like a foreign policy hawk) from the National Review, something's up with the Democrats. And so it is: The rift over foreign policy between liberals and the left which opened during the Iraq debate in 2002 was out of view during Barack Obama's run for president against John McCain. But (temporarily) forgive and forget didn't mean that old suspicions didn't linger. They were back on display after Secretary of State Clinton's warning last week that crippling sanctions might be necessary if Tehran keeps stonewalling.

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CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/29/blogs/coopscorner/entry5351563.shtml

[ixion]

1. I've always been anti-war, and that continues

through to the present day, irregardless of who is in the WH.

[Daveparts still]

2. There is no such thing as a Pro-War Liberal

anymore than there is a pro-social program conservative. American Liberals have never favored war. These people may call themselves Liberals or the media may describe them as liberals but it is just not so.


"Don't forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars." FDR

"I would rather have peace in the world than be President."
Harry Truman

"I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours." John Kennedy

"The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution." John Kennedy