What's Next?

Stanley Kurtz's piece at NRO is particularly worth reading today, following the announcement this morning about the terrorist plot to bring down airliners (which is chillingly similar to Operation Bojinka, the 1995 precursor to 9/11). He calls himself a gloomy hawk, because he believes much more killing is coming...

My concern is that our underlying foreign-policy dilemma calls for both hawkishness and gloom — and will for some time. The two worst-case scenarios are world-war abroad and nuclear terror at home. I fear we’re on a slow-motion track to both.

No, I don’t think our venture in Iraq has gotten us into this mess. I think this mess has gotten us into Iraq. And the mess will not go away, whatever we do. Our Islamist enemy has proven himself implacable — unwilling to relent in the face of either dovish or hawkish policies. That means we’re facing years — maybe decades — of inconclusive, on/off (mostly on) hot war, unless and until a nuclear terror strike, a major case of nuclear blackmail, or a nuclear clash among Middle Eastern states ushers in a radical new phase.

...The West is on a collision course with Iran. There will either be a preemptive war against Iran’s nuclear program, or an endless series of hot-and-cold war crises following Iran’s acquisition of a bomb. And an Iranian bomb means further nuclear proliferation to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as a balancing move by the big Sunni states. With all those Islamic bombs floating around, what are the chances the U.S. will avoid a nuclear terrorist strike over the long-term?

You don’t believe that dovishness and negotiations will fail? Just wait till President Hillary tries to buy off the Iranians with a “grand bargain.” Just wait till a nuclear Iran is unleashed to make further mischief. A seemingly futile and endless occupation of Lebanon once split Israel down the middle, breeding an entire generation of Israeli doves. Now Israel is a united nation of gloomy hawks, transformed by the repeated failure of every gesture of peace, and by the reality of their implacable foe. I’m betting that someday we’ll all be gloomy hawks, too. As for me, I’m already there.

(hat tip: Andrew Sullivan) I'm worried that we're on the verge of something terrible that should be apparent to us, but will only appear glaringly obvious after the fact. I think John Batchelor's column may be something prescient. I'm a big student of history -- and history essentially shows that people often make the same mistakes over and over.

Believeing that we need to come home from Iraq and that this will be a step toward solving our problems is a mistake. Yet many of our fellow citizens think this to be true. Never mind that we've tried this -- abandoning Beirut in 1986 after the barracks bombing, and abandoning Somalia after chaos led to casualties, and not pusuing al Qaeda on a war footing after Khobar towers... hell, take it all the way back to Tehran in 1979. Those students who stormed the U.S. embassy, supported by their fanatical government, committed an act of war against U.S. territory. What was our response? A quarter century has passed, and we're still arguing amongst ourselves how to deal with a death cult of fanatics who have hijacked their religion and glorify dying in a way that their supporters no longer fear death. Bernard Lewis' column earlier this week about August 22nd has me happy that I won't be in DC that day, but also elaborates the other point...

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

Keep in mind, as Donald Sensing notes, that the death toll from this bomb plot could have dwarfed 9/11 (hat tip: Instapundit). And keep in mind some of the other stories in the news right now. In light of all of this, maybe Jim Geraghty asks the right question...

NBC is quoting al-Jazeera about a report of a foiled hijacking of Qatar Airways plane.

Is today some sort of signifcant date? Did something happen in the past couple days that was the "go" signal around the world?

I don't know that we want to know the answer. I suppose we'll find out.

Lieberman's Loss

Well, the Democratic Party spoke last night in Connecticut. I think John Podhertz has it right...

Yes, I know polls have said for two years now that Democratic voters are overwhelmingly opposed to the war. Yes, I know Democratic politicians - with the exception of Joe Lieberman - never miss an opportunity to go after President Bush for his decision to go into Iraq and for his handling of the war.

But the weird little secret of the past couple of years is that when push comes to shove, Democrats in Washington have assented to the continuation of the war on Bush's terms. They have voted to fund it.

House Democrats voted against an immediate withdrawal. Senate Democrats even voted against a set timetable for withdrawal.

That's over now. The Democratic Party officially became the antiwar party last night.

The revolution won't be immediately apparent, because there's a midterm election in November and there are close races where Democratic politicians may need the flexibility to continue to talk like peaceniks and vote more hawkishly.

But that will be that. Democratic voters have now made it clear that there will be severe electoral consequences for anyone who doesn't toe the anti-war line, and toe the anti-war line they will.

That's bad enough for the party and the country -- recall that the Democrats' slide from majority status to being affiliated with Jimmy Carter came within a span of a dozen years. Carter's 1976 victory was the only time the Democrats controlled the White House between 1969 and 1993, and it only came about because Nixon got caught in Watergate (and even then, the peanut farmer barely held off Gerald Ford).

What happened? The Democrats became obsessed with being a peacenik anti-war party, and the public lacked any faith in their ability to handle external threats in a time when national security is important. The party was brought back from the brink by Bill Clinton after the Cold War ended and national security was no longer accorded the same importance, but this was after losing a large group of voters outside the Northeast who used to like voting for people in the same party as John Kennedy and suddenly decided they didn't like pulling levers for the people in the same party as Ted Kennedy. This is why the GOP has had control of Congress for the last dozen years.

Keep in mind that nutroots moonbats supporting and pushing Lamont are basically demanding a withdrawal from Iraq, many of them opposed invading Afghanistan and lack anything approaching a coherent position on Iran, North Korea and the global war on terror, except that they oppose any and all measures taken by President Bush (if Karl Rove really wanted to screw with them, Bush would come out and ask Congress to gut the Patriot Act, just to screw with the folks on the left). Somehow, I'm not sure the American populace will find it comforting that we have an entire party that wants to give up, go home, and rely on the U.N. to make sure we're not attacked again.

I mentioned this to a colleague this morning -- maybe Karl Rove does have control over the minds of Democrats. GOP voters are pretty unhappy with Congress, and the best weapon Rove could offer was the horrifying vision of Nancy Pelosi in the Speaker's chair. This will make even the most angry Republicans sit up and take notice.

Unfortunately, what's good for the GOP's electoral prospects (and they should keep their mouths shut, because letting the other party set fire to their own home is smart politics) isn't good for the country. I don't agree with Joe Lieberman on a whole hell of a lot, but I like and respect him as a politician and a human being, and I admire his integrity and honesty if not his views. I imagine a lot of moderate Democrats feel terrible this morning -- and if Brendan Loy is any example, the Democratic Party will rue the day they did this...

I am no longer a Democrat.

I’ve been calling myself a Democrat since I was ten years old, when I marched around the schoolyard in fifth grade chanting “Jerry Brown! Jerry Brown!” and, later, played the part of Bill Clinton in a sixth-grade mock debate. At the age of 13, I threw my hands up in dismay when the GOP took over Congress. When I turned 18, I registered without hesitation as a Democrat. I proudly cast my ballot for Al Gore in 2000, and — somewhat less proudly — for John Kerry in 2004. In recent years, I’ve seen the “base” of the Democratic Party drifting away from sense and sanity, and at the same time, I’ve felt my own ideological compass pulled somewhat to the right by world events. Yet I remain profoundly uncomfortable with the Republican Party for a variety of reasons, and I’ve never much liked the idea of being an “independent,” considering it — with all due respect to those who wear the label proudly — something of a cop-out in many cases.

So I’ve continued to cling to the label of Democrat, and to the hope that the party would somehow save itself from the tired orthodoxies of its interest groups and the execrable excesses of its far-left wing. I’ve shaken my head at the irrational policies and irresponsible rhetoric coming from so many corners of the party, comforting myself with the thought that while Dennis Kucinich may be a nutjob and Al Sharpton may be a charlatan and Howard Dean may be an idiot and Dick Durbin may be, well, a dick, at least there’s still Joe Lieberman.

Lieberman stood for just about everything good in the Democratic Party, while shunning most of the bad. He was — he is — an honest, decent and rational progressive, a moral but not overly moralistic man, a loyal but not blindly loyal Democrat. He agreed with the party most of the time, but he was willing to disagree when he felt his collegues were wrong. He was also willing to challenge liberal orthodoxies when they needed to be challenged, a rare and crucial trait. Mind you, I don’t worship the man, and I haven’t always agreed with him. He was wrong on Terri Schiavo, for instance, and in his views on the entertainment industry he sometimes tiptoes uncomfortably far toward the line separating criticism from censorship (though, to his credit, he never actually crosses it). But he was — he is — usually right, especially on the big issues, particularly the global war on terrorism and the conflict in Iraq.

Perhaps, I told myself, despite the ascendancy of Nancy Pelosi, the Deaniacs and the Kos Kidz, perhaps Lieberman’s side could still somehow win the struggle for the party’s soul. As long as that hope remained viable, I could continue to be a Democrat. A “Lieberman Democrat,” I called myself, and I was proud.

But now the voters have spoken. Lieberman may still consider himself a Democrat — he says that, if elected as an independent, he’ll vote to organize with the Dems, and I believe him — but the Democrats don’t consider Lieberman a Democrat anymore.

...Well, if there’s no room in the Democratic Party for Joe Lieberman, then there’s no room in it for me.

So I’m done. I’m out. See ya later. Sayonara.

This might seem like an overreaction to a single primary result in a single state, but really, it’s just the straw that broke the donkey’s back. As I said, the Democratic Party and I have been drifting apart for some time now. I believe it began on a Tuesday morning in the fall of 2001; I can’t exactly remember the date, but let’s just say a certain catastrophic event happened which changed the world in the eyes of most people — but not of many liberals and Democrats. Oh, they were sad and mad, just like everybody else. But as the weeks and months wore on, I learned to my dismay that the far left didn’t see 9/11 as a world-changing event or a paradigm shift, but rather, just a minor historical blip that didn’t require any adjustments whatsoever to their worldview or their policy ideas. And as the months turned to years, I watched with even greater dismay as the Democratic Party establishment concluded that the best way to win elections was to drift ever closer to the poisonous views of the far left. When Dick Durbin compared American soldiers to Nazis back in 2005, I almost bid adieu to the party of FDR and JFK… almost. I started drafting a blog post much like this one, declaring that “I am no longer a Democrat,” but then thought better of it. There was still hope for the Democrats, still a possibility that the party would save itself. After all, there was still Joe Lieberman.

Well, I don’t see the point is holding out hope anymore. It’s official now: the Democrats have jumped off the cliff, and are in free fall toward a richly deserved oblivion.

(hat tip: Instapundit) Hey, if you're a moderate Dem, feel free to stay with the party. Just remember that you get to hang out with Michael Moore....

Let the resounding defeat of Senator Joe Lieberman send a cold shiver down the spine of every Democrat who supported the invasion of Iraq and who continues to support, in any way, this senseless, immoral, unwinnable war. Make no mistake about it: We, the majority of Americans, want this war ended — and we will actively work to defeat each and every one of you who does not support an immediate end to this war.

For the Dems who remain in the party, the voters in Connecticut have decided that there will be fewer people like Joe Lieberman and Brendan Loy and more people like Ned Lamont and Michael Moore. That seems like a bad idea, not just for Connecticut and the Democratic Party, but for the whole country.

The Connecticut Primary

The Connecticut primary is apparently getting really ugly. Check out this passage from Lanny Davis' article at the Journal -- and recall that Davis is a proud liberal who was Clinton's lawyer during a large chunk of Whitewater:

A friend of mine just returned from Connecticut, where he had spoken on several
occasions on behalf of Joe Lieberman. He happens to be a liberal antiwar
Democrat, just as I am. He is also a lawyer. He told me that within a day of a
Lamont event--where he asked the candidate some critical questions--some of his
clients were blitzed with emails attacking him and threatening boycotts of their
products if they did not drop him as their attorney. He has actually decided not
to return to Connecticut for the primary today; he is fearful for his physical
safety.

(hat tip: Instapundit) The funny part is, there's only one reason for liberals to vote against Lieberman if they weren't doing so prior to the Iraq War -- and that is his support for the war (if they were angry at Joe for some of his more moderate positions like chastising Hollywood for moral decay, they missed the boat on that three previous times). Lieberman's been far more supportive of Bush than almost anyone else in the Democratic Party, but he has been critical. It's just that he tends to be able to demonstrate that criticism doesn't have to be venemous or lead to an admission of defeat. He's honorable enough to understand the difference between substantive criticism and defeatism, and tends to err on the side of caution because he recognizes the greater stakes in the war (stakes that are greater than domestic politics).

In a nutshell, this primary is a referendum on whether the mainstream Democratic Party is worth trusting with national security. You can (and I'm sure many would argue that you should) criticize the Administration's handling of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the diplomatic efforts with regard to Iran and the current Isreali-Hisbollah war, and the greater war on terror. But that's not what this is about -- Lieberman's not in trouble for just being mildly critical, he's in trouble simply because he doesn't believe that gaining a political benefit is worth potentially losing a war.

For all of my (and many other conservatives) criticisms of John McCain, note that they don't have any real qualms about him on national security (okay, save immigration, but that's one issue where he and Bush are seemingly in total agreement). And one can argue that they should vote on that issue alone in 2008, if they view it as most important. And there's virtually no one in the field (save Rudy) who has the same cachet on the issue as McCain in the GOP primary (there may be better candidates, but not in terms of perception). McCain's and Guiliani's status as front-runners isn't because of moderates in the GOP agreeing with them on issues, it's because they trust them on this issue.

In this way, I'd actually breathe a sigh of relief if the Dems nominated Hillary (I know plenty of people probably dropped their coffee reading that). Even though I'm not sure I believe her, at least she advocates the right positions on the war at times. She's certainly far better on national security than Ketchup Boy or John Edwards or Al Gore, the other presumptive front-runners. That being said, the fact that mainstream Dems are annoyed with Hillary is bad enough. The idea that they would throw Joe Lieberman out is sickening. Ned Lamont's a joke candidate who has no position other than to advocate leaving Iraq right now (likely leaving some mysterious "international force" in place). If that's the best the Democrats can offer, we're in more trouble as a country than I thought.