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IRAN SPECIFICS WATCH: JOE LIEBERMAN EDITION. Joe Lieberman takes to the Wall Street Journal -- where else? -- this morning to whip up fears about Iran's Proxy war" against not only the United States, but also Islamic moderates in Lebanon, Palestine, and Afghanistan. They're very busy, those Iranians.
every leader has a responsibility to acknowledge the evidence that the U.S. military has now put before us: The Iranian government, by its actions, has all but declared war on us and our allies in the Middle East.America now has a solemn responsibility to utilize the instruments of our national power to convince Tehran to change its behavior, including the immediate cessation of its training and equipping extremists who are killing our troops.Most of this work must be done by our diplomats, military and intelligence operatives in the field. But Iran's increasingly brazen behavior also presents a test of our political leadership here at home. When Congress reconvenes next week, all of us who are privileged to serve there should set aside whatever partisan or ideological differences divide us to send a clear, strong and unified message to Tehran that it must stop everything it is doing to bring about the death of American service members in Iraq.It is of course everyone's hope that diplomacy alone can achieve this goal. Iran's activities inside Iraq were the central issue raised by the U.S. ambassador to Iraq in his historic meeting with Iranian representatives in Baghdad this May. However, as Gen. Bergner said on Monday, "There does not seem to be any follow-through on the commitments that Iran has made to work with Iraq in addressing the destabilizing security issues here." The fact is, any diplomacy with Iran is more likely to be effective if it is backed by a credible threat of force--credible in the dual sense that we mean it, and the Iranians believe it.So when Congress reconvenes next week, all members should set aside party and ideology to tell Iran that, if they don't stop doing these things we can't prove they're doing, we will invade them. Spectacular plan. All the more so given that we aren't merely conducting a proxy way against Iran, but funding direct covert operations to topple their regime. How odd, given all that, that Iran still seems to think it can pursue its interests in the region even when they're contrary to our preferred outcomes. But in the end, Lieberman's war-mongering on Iran isn't even about Iran. It's about Iraq. "I hope the new revelations about Iran's behavior will also temper the enthusiasm of some of those in Congress who are advocating the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq," Lieberman writes. "Iran's purpose in sponsoring attacks on American soldiers, after all, is clear: It hopes to push the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan, so that its proxies can then dominate these states. Tehran knows that an American retreat under fire would send an unmistakable message throughout the region that Iran is on the rise and America is on the run. That would be a disaster for the region and the U.S." So Lieberman would like us to remain indefinitely in a Middle Eastern country, projecting our forces across the world so as to compete for dominance with a hostile state neighboring Iraq and sharing both a dominant religion and ethnic group. It's a contest we can't win. It's a war, and a bind, Lieberman helped get us into. And it's gotten so bad that he can't think of any ways to win it, only to expand it.--Ezra Klein
