Senator Lieberman On Iraq

Senator Joe Lieberman has issued a press release of his remarks made yesterday at a speech before AIPAC. Once again, Senator Lieberman hits precisely the right notes:

Increasingly, the debate over our foreign policy is becoming so polarized, so partisan, so bound up in the battles we are having here in Washington, that it seems blind to the real battle outside of America, the challenge of our time from the Islamist extremists who want to destroy us all, who attacked America on September 11, 2001, and intend to do so again.

. . . .
Given all the mistakes made in Iraq, all of the setbacks and disappointments, I understand how well-intentioned people have come to disagree about the war. . .
But I continue to believe that a withdrawal from Iraq, as many are now urging, would be a victory for Iran and Al Qaeda and the cause of Islamist extremism, and a catastrophic defeat for the United States and all who desire peace and security and freedom in the Middle East and here at home.

We are now implementing a new plan for success in Iraq, with new troops under a new commander. That is why I have called for a six-month truce in the political wars in Washington to give that new plan, those new troops, and that new commander a chance to succeed. And I call on all who care about security and peace in the Middle East, and security from terrorism here at home, to do the same.
. . . .
There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism. There is something profoundly wrong when there is so much distrust of our intelligence community that some Americans doubt the plain and ominous facts about the threat to us posed by Iran. And there is something profoundly wrong when, in the face of attacks by radical Islam, we think we can find safety and stability by pulling back, by talking to and accommodating our enemies, and abandoning our friends and allies.

Some of this wrong-headed thinking about the world is happening because we're in a political climate where, for many people, when George Bush says "yes," their reflex reaction is to say "no." That is unacceptable.
. . . .
It's time to step back and remember that there is a real enemy out there—an enemy violently opposed to human rights and women's rights and gay rights and the basic political rights of each one of us.

It's time to step back and see that America's interests lie with the interests of free people everywhere, and that the response to radical Islam is not to abandon them but to stand with them—whether they are in Baghdad or Teheran or Jerusalem. . . .

Read the entire speech here.

Hattip: Powerline