Poor Joe

He's a failure at the one thing he sees as his greatest strength. Iraq is an utter fiasco that has undoubtedly hurt our security (how? let me count the ways--exhausted, overextended military; alienated allies; emboldened enemies; attention diverted from other crises...), yet Loserman refuses to wake up and smell the Willy Pete. Perhaps this is due to Joe's uncritical embrace of faith-based foreign policy long before the neocons' rise to prominence.

American Prospect Online - A Hawk for All Seasons

Leave aside Lieberman's unseemly eagerness to paint his opponent as a jihadist cat’s-paw. There's a bigger problem with his pitch: Lieberman isn't strong on defense at all.

Sure, Lieberman's a hawk. Since arriving in the Senate in 1989, he rarely met a U.S. military action he didn't like. And on numerous occasions, Lieberman's enthusiasm for war has led to enhanced national security, as with his votes for the 1991 Gulf War and the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. What's more, he also stood up for commendable interventions, like the NATO campaigns in the Balkans during the 1990s, when not many Democrats were willing to lend them unequivocal support.

But belligerence isn't the same thing as wisdom -- and hawkishness does not always lead to a safer America. Lieberman has, of course, been the most vigorous Democratic defender of the Iraq quagmire, which has laid waste to U.S. defense capabilities in a way that not even Vietnam was able to. Many have asked why Lieberman has been the lone Democratic hawk to face a vigorous liberal primary challenge, and the answer is surely complex. But part of it may be that while other Democratic hawks emphasize the risks of withdrawal, Lieberman is unique among Democrats in defending the wisdom of the invasion itself, a position so inexplicable as to be nearly insane. Indeed, Lieberman's judgment on defense questions is like that of a stopped clock: the hawkish position, applied consistently, has to be right sooner or later. What Lieberman is asking Connecticut -- and the Democratic Party, and the country -- to accept is that the only secure America is a bellicose America. And that position is a guarantee of future Iraqs.

[snip]

Fervor, clouded thinking, and an instinctual hawkishness [in other words, faith-based foreign policy] are about all that Liebermanism amounts to.

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