Joe Lieberman’s op-ed in this morning’s WSJ is a study in contrasts. Sen. Lieberman’s op-ed starts with him alluding to the muscular foreign policy of FDR, Truman and JFK. Here’s what Sen. Lieberman said about those men’s foreign policy credentials:

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that “it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom.”

It’s unfortunate that the Democratic Party doesn’t stand for those principles anymore. JFK’s “we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom” has been replaced by ‘The war is lost’, “there is no military solution” and let’s talk with Chavez, Castro and Ahmadinejad‘. Sen. Lieberman pinpoints when things started going downhill for the Democratic Party:

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and “inordinate fear of communism” represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America’s fault.

Starting in the late Sixties, the Democratic Party was dominated by pacifists like McGovern and Carter, Clinton and Kerry. In essence, they became the party ‘every burden is too heavy, every challenge too difficult, every enemy too time-consuming.’

The saddest thing is that they’re on the verge of nominating someone who is both utterly clueless about foreign policy and a pacifist. Sen. Obama has said that he isn’t against all wars, that he’s just against this war. Why should we believe him? What proof do we have of that? Nothing in his actions says that he’s prepared to take the fight to our enemies.

God help us if we elect a pacifist during wartime, especially this pacifist.

It’s worth noting that Obama won’t give our intelligence agencies the tools they need to prevent future terrorist attacks:

I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty. There is no reason why telephone companies should be given blanket immunity to cover violations of the rights of the American people - we must reaffirm that no one in this country is above the law.

“We can give our intelligence and law enforcement community the powers they need to track down and take out terrorists without undermining our commitment to the rule of law, or our basic rights and liberties. That is why I am proud to cosponsor several amendments that protect our privacy while making sure we have the power to track down and take out terrorists.

“This Administration continues to use a politics of fear to advance a political agenda. It is time for this politics of fear to end. We are trying to protect the American people, not special interests like the telecommunications industry. We are trying to ensure that we don’t sacrifice our liberty in pursuit of security, and it is past time for the Administration to join us in that effort.”

In other words, he won’t give immunity to the telecommunications companies that help gather surveillance. If these telecommunications companies don’t get some sort of protection, then they’ll refuse to help us.

Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party’s left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.

In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right – regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.

As the saying goes, anyone who isn’t willing to stand up to MoveOn.org crazies won’t stand up to militant crazies like Chavez and Ahmadinejad.

It’s sad to see Democrats cave into the wishes of the MoveOn crazies. They used to have a spine. They’ve traded in that spine for a cash cow. True to recent history, Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Technorati Tags: Joe Lieberman, JFK, FDR, Truman, Foreign Policy, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Obama, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog