Martin Peretz Speaks

In the Wall Street Journal, no less, about Joe Lieberman. Where to start with the TNR editor?

We have been here before. Left-wing Democrats are once again fielding single-issue "peace candidates," and the one in Connecticut, like several in the 1970s, is a middle-aged patrician, seeking office de haut en bas, and almost entirely because he can.

The domestic reaction to the Vietnam War was convulsive, but less so for the Iraq War, because fewer, volunteer troops are involved this time. So, without so many social convulsions, we will see how American democracy functions, slowly, but completely, when faced with unworkable policies. In a real sense we haven't been here before - close with Vietnam - but we are breaking new ground. Peretz's faux-populist stand against Lamont is laughable, when Peretz has been more than happy to promote the candidacies of other rich folks when their policies align with his views.

At least in this sense, Mr. Lamont comes to this campaign for the U.S. Senate from absolutely nowhere--and it shows in his pulpy statements on public issues.

...Mr. Lamont has almost no experience in public life. He was a cable television entrepreneur, a run-of-the-mill contemporary commercant with unusually easy access to capital.

When others feared to run, Lamont had the courage to step forward. Good for him. So, the business class of Connecticut is 'absolutely nowhere?' Interesting! I wonder where somewhere is?

But he does have one issue, and it is Iraq. He grasps little of the complexities of his issue, but then this, too, is true of the genus of the peace candidate. Peace candidates know only one thing, and that is why people vote for them. I know the type well.

Lamont is more than a peace candidate. He supports Social Security, for example, unlike a certain other Senatorial candidate from Connecticut. It isn't just about Iraq.

It was then that people like Joe Lieberman emerged, muscular on defense, assertive in foreign policy, genuinely liberal on social and economic matters, but not doctrinaire on regulatory issues.

But a politician with absolutely no loyalty to the Democratic Party.

But he has also been brave, and bravery is a rare trait in politicians, especially in states that are really true-blue or, for that matter, really true-red. The blogosphere Democrats, whose victory Mr. Lamont's will be if Mr. Lamont wins, have made Iraq the litmus test for incumbents. There are many reasonable, and even correct, reproofs that one may have for the conduct of the war. They are, to be sure, all retrospective. But one fault cannot be attributed to the U.S., and that is that we are on the wrong side. We are at war in a just cause, to protect the vulnerable masses of the country from the helter-skelter ideological and religious mass-murderers in their midst. Our enemies are not progressive peasants as was imagined three and four decades ago.

Lieberman hasn't been brave, he's been complacent. Not all reproofs were retrospective - in 2003, various authorities on Iraq and its culture feared we'd be getting into a mess we couldn't extricate ourselves from. We may not be on the wrong side, but we have to know whom to fight, when, and how. By creating many more terrorists than existed before, through our ham-handed actions, we've erased any benefit we might have had by being on the right side. If we linger in Iraq, the terrorists win.

If Mr. Lieberman goes down, the thought-enforcers of the left will target other centrists as if the center was the locus of a terrible heresy, an emphasis on national strength. Of course, they cannot touch Hillary Clinton, who lists rightward and then leftward so dexterously that she eludes positioning. Not so Mr. Lieberman. He does not camouflage his opinions. He does not play for safety, which is why he is now unsafe.

Along with other neocons, Mr. Peretz's vision of the center has weakened us, not made us stronger. Hillary Clinton is absolutely vulnerable, as long as she persists in supporting staying in Iraq. No amount 'it takes a village' babble will save her as long as she supports this war for losers. Lieberman has played for safety all along - why else the independent run? - but the ground has shifted under him. Other centrists need not be vulnerable, as long as they are not as pig-headedly stupid as Lieberman has been.

Now Mr. Lamont's views are also not camouflaged. They are just simpleminded. Here, for instance, is his take on what should be done about Iran's nuclear-weapons venture: "We should work diplomatically and aggressively to give them reasons why they don't need to build a bomb, to give them incentives. We have to engage in very aggressive diplomacy. I'd like to bring in allies when we can. I'd like to use carrots as well as sticks to see if we can change the nature of the debate." Oh, I see. He thinks the problem is that they do not understand, and so we should explain things to them, and then they will do the right thing. It is a fortunate world that Mr. Lamont lives in, but it is not the real one. Anyway, this sort of plying is precisely what has been going on for years, and to no good effect. Mr. Lamont continues that "Lieberman is the one who keeps talking about keeping the military option on the table." And what is so plainly wrong with that? Would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be more agreeable if he thought that we had disposed of the military option in favor of more country club behavior?

How does Mr. Peretz know that negotiations with the Iranians have been fruitless? Because the result isn't exactly what Mr. Peretz desired? Who, then, is detached from the real world? Who gets everything they want, except maybe Paris Hilton?

Finally, the contest in Connecticut tomorrow is about two views of the world. Mr. Lamont's view is that there are very few antagonists whom we cannot mollify or conciliate. Let's call this process by its correct name: appeasement. The Greenwich entrepreneur might call it "incentivization." Mr. Lieberman's view is that there are actually enemies who, intoxicated by millennial delusions, are not open to rational and reciprocal arbitration.

No, the battle is between a traitor to the Democratic Party, and a loyalist - it's not about worldviews. I'm sure every day is Munich 1938 in Mr. Peretz's world, but matters are a bit more mundane in the real world.

The Lamont ascendancy, if that is what it is, means nothing other than that the left is trying, and in places succeeding, to take back the Democratic Party. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Maxine Waters have stumped for Mr. Lamont. As I say, we have been here before. Ned Lamont is Karl Rove's dream come true. If he, and others of his stripe, carry the day, the Democratic party will lose the future, and deservedly.

Well, fight back, and fairly Mr. Peretz. If the Iraq War is so popular, then let your allies run candidates supporting it. Then, we'll have a fair vetting of views, something that was sadly lacking in Vietnam, and so far, with Iraq as well.