Lieberman & Cheney Inc.

Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney have it wrong for two reasons as they lead the charge in a strategy of accusing Connecticut’s Democratic voters with a willingness wave the white flag and cut and run on the war on terror. Increasing opposition to the Iraq war helped give Sen. Lieberman’s challenger, Ned Lamont, an upset victory over the incumbent senator.

Here are Sen. Lieberman’s words in Waterbury, Conn., as he campaigned as an independent to reclaim his seat: “If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It will strengthen them, and they will strike again.”

Vice President Cheney called the Lieberman defeat a “purge” and said it was “a perhaps unfortunate and significant development from the standpoint of the Democratic Party.” He said that the voters who supported Mr. Lamont’s antiwar platform were giving “the Al Qaida types” exactly what they wanted, to “break the will of the American people in terms of our ability stay in the fight and complete the task.” He went on that the rejection of Sen. Lieberman seemed to suggest that Democratic party’s dominant view was “the basic, fundamental notion that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in the conflict and be safe here at home, which clearly we won’t – we can’t be.”

Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, chimed in, saying that what he coyly renamed the “Defeat-o-crat Party” that “once stood for strength now stands for retreat and defeat.”

Their strategy is clear: They are trying to recast an electoral defeat and a rising tide of opposition to the Iraq war as reluctance to engage in coping with radical Moslem terrorism.

In taking this line, they ignore the historical fact that the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq had nothing to do with the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The Iraq war was based on the false assumptions that Saddam Hussein played some part in the 9/11 disaster and had a vast arsenal of nuclear and biological weapons. The dragged-out war and occupation have been distractions from the almost forgotten war in Afghanistan and from the vital task of tracking down Osama bin Laden and wiping out his Al Qaida terrorist conspiracy.

Lumping together the Iraq invasion and the terrorist attacks as the war on terror not only perverts historical facts. It also may well be bad politics. The Bush administration seems, ever so slowly, to sense that “staying the course” is not an adequate policy for the deepening Iraq quagmire as it slides toward full-scale civil war. It makes less and less political sense for the administration to brand as weaklings and traitors the growing mass of Americans who want to help find a way out of the mess.