For more than seven months this year, Joe Lieberman had labored to earn his party’s nomination for re-election to a fourth term as U.S senator from Connecticut. It was a hard-fought campaign, not unlike those we have seen here in Maine in primaries for similar statewide offices. But when it had become clear that he had lost, Joe Lieberman strode to the podium, not to give a gracious concession speech, ending with a promise of support in November for his fellow Democrat, Ned Lamont, but to announce that he would run against his own party’s nominee as an “Independent Democrat”. Say it ain’t so, Joe. We expected better of you.

The party whose nominee you will now run against had helped pluck you from obscurity to statewide prominence. Its volunteers have tirelessly distributed leaflets door-to-door for you, raised money for you, and watched the polls on election nights for you, because they thought you shared a commitment to a common dream. Six years ago, you were lifted from semi-obscurity by the party’s nominee for President, Al Gore, to a position of national pre-eminence you probably never dreamed of 30 years ago: vice presidential nominee of the oldest political party in America. Now you say to the Democratic Party, whose voters have democratically chosen a different nominee, that you will abandon it. Say it ain’t so, Joe. We expected better of you.

Joe, the decision by Connecticut voters to replace you was not an easy choice for them to make. The primary factor in choosing a new nominee was your continued support for George Bush’s endless war in Iraq. Ned Lamont has suggested that we declare victory (after all, Saddam Hussein is in a jail cell, not a presidential palace) and announce our orderly withdrawal of forces over the next 12 months, since Americans have no particular stake in which side, Sunni or Shia, wins the ongoing civil war there. I understand that you disagree with that approach and prefer an infinite commitment of American blood and treasure to a nation whose citizens, in polls, say they want us to leave.

While I think you’re wrong, I had thought, until the night after the primary, that your approach was along the lines of “While, in hindsight, we shouldn’t have invaded, we owe it to the Iraqi people to find a better exit than simply announcing we’ll be gone in 12 months.” That approach has a superficial appeal, although I’ve never heard any of its proponents say just what that ultimate exit strategy will be. Our effort of over three years of trying to build Iraqi military and security forces up has looked like running in place in quicksand to me.

But on the evening of Aug. 9, Joe, I listened to Larry King ask you on CNN whether, knowing what you do now, would you have still urged an invasion of Iraq. I thought of the 2,600 dead American soldiers, the proof that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, the proof that Saddam had no links to Al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks, the news that, in Baghdad alone, 100 corpses a day were arriving at the morgues due to the civil war there, the diminished prestige that America now has world-wide, the inability of the American military to respond to crises elsewhere, the $319 billion that has been spent or earmarked for Iraq, with no end in sight, the over 20,000 American soldiers who have lost limbs or sanity or health due to this war, the poll showing that 47 percent of Iraqis feel that attacks on American soldiers are justified, and the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian dead, and I yearned to hear your humble answer. I yearned to hear that, unlike George Bush, you have learned from history and are not condemned to repeat it.

But I heard no modest answer that, in retrospect, we should have waited for Saddam to die, just as we waited for Stalin and Mao to die. No, you said you would do it all again and said, effectively, that the invasion of Iraq was worth the price that other people’s children continue to pay. Say it ain’t so, Joe. Only ego could make you say something this foolish. Only ego could leave you so stubbornly sticking to your original position. As I thought of your boisterous performance in your earlier debate with Ned Lamont, I realized that my instincts then were right. You increase the volume of your words to make up for their lack of wisdom.

Joe, that lack of wisdom was nowhere more evident than when you said, after the foiled hijacking plot in England, that leaving Iraq 12 months from now would be “taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England.” I never thought you would stoop to so crassly linking your opponent to terrorism. Joe, a wiser politician might wonder whether the continued American military presence in Iraq both trains terrorists and inspires them to revenge. One doesn’t fight a mosquito infestation by enlarging the swamp.

Now, Joe, you say you will run as an independent out of loyalty to state and country. I suggest a baser loyalty is at play. I remember in 2000 that you ran both for re-election as senator and for vice president.

Had the Supreme Court not snatched away your and Al Gore’s victory, you would have had to resign as senator and see a Republican governor, John Rowland (later indicted for corruption), replace you with a Republican senator, potentially changing the party balance of the Senate.

That decision, to run for two offices, showed neither loyalty to state, nor country, nor party, but only a loyalty to self.

When you run as an independent, do not call your ticket the “Independent Democrat” slate, but simply “The Joe Lieberman Party.” You will be assured of your own vote, at least.

Arthur Greif is an attorney practicing in Bangor.