Newsgroup: it.cultura.militare
Titolo: il giorno del giudizio per i neocons e i loro supporters? (asia times)

Day of reckoning for US warmongers
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Tuesday's defeat in Connecticut's primary election of US
President George W Bush's "favorite Democrat", Senator Joe Lieberman,
by a little-known anti-war candidate marks a major setback to
neo-conservative hopes of maintaining bipartisan support for the
administration's aggressive foreign policies, particularly in the
Middle East.
Lieberman, the Democrats' vice-presidential candidate in the 2000
campaign, received strong support from prominent neo-conservatives,
especially those who had led the campaign to invade Iraq, in the
closing days of the primary battle, when it became clear that his
challenger, Ned Lamont, was on the verge of victory.
"What drives so many Democrats crazy about Lieberman is not
China Business Big Picture
simply his support for the Iraq war," complained Weekly Standard editor
and co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, William
Kristol, in response to polls last week showing that Lamont had pulled
ahead of the three-term incumbent by a large margin. "It's that he's
unashamedly pro-American."
In the event, Lieberman, who was backed in the primary by both Bill and
Hillary Clinton, among other prominent establishment Democrats, did not
do as poorly as last week's polls indicated, losing by a 48-52% vote.
The relative closeness of the final results clearly encouraged him to
announce, even as he conceded the primary on Tuesday night, that he
will run as an Independent against both Lamont and the Republican
candidate, Alan Schlesinger, in the general election in November.
Because Connecticut is strongly Democratic, Lieberman's hopes rest on
wooing a sufficient number of conservative Democrats and independents
to his side to overcome the backing of the state and national party
organizations for Lamont, a multimillionaire heir and businessman who
had never run for statewide office. Whether he can succeed -
particularly in light of the strong anti-incumbent mood in the country
- was a matter of much speculation in Washington on Wednesday.
Most analysts attributed Lamont's remarkable victory - it marked only
the third time in 25 years that an incumbent senator was defeated in a
primary election - to a combination of grassroots Democrats' revulsion
toward Bush and the Iraq war, in particular, and Lieberman's failure to
pay attention to the concerns of his constituents.
"There was a personal sense among Connecticut Democrats that his
national agenda is what matters to him and not Connecticut," a former
state party chairman told the Washington Post.
Nonetheless, Lamont's victory was hailed by critics of both Lieberman
and Bush's foreign policy as a potential watershed for both the
Democratic Party and the anti-war movement.
"His victory represents a growing voter revolt against the failed
policies and politics of the Bush administration and its congressional
enablers, particularly the debacle in Iraq," said Robert Borosage,
co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, which represents more
left-wing Democrats.
"After [Lieberman's] defeat, Democrats will show more backbone in
challenging the current disastrous course, and more Republicans will
look for ways to distance themselves from the president," he wrote in
TomPaine.com on Wednesday.
In particular, the primary result is likely to give pause to several
likely Democratic presidential aspirants. These include Senator Clinton
and Senator Joseph Biden, who, while critical of the administration's
competence in Iraq, have steadfastly resisted setting a timetable for
withdrawal.
They are also closer to the growing number of their congressional
colleagues who favor a relatively quick pullout beginning no later than
the end of this year - a position shared by 61% of the US public,
according to a CNN poll that was coincidentally released on Wednesday.
As noted by former Republican Connecticut senator Lowell Weicker, who
supported Lamont against Lieberman, the primary was a "referendum on
the Iraq war - not just for Connecticut but for the whole country".
That is precisely the concern of neo-conservatives like Kristol and
other backers of the Iraq war who see in Lieberman's defeat not only
the possible collapse of dwindling public support for the war, but also
the loss of the leading champion for their foreign-policy ideas in the
Democratic Party, which have been channeled mainly through the
Democratic Leadership Council, of which Lieberman is a longtime member
and former chairman.
To them, Lieberman is the lineal descendant of the late senator Henry M
"Scoop" Jackson, in whose office some of today's most influential
neo-conservatives, including former Defense Policy Board chairman
Richard Perle; Bush's top Middle East adviser, Elliot Abrams; Center
for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney; and Kristol himself got
their start.
Reliably liberal on civil and women's rights and the environment,
closely tied to conservative labor unions, Jackson, like Lieberman
today, was the standard-bearer of what became the neo-conservative wing
of the Democratic Party - staunchly pro-Israel, a steadfast supporter
of ever-higher defense budgets, and a strong believer in what was
euphemistically called "peace through strength".
"Until yesterday, Senator Joseph Lieberman was the most prominent
representative of the Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic party,"
wrote Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of
Democracy (FDD), a hardline pro-Israel group for which Lieberman has
served as a "distinguished adviser". "Today, that wing is down to its
last few feathers."
On Middle East issues, Lieberman has long favored close alignment with
Israel, although, unlike hardline neo-conservatives, he has leaned more
to the Labor Party than to the right-wing Likud.
In April, he became the first prominent Democrat to voice support for
an eventual US military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Lieberman's association with the FDD was typical of a number of
"bipartisan" organizations he helped create or sponsor that have been
dominated by neo-conservatives.
In 2002, for example, he became honorary co-chair of the Committee to
Liberate Iraq, an advocacy group created just a few months before the
US invasion by Kristol, Perle, former Central Intelligence Agency
director James Woolsey, and Eliot Cohen, among other prominent
neo-conservatives. In 1998, he co-sponsored with Republican Senator
John McCain the Iraq Liberation Act, which made the ouster of Saddam
Hussein official US policy.
Since 2004, he has served as co-chair of the Committee on the Present
Danger, another influential, mainly neo-conservative group created, in
Lieberman's words, to "form a bipartisan citizens' army, which is ready
to fight a war of ideas against our Islamist terrorist enemies, and to
send a clear signal that their strategy to deceive, demoralize and
divide America will not succeed". Other board members are Woolsey,
Perle, Cohen and Gaffney.
As the Iraq war became increasingly unpopular over the past year,
Lieberman, to the frustration and fury of many of his party colleagues,
served as the administration's chief Democratic defender.
In a column he published in the Wall Street Journal last autumn - and
which was subsequently cited repeatedly by top administration
officials, including Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney - he
criticized fellow Democrats who favored withdrawal, arguing that "we
undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril".
Indeed, so favorably was Lieberman regarded in the White House that, as
he was leaving the well of the House of Representatives after his 2005
state of the union address, Bush embraced Lieberman and planted a kiss
on his cheek.
For most Connecticut Democrats, it turned out to be the kiss of death.

sbagliato ng perdono!

 sbagliato ng perdono!
sbagliassi solo quello...
-- 
 > saranno 3 o 4 anni che la mia quota di letture in inglese cinese
 > coreano e russo ha superato quella di quelle in italiano.
     (il barone poliglotta)