Now, Mr. Lieberman is talking straight and making sense. He just got back from a visit to Iraq and made some positive comments on the progress being made there. The difficulties, he says, boil down to a simple idea:
It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. . . . If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.
I’m very happy to see a US Senator being so straightforward. I’m a supporter of the possibilities the Iraq war has created to spread liberty; nevertheless, I find myself thinking very negatively about the war after being exposed to constant, overwhelmingly negative media reports day after day. To hear testimony from somebody who was there helps to clear away the twisted, narrow perspective that the media machine has decided to give to us here in the States (not to mention what’s cranked out overseas). So—and I didn’t ever think I’d be saying this—thanks Senator Lieberman for being (at least in this one case) a reasonable fellow who has reenlivened the “spark of freedom” within me.