This is today's New Dem Daily (10/17/01) . Sen. Joe Lieberman is the 
immediate past  chair of the national DLC.   His speech is at 
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=106&subid=122&contentid=3851.  Please 
let us know what you think.

Earlier this week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) made a thoughtful speech about 
the success of New Democrats in reviving their party's traditional 
commitment to a "foreign policy that was values-based and fully engaged, a 
defense policy that was muscular and modern, and an economic policy that 
was internationalist." Indeed, Lieberman suggested that the Bush 
Administration has moved in a similar centrist direction in its 
impressively unifying response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 
eschewing its previous tendency towards unilateralism and a values-neutral 
"realism."

But Lieberman made news in his address to the fall conference of the New 
Democrat Network by openly saying what many Americans have privately 
concluded during the last month: the logic of the President's 
well-articulated position on the scope of the war on terrorism means that 
we cannot necessarily limit military action to Afghanistan. In Lieberman's 
words, we must at some point become "unyielding in our demands that 
countries like Syria and Iran end their support of terrorism before we will 
contemplate working with them." Moreover, said Lieberman, "it should make 
us unflinching in our determination to remove Saddam Hussein from power in 
Iraq before he, emboldened by September 11, strikes at us with weapons of 
mass destruction."

Lieberman is one of the few elected officials from either party to publicly 
connect the dots between our proclaimed war on any form of terrorism "with 
global reach," and the obvious existence of a Middle Eastern rogue state 
that is sponsoring terrorism, pursuing weapons of mass destruction, 
continuing to threaten its neighbors, and is dedicated to the elimination 
of the U.S. presence in the region -- much of it necessitated, of course, 
by Iraq's continued behavior. The President has eloquently and repeatedly 
said any country that is not on our side in the war on terrorism must be 
treated as a "hostile power." By any measure, Iraq is a supremely hostile 
power that shares every anti-American impulse of both Al Qaeda and the 
Taliban, while having far superior means for attacking us. How can Iraq 
possibly be treated as irrelevant to this struggle? How can we possibly 
demand that friendly regimes in the region decisively side with us, while 
we ignore Iraq?

Unfortunately, there have been several signals from the Administration that 
the U.S. might shrink from the broader task of fighting terrorism -- even 
to the extent of leaving elements of the Taliban in power in Afghanistan -- 
if the more immediate task of capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and 
other top leaders of Al Qaeda can be accomplished. The logic seems to be 
that removing the Taliban, much less Saddam Hussein, from power could 
create a dangerous "power vacuum" in those countries, while destabilizing 
the international coalition against terrorism. This line of argument is 
reminiscent of the reasoning behind the decision in 1991 to leave Hussein 
in power in Iraq, followed by an unsuccessful sanctions regime and the 
permanent stationing of U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf region.

Whatever you think about that decision and its consequences, it's clear now 
that we cannot let excessive concern for political stability and 
coalition-building keep the United States from destroying the terrorist 
network and protecting our country from terrorist threats that continue 
every day. Surely we learned on September 11 that there are worse things in 
the world, and worse things in the Middle East, than "power vacuums." The 
Taliban, after all, was created in large part to bring order to 
Afghanistan, which led to its active sponsorship of violent disorder 
elsewhere, including our own country.

As for the anti-terrorist coalition, we should remember that coalitions are 
a means to an end, not ends in themselves. A coalition that cannot accept 
changes of regime in terrorist states, whether in Kabul or Baghdad, is not 
a terribly useful coalition to begin with. As Lieberman put it, "if it 
becomes necessary, as we hope it will not, we could benefit from a dose of 
the Administration's previous preference for unilateralism." As New 
Democrats have always argued, multilateralism is the preferred means in a 
post-Cold War world for the vindication of Americans' interests and values. 
But especially in the case of an attack on the United States itself, 
multilateralism should not become an excuse for inaction. Does this mean we 
have to go to war in Iraq? No, but it does mean the matter must remain open 
so long as the terrorist network still threatens us.

Non-military steps, including a different regime of "smart sanctions" that 
hit Saddam's thugs more than his already victimized citizenry, are 
possible. So, too, are military steps that could create truly autonomous 
Shiite and Kurdish regions in Iraq while leaving Saddam with a smaller 
domain. But the point to remember is this: we cannot treat the war on 
terrorism as a small skirmish in Afghanistan aimed solely at bin Laden and 
his closest associates. As Joe Lieberman rightly said: "Our fundamental 
principles are at least as much on the line in this war against terrorism 
as they were in our battles with Nazism and Communism during the last century."

Lieberman performed a valuable service in reminding Democrats of the 
heritage of tough-minded internationalism that characterized Democratic 
leaders like Truman and JFK during the post-World War II era. It's a 
heritage whose time has come once again.