Lieberman Creates New Imaginary Foe: Al Qaeda in Iran

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 11:09 AM on April 3, 2008.

We’ve seen more than a few instances of late in which John McCain has made comments about foreign policy that didn’t make any sense, only to have Joe Lieberman intervene, whisper in his ear, and walk the Republican presidential candidate back a bit. It’s easy to get the sense that while McCain is confused about current events, Lieberman is at least vaguely aware of reality. His judgment is clearly wrong, but there’s still some attachment to reality.

But maybe this assumption is off-base, too. Consider Lieberman’s criticisms of Barack Obama on (where else?) Fox News yesterday. (Jane Hamsher has the video.)

“[L]et me say generally that Sen. Obama doesn’t come to this debate with a lot of credibility. Basically on the question of Iraq, John McCain has had the guts to stand out on his own arguing for what he thought was right. And it turned out that he was right about the surge working to improve conditions in Iraq.

“If we did what Sen. Obama wanted us to do last year, Al-Qaeda in Iran would be in control of Iraq today. The whole Middle East would be in turmoil and American security and credibility would be jeopardized.

“On the specific question of the 100 years, I think that’s an unfortunate example of the way Sen. Obama has used it, of playing political gotcha with a national security question.

“If you look at what Sen. McCain said, in that exchange, in a town-hall meeting I believe it was in New Hampshire, he wasn’t talking about a long war. He’d like to see our troops — as many of them as possible — come home as soon as possible from Iraq.

“But the fact is we’re going to need, as we have after every conflict we’ve been in — World War II, Korea, etc., we’re going want to leave troops there to secure the peace that our soldiers have won. It’s clear that’s what he meant.”

It’s hard not to chuckle a bit hearing Lieberman criticize Barack Obama’s “credibility” on Iraq. Not only was Obama right about the war, but nearly everything Lieberman said after the criticism was utterly ridiculous.

First, Lieberman’s take on history is simply mistaken. Second, his argument that the surge has worked is transparently silly.

But the real gem here is Lieberman’s argument that if we had left Iraq a year ago, “al Qaeda in Iran would be in control of Iraq today.”

I realize the Senate’s Three Stooges — McCain, Lieberman, and Graham — have been embarrassingly confused about the basics in the Middle East lately, but I’d hoped that Lieberman would be aware of the fact that there’s no such thing as “al Qaeda in Iran.” Iran is Shiite, al Qaeda is Sunni. Lieberman creating a new terrorist group — while attacking the credibility of a colleague who’s been right all along — isn’t exactly reassuring.

It’s possible that Lieberman knows this, and simply misspoke. Maybe he meant to say “al Qaeda in Iraq” and it came out “al Qaeda in Iran.” During a television interview, it’s easy to make a mistake like this.

But even if we give Lieberman the benefit of the doubt, his comments to Fox News are still nonsense. There’s simply no way AQI could take "control" of Iraq. It is, after all, a small, "fragmented, clandestine, non-Iraqi terrorist organization," which most Iraqis have already turned against.

As Joe Klein recently responded after McCain made an identical claim:

They’d be taking a country? Last time I checked, Iraq has a Shi’ite majority. McCain thinks the Shi’ites–the Mahdi Army, the Badr Corps (and yes, the Iranians)–would allow a small group of Sunni extremists to take over? In fact, as noted above, the vast majority of indigenous Iraqi Sunnis aren’t too thrilled about the AQI presence in their country, either.

The reality is AQI has no real allies in Iraq. The Kurds have no use for them, the Shiite majority has no use for murderous Sunni jihadists running around their country, and Sunnis have been rising up against AQI since before the "surge" even began. If we left, al Qaeda would "take" Iraq? Not in this reality, it won't.

So, either Lieberman was creating a new terrorist group that doesn’t exist, or he doesn’t understand the basics of what’s going in Iraq after more than five years of war.

Sure, Joe, remind us again about how those who got the war right from the start don’t “come to this debate with a lot of credibility.”

Tagged as: iran, iraq, lieberman, terrorism, al qaeda, obama, mccain

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.