Lieberman Talks About McCain, Hamas, and the Democrats

Senator Joe Lieberman

Last week you were standing next to Sen. McCain when he was asked about making a campaign issue out of the Hamas adviser saying "we like Obama and hope that he will win the election." Sen. McCain called it a "legitimate" issue and has gone so far as to call the comment an "endorsement" of Obama. Many others have called it a smear of Obama. What do you believe?
It's a legitimate issue, and I know John agrees with this, but you've got to be careful with how you talk about it. He's not saying, and I would never say, that Sen. Obama shared anything with Hamas—their goals, their values. But it is worth noting that a spokesperson for Hamas essentially said that they would look forward to having Sen. Obama as the president. Sen. Obama obviously didn't seek that. But it raises a question that leads to the larger points of direct conflict, a difference in policy. Sen. Obama said he'd sit down with the leader of Iran, said he might consider sitting down with Kim Jong Il, with [Hugo] Chavez. If you sit down with our enemies without precondition, without any sense that they and we both had something to gain from it, we're going to end up with fewer allies in the world. And can begin to seem to curry some kind of favor with Ahmadinejad. You would have a drastic, terrible effect on our Arab allies, not to mention Israel.

Do you think that's actually what he was suggesting, or is it his attempt to not to rule out conversations with our enemies as an antidote to the Bush foreign policy?
In my opinion, you're not going to have productive discussions with the current fanatical leadership of Iran unless they have something to fear. The Europeans have negotiated with the Iranians for more than two years over nuclear weapons and produced absolutely nothing. We're squeezing them somewhat economically with sanctions, and that's very important. The premise of going to sit down with somebody is that they are subject to sweet rationality and that once they're confronted with that they'll change. There are some people in the world who are just plain evil or are just plain our enemies. Ahmadinejad constantly shouts, "Death to America." And unless there's some reason to believe that there's something constructive that would come out of the discussion, the end point of it would be that it would raise his stature.

This week House GOP leader John Boehner mischaracterized Sen. Obama's comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Obama called the conflict a "constant sore." Boehner put out a release saying Obama characterized Israel as a "constant sore." What are your thoughts on this?
I thought that [Boehner's comments were] without foundation. It seems to me [Obama] was talking about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. I mean, he's had a pro-Israel voting record, and he's made statements, including particularly in the last month when people have been raising questions that are certainly pro-Israel. I don't mean to suggest that [Obama's] in any way anti-Israel. I mean to suggest that he's said some things in this campaign about dealing with Iran and even about retreating from Iraq that would have the effect of destabilizing the Middle East, which would be bad for all of our allies in the Middle East, both Arab and Israeli.

As a person of influence in the Jewish community, do you and would you repudiate this type of campaigning?
Yes, for sure.

In President Bush's speech in Israel, he spoke about Iran, what he characterized as the dangers of appeasement, and then took it a step further to the Hitler analogy. Was that appropriate?
I thought it was a very strong speech, and I thought that part in particular was moving. I was not thinking that it was an attack on Sen. Obama. I thought the president was speaking in the context of the 60th anniversary of modern Israel, which, after all, grew up after the Holocaust. I thought his main audience was Israel, which is living in fear that Iran is controlled by a regime that is building nuclear weapons and is committed to not just fighting Israel but extinguishing Israel. I thought he was also speaking to Iran, quite consistent to a ratcheting up of the statements about Iran from the administration, including the military, over the last month or so. History teaches us that there are just certain people that you cannot negotiate into reasonable, lawful behavior. We operate sometimes on the assumption, and I think some of this is involved in the statement Sen. Obama made, that our powers of rationality and persuasion can change the mind of anyone. But history tells us there are people who are not subject to forces of reason and to decency. I would never say that we should never talk to Iran. I hope and pray for the day when there's some leadership there we feel we can talk to.