Senator Lieberman: Have You No Shame, No Decency?

My title paraphrases the question posed to Joseph McCarthy by Joseph Welch in 1954: "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

I have had a long-standing admiration for Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. I confess that some of this admiration was based on his religious ideology and on his liberal-progressive political stances. My first inkling that I would be disappointed, eventually, was when he ran against anti-Iraqi war, Ned Lamont, promising, "I am confident that the situation is improving enough on the ground that by the end of this year, we will begin to draw down significant numbers of American troops," he said in October 2006, "and by the end of the next year more than half of the troops who are there now will be home." Within weeks after winning that election, of course, Lieberman was joining with Sen. John McCain, his friend and ideological ally, in support of sending 30,000 additional American troops to Iraq -- and bringing exactly none home.

Was he lying when he offered that false but comforting assurance in the heat of a Senate campaign? Was he simply unable to distinguish between reality and his own propaganda?

Now he has done it again, possibly selling his soul to ingratiate himself with his new friend and ideological associate John McCain. For what? A possible cabinet post in a McCain administration? Consideration as a possible vice-presidential choice? Whatever the reason, whatever the rationale, Senator Lieberman's decision to deliver the keynote address at John Hagee's Christians United for Israel meeting

In case people do not know about Rev. Hagee or the fact that, after courting his political support, John McCain announced he was severing any relation with the popular Texas minister who has suggested that God sent Hitler and the Holocaust in order to have Jews forced to settle in Israel. Rev. Hagee is an equal-opportunity hater, calling the Roman Catholic Church "the Great Whore", alleging those who are Muslims, ""those who live by the Qur'an have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews... it teaches that very clearly." As to Jews, the message is contradictory, sort of.

Hagee claims to be a supporter of the State of Israel. But his motives are that which most Jews and Gentiles would consider unusual! He believes, and preaches sentiments to be found on conspiratorial websites promoting the debunked Protocols of the Elders of Zion and also the beliefs of the KKK and American Neo-Nazi groups such as Christian Identity. John Hagee states that Nazi persecution of Jews was God's way of driving Jews to Israel, blames Jews for the death of Jesus Christ, holds that Jews cannot get into heaven, calls liberal Jews "poisoned" and "spiritually blind", believes that the preemptive nuclear attack on Iran that he advocates will lead to a Mideast conflict that will kill most Jews in Israel and perhaps also lead to the Nuclear destruction of the East and West coasts of the United States of America His support, and the support of many of his followers, has been courted by Senator McCain and with other former contenders for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

In short, inherent among many of the so-called Christian Zionists, are views which support a "strong" Israel, oppose all Israel peace negotiations with Palestinians that would make land concessions, rhetorically demonize and antagonize the Muslim world, label Islam as a "wicked" religion and slander Mohammed, and hope that an American or Israeli attack on Iran will touch off a widespread conflict leading both to the Rapture and to the death of most Israeli Jews or even most Jews worldwide.

This, then, is the man to whom Joe Lieberman gives respect and honor. Listen to the Rev. Hagee explain that the fundamentalist Anti-Christ is a Jewish homosexual, a "fierce" gay Jew who "slaughter one-third of the Earth's population" and "make Adolph Hitler look like a choirboy."

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I may have misjudged Joe Lieberman, he may yet come to his senses, But as of now, his behavior in inexcusable.

Senator, have you no sense of decency?