In the confrontational, climactic scene of the the classic 1964 Cold War film Seven Days in May, President Jordan Lyman barks a question in frustration at Gen. James Mattoon Scott, the leader of a right-wing military conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. “Why in the name of God don’t you have any faith in the system of government you’re so hell-bent to protect?” says the president, slamming his hand on the table. A much toned down version of this drama plays out today, too. Only now it’s the generals — the top brass, no less — using strong language to remind politicians of the delicacies of the American republic.

Perhaps taking their cues from Congress or neocon websites, GOP presidential candidates long ago settled on a battle cry against President Obama’s national security record: the almost universal theme that the President should do to what the generals tell him. Texas governor Rick Perry said it about Afghanistan and Iraq. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said it about reinstating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (many generals were for the repeal). Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said he would do what the generals want on Afghanistan, before backing down. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich went the other way, reversing his support for civilian control in favor of wondering why Obama “overrule(d) all his generals.”

But during a press availability while traveling in Saudia Arabia, the top U.S. military officer sang a different tune, using harsh language to describe the talking point about deferring national security and war decisions to the generals. Asked about the line, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said:

I’ll probably make news with this but I find some of those articles about divergence or control of the generals to be kind of offensive to me.

And here’s why. One of the things that makes us as a military profession in a democracy is civilian rule. Our civilian leaders are under no obligation to accept our advice; and that’s what it is. Its advice. It’s military judgments, it’s alternatives, it’s options. And at the end of the day, our system is built on the fact that it will be our civilian leaders who make that decision and I don’t find that in any way to challenge my manhood, nor my position. In fact, if it were the opposite, I think we should all be concerned.

Dempsey isn’t the first top military officer to tell politicians about the chain-of-command recently. This summer, the last two Joint Chiefs chairmen, Gen. David Petraeus, since retired and leading the CIA, and the now-retired Admiral Michael Mullen, explained the concept in hearings on Capitol Hill.

Last night speaking with campaign donors at the home of American Jewish Congress Chairman Jack Rosen, President Obama noted that his administration has been an ardent supporter of Israel’s security:

“I try not to pat myself too much on the back, but this administration has done more for the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration,” Obama said. “We don’t compromise when it comes to Israel’s security … and that will continue.”

It should come as no surprise that the right-wing pro-Israel types who believe Obama hates Israel immediately began to hyperventilate. “[N]o one, not [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu nor most American Jews, is fooled by Obama’s boasting,” Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin wrote today.

While Netanyahu has refused to weigh in publicly on this issue, his defense chief has. “I can hardly remember a better period” of American support for Israel, Israeli Defense Minster Ehud Barak said in August. Just last month, Barak said of Obama, “I don’t think that anyone can raise any question mark about the devotion of this president to the security of Israel.” Another Israeli official has said that U.S.-Israeli cooperation on Iran intelligence is “even better than under President Bush.” Even Bush administration hawk Eliott Abrams agreed that “it’s the best military-to-military relationship ever.”

And when asked on Fox News this morning about Obama’s comment, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said “it is true”:

LIEBERMAN: I will say first that Israel has been fortunate that presidents and members of Congress of both parties, by and large have been very strong supporters of the security of the state of Israel because of our alliance and our shared values in democracy and all the rest. It is true, and you’ll hear this from a lot of Israeli leaders, that President Obama has been very good on supporting Israel’s military and its security.

Watch it:

“Clearly the Obama administration remains deeply committed to the U.S.-Israel alliance,” AIPAC spokesman Josh Block said last year, “and supporting aid to Israel and deepening our military cooperation is just one aspect of that.”

Today during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Iraq, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) chastised the Obama administration for failing to get an agreement with the Iraqis to maintain a U.S. troop presence there past 2011. Of course, much of the criticism coming from Iraq war dead-enders like McCain about President Obama’s decision has ignored entirely that the Iraqis also played a role in this outcome.

“The truth is that this administration was committed to the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and they made it happen,” McCain said, not hiding his displeasure. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta then had to remind McCain that Iraq is a democracy, it’s their country, and ultimately the decision wasn’t entirely the president’s and that the administration would not accept a deal in which U.S. troops staying past 2011 were not given legal immunity:

PANETTA: Senator McCain, that’s just simply not true. I guess you can believe that and I respect your beliefs…but that’s not how it happened. This is about negotiating with a sovereign country. An independent country, this was about their needs. This is not about us telling them what we’re going to do for them or what they’re going to have to do. … This is about their country making a decision as to what is necessary here. [...]

This is a country where you could very well be engaging in combat operations. If you’re going to engage in those kind of operations, you’re going to engage in CT operations, you absolutely have to have immunities and those immunities have to be granted by a SOFA agreement. I was not about to have our troops go there in place without those immunities.

Panetta also had to remind Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who expressed hope that the Iraqis would grant U.S. troops immunity before the withdrawal deadline. “Again I would stress to you Senator Lieberman,” Panetta said, “It’s got to be a two way street.” Later in the hearing, committee chair Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) tried to clear up all the confusion:

LEVIN: Did Iraq ever request U.S. trainers or other troops remain in Iraq after December 31 and if so in what number did they request and were they willing to grant legal protection, immunity to our troops?

PANETTA: There was no such request. …

Watch the clips:

For all the braying by the Senate’s top three hawks about how the U.S. wasn’t doing enough to oust Libyan dictator Col. Muammar Qaddafi from power, one might be surprised to learn that exactly two years ago, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) were in Tripoli meeting with the erratic leader and giving him assurances that relations between the nations were on the mend.

According to a leaked August 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks recounting the Senators’ junket, the neoconservative Connecticut Senator captured the dynamic of aligning with a brutal dictator:

Lieberman called Libya an important ally in the war on terrorism, noting that common enemies sometimes make better friends.

Qaddafi’s history as a top enemy of the U.S. stretched back decades, but his change of heart came quickly after the U.S. invaded Iraq under the pretense of Saddam Hussein’s development of weapons of mass destruction. Hawks seized on Libya’s détente with the West as a sign that Bush’s tough actions in Iraq were having a ripple effect, though patently not, as Iraq War boosters had predicted, with regard to democratic reforms. “We never would have guessed ten years ago that we would be sitting in Tripoli, being welcomed by a son of Muammar al-Qaddafi,” said Lieberman, according to the leaked cable.

The three Senate hawks discussed in detail the Qaddafi regime’s security needs with Libyas National Security Adviser, Qaddafi’s son Muatassim. According to the cable:

5.(C) Senator McCain assured Muatassim that the United States wanted to provide Libya with the equipment it needs for its [a Libyan security program]. He stated that he understood Libya’s requests regarding the rehabilitation of its eight C130s [a transport plane] and pledged to see what he could do to move things forward in Congress. He encouraged Muatassim to keep in mind the long-term perspective of bilateral security engagement and to remember that small obstacles will emerge from time to time that can be overcome.

At another point, McCain and Graham reiterated pledges to push to fulfill the Qaddafi regime requests at the Pentagon and on the Hill:

Senators McCain and Graham conveyed the U.S. interest in continuing the progress of the bilateral relationship and pledged to try to resolve the C130 issue with Congress and Defense Secretary Gates.

But 18 months later, Qaddafi reacted to mass protests by mobilizing his military, bringing down international condemnation and, in just a few short weeks, a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force. The U.S. and it’s allies in NATO and elsewhere rained down bombs to hold Qaddafi’s forces at bay as rebels organized a coherent opposition council. As the rebels went on the offensive, Western and allied bombers lent them air support with surveillance and tactical bombings.

When suddenly — as if Qaddafi’s repression had emerged from out of the blue — McCain and his clique returned to their perches as the staunchest advocates of U.S. military action in Liyba, taking to the airwaves to lament the U.S.’s mere three-week delay to build international consensus and calling for arming the Libyan rebels.

Just as the political winds around Qaddafi seemed to determine the senators’ stand — for him when it was convenient as a win for the Bush administration, and against him when the uprising began and in the month it took to rally the Security Council — McCain and Graham took a curious political shot at Obama just as Qaddafi’s regime crumbled. In a statement, they thanked everyone but the U.S. Starting with the Libyans themselves, they went on to

also commend our British, French, and other allies, as well as our Arab partners, especially Qatar and the UAE, for their leadership in this conflict. Americans can be proud of the role our country has played in helping to defeat Qaddafi, but we regret that this success was so long in coming due to the failure of the United States to employ the full weight of our airpower.

One wonders if August 2009 was too soon to press Qaddafi on the well-being of his people: there’s no hint of democratic reforms, or indeed the Libyan people, in the WikiLeaks cable.

Appearing on Fox News, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told host Sean Hannity that President Obama has encouraged Israel’s enemies and made it more difficult for the Jewish State to make peace with its neighbors. Baited by Hannity into discussing one of his favorite topics — how anything short of right-wing orthodoxy is not pro-Israel enough — Lieberman jumped at the opportunity to accuse Obama of essentially giving moral support to opponents of Israel:

HANNITY: I worry about the President. I didn’t feel he treated the prime minister [of Israel] correctly, when he came to town the first time. I didn’t like when he sprung on him, they got to go back to ’67 borders. I wanted to get your thoughts.

LIEBERMAN: I agree with you. I think the President is not anti-Israel. I think he’s pro-Israel but I think he’s handled the relationship with Israel in a way that has encouraged Israel’s enemies and really unsettled the Israelis. Because the Israelis have one really good friend in the world, it’s us, it’s natural and of course, they are very loyal to us too.

But when the President of the United States acts in a way that makes the Israelis wonder whether we are for them. Really what it does is to discourage them from taking the risk that they would ever have to take to have a peace agreement with the Palestinians or anybody else.

Watch the video:

It’s unclear why Lieberman didn’t like Obama’s 1967 borders statement. Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t see any problem with it. And Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak said recently that the President’s critics had misrepresented what he said. “I should tell you honestly that the President didn’t say that Israel should go back to the borders of ’67,” Barak said.

But Lieberman is no stranger to attacking Obama using right-wing inspired baseless charges that the President is anti-Israel. Perhaps that’s why he said yesterday that he’s considering voting Republican in 2012.

Last year, President Obama used his recess appointment power to install Robert Ford as the U.S. ambassador to Syria after Republicans blocked Ford’s confirmation because they thought that by sending an envoy to Damascus, the president was rewarding Syrian support for terrorism.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) also opposed sending Ford to Syria. “I felt that dispatching an ambassador to Damascus would be a mistake given [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad’s failure to alter any of his outrageous policies,” Lieberman writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today. But now, Lieberman has changed his mind and is calling on the Senate to finally confirm Ford. He explains why:

Rather than being an envoy to Assad, Mr. Ford is now first and foremost our ambassador to the Syrian people and a bridge to the democratic transition they demand. This is a role for which Mr. Ford—an innovative and tough diplomat with extensive experience in the Middle East—is uniquely well-suited.

The ambassador’s important and powerful visit last month to the city of Hama — where peaceful protesters had seized control, but where Syrian forces now are engaged in a gruesome campaign of violence — was an example of the kind of forward-leaning, gutsy diplomacy that our Syria policy now needs. It was also a powerful reminder that, while we cannot dictate the outcome of the struggle in Syria, U.S. leadership is pivotal –and Amb. Ford provided it.

Indeed, Ford told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that he needs to be in Syria for exactly the reason that Lieberman laid out. “It’s really important now to give Syrians an ear and to amplify their voices especially when the international media is barred from Syria,” he said, adding, “I think we owe it to them to remain supportive and it try to build that support wisely.” U.S. officials said Ford’s contacts there are “the most important sources of information in assessing the Syrian scene.”

Ford has drawn wide praise from analysts here in the U.S., and even from the Syrian pro-democracy activists themselves, for his dramatic visit to Hama last month. And like Lieberman, it has caused some to rethink their view that the United States should not have an ambassador in Syria. Yet the neocons remain unconvinced. Last month, the Foreign Policy Initiative called on Obama to recall Ford from Damascus.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) wastes few opportunities to criticize the White House’s troop drawdown timetable in Afghanistan, but his latest criticism of the Obama administration falls back on conjuring up an implausible future terrorist attack conducted from within Afghanistan.

Lieberman told Fox News Sunday:

We’re [in Afghanistan] because we were attacked from here on 9/11. If we don’t succeed here and the Taliban comes back into power we’ll be attacked again. And there could be no greater threat to our security and our freedom, the freedom we celebrate on July 4th.

Watch the video:

Lieberman’s conflation of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and his dire warnings about a resurgent terrorist threat from within Afghanistan’s borders are in direct contradiction with the White House’s position that Al Qaeda in Afghanistan is no longer a threat to the U.S. A senior administration official told Business Insider:

There is no indication at all that there is any effort within Afghanistan to use Afghanistan as a launching pad to carry out attacks outside of Afghan borders.

And CIA Director Leon Panetta told ABC News:

I think the estimate on the number of Al Qaeda [in Afghanistan] is actually relatively small. At most, we’re looking at 50 to 100, maybe less. It’s in that vicinity. There’s no question that the main location of Al Qaeda is in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

While Lieberman is quick to throw around the threat of a terrorist attack as grounds for criticizing the president’s troop drawdown timetable, consistent reports about the diminishing presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan undermine his sensationalist warnings.

 

On Fox News Sunday, two of the Senate’s leading Iran hawks pressed the administration to do more on Iran and issued thinly-veiled threats to the Islamic Republic.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who has advocated for “retir(ing) our ambiguous mantra about all options remaining on the table” for Iran and made sure then-Defense Secretary nominee Leon Panetta has a plan for attacking, warned the Islamic Republic that a “day of reckoning” was ahead:

I would say that a day of reckoning is coming for this extremist regime in Iran, when a majority of Iranians who really yearn for freedom can see this dream come true. And I hope we do everything we can to make this happen as soon as possible.

The platitudes about helping freedom-seeking Iranians would mean a lot more if actual Iranian human rights and democracy advocates agreed with Lieberman. Instead, they say that an attack would be disastrous for them and that, indeed, the U.S.’s shifting away from belligerent rhetoric helped open up a political space in Iran.

Lieberman’s close ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) also didn’t seem to get some regional dynamics in the Iran-Iraq relationship. When asked about Iran’s alleged support for the Taliban, Graham said:

I think people need to understand why Iran is doing this. The biggest nightmare for the Ayaltollahs in Iran is democracies on their borders in Iraq and Afghanistan. …Their biggest nightmare is that the Arab spring is successful. I hope the president will condemn this and put Iran on warning that you’re not going to get away with this.

Watch the video of Graham and Lieberman on Fox News Sunday:

Graham’s characterization of Iran’s involvement in Iraq only captures a small bit of the picture: There may be involvement with Shia militas, but most of Iran’s political clout in Iraq comes from its contacts with the Shia majority that was empowered with the fall of Saddam Hussein. Take, for example, Ahmad Chalabi, the exiled politician who, after cozying up to Washington hawks like Lieberman and Graham, was paid millions of dollars by the State Department and the C.I.A. to provide the faulty intelligence that was used to sell the war in America. Chalabi was later accused by U.S. forces of spying for Iran.

Again in Graham’s case, turning to actual Iranian human rights advocates is instructive. Late last year, Iranian human rights lawyer and now-exiled dissident Shirin Ebadi told CAP’s Matt Duss that the Iraq War was a great example of why not to attack Iran. Noting that Iran’s “Green movement is the Iranian peoples’ movement” and that change “must come from inside Iran,” Ebadi added:

You paid money, Iraqis died, and Iran has benefited. Saddam was Iran’s enemy that was removed by the U.S., (and Iran’s power and influence has been increased as a result).

Are Chalabi-backers like Lieberman and people with shaky understandings of regional dynamics like Graham really the ones whose advice the president ought to take on what to do about Iran?