Candidate Review - Foreign Policy - Senator Joe Lieberman and Representative Dennis Kucinich

Finishing up today, which I suspect will happen pretty regularly if I do these on Friday.

Here's Joe Lieberman, from a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, September 10, 2003.

"In 2000, then-Governor Bush said he wanted American foreign policy to be "humble, but strong."

To have ignored his own credo right after the election was bad enough. But to have continued on that path after September 11th has been downright dangerous. It hasn't just let down the American people; it's let down the moderate Muslim majority that needs our support now more than ever.

As a result, distrust of America is wide and deep around the world today, even among our closest allies. That is an ominous fact in a war that demands we muster long-term moral and political strength as well as military might.

We have suffered enough from the Bush Administration's miscalculations and mistakes. It is time to rebuild strategic partnerships with the world--partnerships that will promote our values, strengthen our security, and stand the test of time."

And from Dennis Kucinich's website, his proposal for a department of peace. You'll remember I made fun of this idea when I first heard it, and I haven't changed my mind much, but at least I'll present it for your review.

"As we stand on the threshold of a new millennium, it is time to free ourselves, to jettison our illusions and fears and transform age-old challenges with new thinking. We can conceive of peace as not simply the absence of violence but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness, of respect, trust, and integrity. Of peace, wherein we all may tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness and conditions that impel or compel violence at a personal, group, or national level toward creating understanding, compassion, and love. We can bring forth new understandings where peace, not war, becomes inevitable. Can we move from wars to end all wars to peace to end all war?

Citizens across the United States are now uniting in a great cause to establish a Department of Peace, seeking nothing less than the transformation of our society, to make non-violence an organizing principle, to make war archaic through creating a paradigm shift in our culture for human development for economic and political justice and for violence control. Its work in violence control will be to support disarmament, treaties, peaceful coexistence and peaceful consensus building. Its focus on economic and political justice will examine and enhance resource distribution, human and economic rights and strengthen democratic values."