The Senate’s three most predictable and least credible warmongering “moderates” frequently join forces to publish joint Op-Eds or hold press conferences and the one thing they always, invariably want is for the United States to have just a little bit more war than it currently has, somewhere far away. Sure, we could draw down in Iraq … or we could listen to McCain, Lieberman and Graham and draw back up. We could draw down in Afghanistan … or we could stay the course and keep sending troops there until we win! Americans may be tired of endless war with no coherent goal, but on the other hand, “only decisive force can prevail in [whatever country John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman are talking about now].”

As the Hill recently explained in a story on how John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman were pushing for a resolution basically promising to make war with Iran, “Graham, Lieberman and McCain are considered some of the top foreign policy experts in the upper chamber,” because they always, invariably support military intervention everywhere for any reason, and that is invariably considered a sign of “seriousness” in Washington. If you don’t like waging wars everywhere, forever, you are a weird kooky hippie, and everyone laughs at you. If you believe that bombs and troops have the power to magically solve all problems, you are invited on all the Sunday shows every week to offer your sober analysis of the foreign situation.

You just never know which country these three will decide needs bombing next! One time the three amigos also took a trip to Tripoli to hang out with Moammar Gadhafi. (They invited Susan Collins along, though usually their sleepover parties are strictly “no girls allowed.”) Sadly, by April of last year, they were no longer friends with Gadhafi, and the three had decided that the United States should assassinate him. (That is not really legal but, you know, “war on terror” and “serious, muscular foreign policy” or something.)

One time Lieberman and Graham tried to hang out with a different senator and they all came up with an idea that didn’t involve bombing anyone but that made McCain mad and he yelled at them. Don’t hang out with John Kerry and try to solve climate change! Hang out with me and let’s try to convince everyone to bomb Russia or something!

Sadly, Joe Lieberman will be leaving the U.S. Senate soon, which means John McCain and Lindsey Graham will need to find a new fake-Democrat best friend to add a patina of “bipartisanship” to their endless demands for explosions and shooting and death.

Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial page takes a break from excusing the criminality of the executives in charge of its parent company to deliver an official house reaction to the developments in Tripoli that starts off cautious and then just descends right back into the exact same lame arguments it’s been using for the last six months:

Having helped to midwife the rebel advances with air power, intelligence and weapons, NATO will have some influence with the rebels in the days ahead. The shame is how much faster Gadhafi might have been defeated, how many fewer people might have been killed, and how much more influence the U.S. might now have, if America had led more forcefully from the beginning.

Planning for this moment is precisely why we and many others had urged the State Department to engage with the rebels from the earliest days of the revolt, but the U.S. was slow to do so and only formally recognized the opposition Transitional National Council in mid-July. The hesitation gave Gadhafi hope that he could hold out and force a stalemate.

Libyans will determine their own future, but the U.S. has a stake in showing the world that NATO’s intervention, however belated and ill-executed, succeeded in its goals of removing a dictator, saving lives, and promoting a new Libyan government that respects its people and doesn’t sponsor global terrorism.

I’m not sure how long the editors of the Wall Street Journal think your average revolution lasts, but assuming Gadhafi’s hold on power is as weak as it appears today, I would argue — as a layman, of course — that NATO’s intervention seems neither “belated” nor “ill-executed.” (I mean, it seems well-executed, in the sense that it seems to have accomplished its goal?)

But it’s the line about America leading “more forcefully from the beginning” that the neocons and GOP hawks will continue to cling to no matter what actually happens in Libya. It’s the same argument BFF Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham used in their joint response to this weekend’s developments: “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.”

All-out war! From day one! With the full force of American airpower! One definite way to make a civil war faster and less bloody is for a foreign country to enter it fully, right? (It tends to unite the populace, for one thing!) And conflicts are always less bloody when America drops more American bombs. That’s how we won Vietnam!

There’s no point in countering McCain and the Journal’s arguments with reason, of course, because these are not actually fact-based responses to news, they’re just rote recitations of Republican dogma: Obama weak! (Except domestically, where he is an autocrat.)

And this is the “respectable” Republican talking point. The line from the real nuts — I’m guessing something along the lines of “radical Obama allows Muslim Brotherhood to seize control in Libya” — will begin bubbling up from the sewers to talk radio and Fox News and Michele Bachmann’s campaign soon enough.

And then that what happens in Libya will not only determine America’s economic future, but that there will never be prosperity here if there are “evil people” in power in the world:

“There will never will be economic prosperity in America if the world is in the hands of evil people who will make it very difficult for us to travel and trade and do business,” he said.

That last point is belied by … every period of economic prosperity in American history, which occurred when “evil people” were roaming around the world. 

As for the Nazi comparison, if Gadhafi is Hitler, is Graham Chamberlain?

Via Ali Gharib

“I believe that the planned drawdown is an unnecessary risk,” McCain, a Republican from Arizona, who claimed that no military leader has spoken in favor of the timetable.

Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, a Marine general expected to carry out the president’s drawdown order, has said the schedule is a bit more aggressive than the military had anticipated. Allen has cautioned that successfully winding down the war will require new progress on a wide front, including more help from allies and less Afghan corruption.

McCain — during a stop at the Kabul headquarters of the foreign military contingent, called the International Security Assistance Force — said he’s concerned there may not be enough American troops for a move from southern Afghanistan to the east to “finish the job there.” There are currently about 90,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan among a total international force of more than 132,000.

NATO has deployed the bulk of its forces to Helmand and Kandahar, two southern provinces where Afghan Taliban influence is strong, but international terrorist groups are less influential.

McCain said the drawdown will deprive NATO “to a significant degree” as it attempts to pacify eastern Afghanistan next summer.

Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, cited gains in Afghan security force recruitment and capability and said he was optimistic that native forces would soon be ready to take over security. But Graham also worried Obama’s withdrawal plan may reduce U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan too quickly.

“Withdrawal is what the enemy hopes to hear,” said Graham. “Our goal is to make sure that the enemy doesn’t hear withdrawal and the Afghan people don’t hear withdrawal.”

Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, said it was important to reassure Afghans that they will continue to receive help long after the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops.

“We’re certainly going to be here in great numbers until the end of 2014 and I hope as a result of a strategic long-term partnership with Afghanistan that we will have a military presence here and cooperation here with our Afghan partners for a long time after that,” said Lieberman.

The senators were skeptical about Western efforts to reach a negotiated peace with the Taliban’s leadership and suggested that political compromises with the insurgents could betray the Afghan people.

“I don’t think there will be serious negotiations with the Taliban until they are convinced that they cannot succeed in the attaining their goals through the force of arms on the battlefield,” said McCain, who lost to Obama in the 2008 presidential race.

Lieberman said that the Taliban would not seriously consider peace until coalition and Afghan forces “basically beat down and wear down the Taliban fighters and they lose their will increasingly and the leadership is isolated.” Lieberman called the idea that Afghan President Hamid Karzai, NATO leaders and insurgent commanders could talk out their differences at a peace conference “a dream, a fantasy.”

The senators’ harshest observations were reserved for Pakistan, home of many of the insurgent groups NATO forces are currently fighting in Afghanistan.

“There’s growing anger, it’s not just impatience, in the Congress of the United States toward Pakistan,” said Lieberman. “We want to have a good relationship with them but we’re tired of seeing them be both our allies and our enemies and supporting our enemies at the same time. They’ve got to decide to be our allies and we’ll be good allies to them, or we won’t.”

Shortly before the senators’ news conference in Kabul, an improvised bomb exploded on the other end of the capital, wounding three Afghan policemen, the Afghan Interior Ministry said. Insurgents have focused many of their attacks on Afghan security forces to undermine their development and NATO’s plans to transfer security operations to Afghan control.

So when Graham lets it be known that he is working on immigration reform again (with Senator Chuck Schumer), it is not really about passing immigration reform (which is impossible anyway, because members of Graham’s political party now control the House of Representatives, and Graham did not bother to help get reform passed back when he had the chance because he got cranky about the fact that Harry Reid wanted to actually try to do it instead of delaying the process forever). It is about signaling that Graham is a powerful bipartisan deal-maker, and that all legislative compromises must go through him.

The point is also to annoy True Immigrant-Hating Conservatives like Mark Krikorian, which Graham does beautifully — not only is he working on “amnesty” with Schumer, they’re apparently reaching out to Alaskan Earmark defender Lisa Murkowski.

Anyway, grand bargains with Lindsey never go anywhere, but it’s always fun to watch everyone carefully negotiate compromises for months before it all blows up. My favorite part is usually when, the next time the issue comes up, whatever the previous closest shot at a bipartisan compromise position was becomes, now, the baseline that has to be pushed to the right to pick up Republican support. In 2015 the compromise will be that we’ll only send half of all “anchor babies” to Guantanamo.

Graham: I want an enduring relationship with Afghanistan past 2014 , politically, economically, and militarily, so that country never goes back into the hands of the Taliban or al-Qaeda . The two words that will be talked about in 2011 with Afghanistan are “corruption” and ” Pakistan .” I am hopeful the Pakistani army will be more bold in attacking safe havens across the border that lie in Pakistan . I hope the Karzai government will better address corruption. I hope we can find an enduring relationship with Afghanistan that will make sure that country never goes back in the hands of terrorists. And the idea of putting permanent military bases on the table in 2011 , I think would secure our national interest and tell the bad guys and the good guys we’re not leaving, we’re staying, in a responsible way if the Afghan people want us to stay.

David Gregory: But that’s important. You believe a permanent U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is required in order to head off a potential failed state in the future?

Graham:  I think it would be enormously beneficial to the region , as well as Afghanistan. We’ve had air bases all over the world . A couple of air bases in Afghanistan would allow the Afghan security forces an edge against the Taliban in perpetuity. It would be a signal to Pakistan that the Taliban are never going to come back in Afghanistan. They could change their behavior. It would be a signal to the whole region that Afghanistan is going to be a new and different place. And if the Afghan people want this relationship, they’re going to have to earn it. But I hope they will seek a relationship with the United States of where we can have an enduring relationship, economic and militarily and politically. And a couple of air bases in Afghanistan will give us an edge militarily, give the Afghan security forces an edge militarily, to ensure that country never goes back into the hands of the Taliban , which would be a stabilizing event throughout the whole region. That has to be earned by the Afghan people, and it has to be requested by them.

So, as Graham suggests, a push for permanent Afghan bases is something to look for from the new Congress this year. This is not actually so far off from the Obama administration’s position, which currently provides for an indefinite, rather than specifically permanent, military presence in Afghanistan.

Here’s the video of Graham on Sunday:

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