Former Senator Joe Lieberman hears “echoes” of Neville Chamberlin
Mar 4, 2015, 4:46 PM | Updated: Oct 14, 2024, 9:36 am
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood before Congress on Tuesday and bluntly warned the U.S. that an emerging nuclear agreement with Iran "paves Iran's path to the bomb." (AP)
(AP)
In a direct challenge to the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood before Congress on Tuesday and bluntly warned the U.S. that an emerging nuclear agreement with Iran “paves Iran’s path to the bomb.” President Barack Obama pushed back sternly, saying the U.S. would never sign such a deal and Netanyahu was offering no useful alternative.
Former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman joined David Boze, filling in for Michael Medved on AM 770 KTTH Wednesday, to say that he thought Netanyahu presented an alternative.
“He said that an alternative to a bad deal is not war. An alternative to a bad deal is a better deal,” Lieberman said.
Boze pointed out Netanyahu recognized Nobel prize-wining author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and compared the struggle against Nazism with the struggle against the new darkness.
“Does this analogy make Israel – Czech Republic and President Obama – Neville Chamberlain?” Boze asked the former senator.
“Well there are echoes there,” Lieberman said. “The question is, God forbid, what happens from here, but there’s a famous story from history that when Chamberlain announced to the House of Commons in London that he was going to Munich to negotiate with Hitler, there was tremendous applause. He ran into Masaryk, the great leader of the Czech people who asked for the right to go to the negotiations as part of the British delegation because the future of Czechoslovakia was on the line. Chamberlain said to him that you can’t go because Hitler will not allow you to be there. Well, in the end, as we all know, Hitler moved in to Czechoslovakia and really what followed were the horrors of WWII.
“You don’t want to say, yes, that’s exactly what’s going on, but I think there are echoes of this that I think Netanyahu hears and we ought to all hear so that we don’t repeat the worst experiences of history.”
Lieberman said he doesn’t really miss being in the midst of the fray.
“Every now and then, but it passes quickly. But if it doesn’t pass, then I come on the Michael Medved Show or write an Op-Ed.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
