President Donald Trump's decision to order the airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassam Soleimani was both "bold" and "unconventional," so it is not surprising there are questions about it, but it is "not natural" that all of the questions are coming from Democrats and all the praise is coming from Republicans, former Sen. Joe Lieberman said Monday.
"That tells me that this partisanship has really disabled our government," the former Democratic vice presidential candidate told Fox News' Neil Cavuto. "It's now standing in the way of us getting together across party lines even about the killing of a man who is responsible for the deaths of a lot of Americans."
Lieberman, in a column for The Wall Street Journal, asked why it is so difficult for 2020 Democratic candidates to admit the world is safer without Soleimani, and he said Monday he has not heard from his fellow Democrats about the article.
He added the United States had reason to go after Soleimani 15 years ago, when he was overseeing camps in Iran where his elite Quds Force was being trained during the Iraq war, and he does not know why that did not happen.
"I think part of it was that we were engaged in the Iraq war," Lieberman said. "When you think about it, as I said in the column, he oversaw the training camps, three of them in Iran where he brought Iraqi militias, therefore creating and equipping."
By the State Department's tally, more than 600 Americans were killed through Soleimeni's actions, Lieberman continued.
Congress, meanwhile, is looking at ways to rein in Trump's presidential war powers with Iran, and Lieberman called that "classic and traditional wrestling."
"I saw it happening in my time in the Senate with different parties in the White House and Congress," he said. "Today, if the president decides to take action like this, he doesn't have to tell the country, the world, or have a vote in Congress."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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