Joe Lieberman: “I do think we have to ask ourselves--I do not make any accusations here, of course, with respect to all my colleagues.…”

“I do think we have to ask ourselves--I do not make any accusations here, of course, with respect to all my colleagues. Lingering behind some sentiments is not just specific concern about Kosovo but what Mr. Lindberg calls, in the Washington Times, ``the opportune application of a general principle of disengagement. . . .'' If it is that, it is extremely consequential. We have been tempted over our history and have fought the impulse of isolationism and disengagement from the world, and every time we have succumbed it has come back to cost us dearly. I sat with our colleague from Nebraska, Senator Kerrey, a week or two ago, discussing this very issue. Perhaps he has told this story on the floor. But he reminded me, on the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war, a newspaper asked him, because he is a distinguished and honored veteran of that conflict, whether he would write his thoughts about it. He said one of the thoughts that came to his mind is that 25 years after the end of the first war--which I referred to at the opening of my remarks--in 1943, the sons and some of the daughters of those who fought in the First World War, which ended in 1918, in 1943, were training for and beginning to go to war in Europe.”