The Murtha Boomerang

[Watchman]

This whole discussion has a kind of dirty feeling to it.

[Major Robert Dump]

hahaha

Yes, no Democrats have ever been in the amred forces, ever, and if they were it was purely career motivated.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that perhaps some soldiers like knowing theres a healthy debate going on back home about the foreign policy that sent them into battle, rather than being cowtowed to and patronized by a party and its pundits who rely strictly on stereotypes and its "tradition" of being the party of the military.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Yes, no Democrats have ever been in the amred forces, ever, and if they were it was purely career motivated.

No one ever said that. In fact most of the soldiers who fought for the south had been democrats.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that perhaps some soldiers like knowing theres a healthy debate going on back home about the foreign policy that sent them into battle, rather than being cowtowed to and patronized by a party and its pundits who rely strictly on stereotypes and its "tradition" of being the party of the military.

Obviously it has to those of you on the left. Most of the soldiers I speak with are appalled with the debate going on here and the democrats missrepresentation of whats going on.

[Sartaq]

I don't necessarily agree that it will make all or most vets vote or run democrat but this is disgusting to see and the republicans deserve whatever backlash they get.

In the case of some people, mostly Kerry, he milked his service for all it was worth, I don't have so much sympathy for him as I do the others.

[Watchman]

Obviously it has to those of you on the left. Most of the soldiers I speak with are appalled with the debate going on here and the democrats missrepresentation of whats going on.

Obviously the soldiers you speak with aren't all the soldiers. More to the point, if I know anything of how people network and socialize, most of the soldiers you speak with are going to be reasonably like-minded individuals...

Ergo, the point is moot.

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Obviously the soldiers you speak with aren't all the sol

Obviously, But they do represent a cross section of the military.

. More to the point, if I know anything of how people network and socialize, most of the soldiers you speak with are going to be reasonably like-minded individuals...

Yes their like minded. They think the democrats should be ashamed of themselves and the press as well. I ask any soldier ,sailor or Marine I run into about Iraq and almost all give the same answer. I dont socialise or network with any of them.

[Watchman]

*sigh* There *is* a thing called "source critique", and somehow I dont think we can trust yours if you know what I mean.

Not that I had overmuch faith in the judgement of the average American soldier either.

Anyway, as said, this whole phenomenom seems inherently tacky and filthy to me. Gives me the impression of bickering loudmouths throwing bones from an open grave at each other, or something similar. No, it's not a very pretty impression. Kind of like mud-slinging crossed with grave-robbing.

[Lemur]

I just remembered, many newspapers allow their articles to lapse into pay-only land after a week. In the unlikely case anybody in here is still talking about this in a week, here's the full text:

Purple Heartbreakers
By JAMES WEBB

January 18, 2006
Arlington, Va.

It should come as no surprise that an arch-conservative Web site is questioning whether Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has been critical of the war in Iraq, deserved the combat awards he received in Vietnam.

After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.

Not unlike the Clinton "triangulation" strategy, the approach has been to attack an opponent's greatest perceived strength in order to diminish his overall credibility. To no one's surprise, surrogates carry out the attacks, leaving President Bush and other Republican leaders to benefit from the results while publicly distancing themselves from the actual remarks.

During the 2000 primary season, John McCain's life-defining experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam were diminished through whispers that he was too scarred by those years to handle the emotional burdens of the presidency. The wide admiration that Senator Max Cleland gained from building a career despite losing three limbs in Vietnam brought on the smug non sequitur from critics that he had been injured in an accident and not by enemy fire. John Kerry's voluntary combat duty was systematically diminished by the well-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in a highly successful effort to insulate a president who avoided having to go to war.

And now comes Jack Murtha. The administration tried a number of times to derail the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war, including a largely ineffective effort to get senior military officials to publicly rebuke him (Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only one to do the administration's bidding there).

Now the Cybercast News Service, a supposedly independent organization with deep ties to the Republican Party, has dusted off the Swift Boat Veterans playbook, questioning whether Mr. Murtha deserved his two Purple Hearts. The article also implied that Mr. Murtha did not deserve the Bronze Star he received, and that the combat-distinguishing "V" on it was questionable. It then called on Mr. Murtha to open up his military records.

Cybercast News Service is run by David Thibault, who formerly worked as the senior producer for "Rising Tide," the televised weekly news magazine produced by the Republican National Committee. One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh.

The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.

The Bush administration's failure to support those who have served goes beyond the smearing of these political opponents. One of the most regrettable examples comes, oddly enough, from modern-day Vietnam. The government-run War Remnants Museum, a popular tourist site in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, includes an extensive section on "American atrocities." The largest display is devoted to Bob Kerrey, a former United States senator and governor of Nebraska, recipient of the Medal of Honor and member of the 9/11 commission.

In the display, Mr. Kerrey is flatly labeled a war criminal by the Vietnamese government, and the accompanying text gives a thoroughly propagandized version of an incident that resulted in civilian deaths during his time in Vietnam. This display has been up for more than two years. One finds it hard to imagine another example in which a foreign government has been allowed to so characterize the service of a distinguished American with no hint of a diplomatic protest.

The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly. It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.

A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

Rudyard Kipling summed up this syndrome quite neatly more than a century ago, writing about the frequent hypocrisy directed at the British soldiers of his day:

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!