[Mb-civic] Murtha and the Mudslingers - E. J. Dionne - Washington
Post Op-Ed
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Tue Jan 17 04:07:26 PST 2006
Murtha and the Mudslingers
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006; A17
I underestimated the viciousness of the right wing.
Last November, Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat and a decorated Marine
combat veteran, came out for a rapid American withdrawal from Iraq. At
the time, I wrote: "It will be difficult for Bush's acolytes to cast
Murtha, who has regularly stood up for the military policies of
Republican presidents during his 31 years in Congress, as some kind of
extreme partisan or hippie protester."
No, the conservative hit squad didn't accuse Murtha of being a hippie.
But a crowd that regularly defends President Bush for serving in the
Texas Air National Guard instead of going to Vietnam has continued its
war on actual Vietnam veterans. An outfit called the Cybercast News
Service last week questioned the circumstances surrounding the awarding
of two Purple Hearts to Murtha because of wounds he suffered in the
Vietnam War.
John Kerry, as well as John McCain -- who faced scurrilous attacks on
his war record when he was running against Bush in the 2000 South
Carolina primary -- could have warned Murtha: If you're a Vietnam
veteran, don't you dare get in the way of George W. Bush.
David Thibault, editor in chief of Cybercast, made it very clear to The
Post's Howard Kurtz and Shailagh Murray that Murtha was facing
accusations about his 1967 service now because "the congressman has
really put himself in the forefront of the antiwar movement." In other
words, if Murtha had just shut up and gone along with Bush, nothing
would have been said about his service.
As it is, the charges are remarkably flimsy. Former representative Don
Bailey (D-Pa.), whom Murtha defeated in a 1982 congressional primary
after a redistricting, said that Murtha had told him he did not deserve
his Purple Hearts, Kurtz and Murray reported. Bailey, who won a Silver
Star and three Bronze Stars in Vietnam, recalled Murtha saying: "Hey, I
didn't do anything like you did. I got a little scratch on the cheek."
Authentic war heroes (including McCain) often play down their own
heroism. In any event, what we know about Murtha, McCain, Kerry and,
yes, Bailey, is that they served in combat in Vietnam. What we know
about Bush and Vice President Cheney ("I had other priorities in the
'60s than military service'') is that they didn't.
What's maddening here is the unblushing hypocrisy of the right wing and
the way it circulates -- usually through Web sites or talk radio --
personal vilification to abort honest political debate. Murtha's views
on withdrawing troops from Iraq are certainly the object of legitimate
contention. Many in Murtha's party disagree with him. But Murtha's
right-wing critics can't content themselves with going after his ideas.
They have to try to discredit his service.
Moreover, the right has demonstrated that its attitude toward military
service is entirely opportunistic. In the 1992 presidential campaign,
when the first President Bush confronted Bill Clinton -- who, like
Cheney, avoided military service entirely -- conservatives could hardly
speak or write a paragraph about Clinton that didn't accuse him of being
a draft dodger. In October 1992, Bush himself assailed Clinton. "A lot
of being president is about respect for that office and about telling
the truth and serving your country," Bush told a crowd in New Jersey.
"And you are all familiar with Governor Clinton's various stories on
what he did to evade the draft."
But from 2000 forward, the Republicans had a problem: They confronted
Democrats, first Al Gore and then John Kerry, who actually did go to
Vietnam, while it was their own standard-bearers who had skipped the
war. Suddenly, service in Vietnam wasn't the thing at all. When a
Democrat went to war, there must have been something wrong with the way
he did it. Gore's service was dismissed because he worked "only" as a
military journalist. You can even find Bush's defenders back in 2000
daring to argue that flying planes over Texas was actually more
dangerous than joining the Army and serving in Vietnam the way Gore did.
The Republicans had an even bigger problem with Kerry, who did
unquestionably dangerous duty patrolling rivers. Not to worry. The Swift
Boat Veterans simply smeared him.
"War's a nasty business," Murtha said on CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday.
"It sears the soul. The shadow of friends killed, the shadow of killing
people lives with you the rest of your life. So there's no experience
like being in combat."
Unfortunately, politics is a nasty business, too. And there is no honor
given to those who serve if they choose later to take on the powers that be.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR2006011600913.html?nav=hcmodule
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