[Mb-civic] Murtha and the Mudslingers - E. J. Dionne - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060117/130fecd2/attachment.htm