By James Webb, a secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, was a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam.
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!
Of course it is wrong, but, as you said, never a peep out of the media.
And never a peep out of the Republicans I know. Then again, most Republicans I talk to face-to-face are quite cowardly when a chance at debate comes up. The denigration of a war hero’s service is revolting as hell. What next? That he sucks cock for cash?
Mr. Webb has a point here sad to say. I disagree with Mr. Murtha, but I respect the man nonetheless, because I believe that he acts from sincere motives.
I can’t understand how a man with his resume wouldn’t be afforded that Paul. This was a sore topic for me going back two years ago. In fact, it was a primary motivator for me to start deadissue.
My first extended foray into the political world as a civilian brought about a great deal of frustration, especially with how veterans were treated one way when it was convenient and another way also when it was convenient.
The hypocracy of ‘Support the Troops’ coming out of one side of the mouth, and from 30 years and a few thousand miles away, the amount of certanty people would accuse Kerry of not earning his medals out of the other side…
Then to see Max Cleland smeared on FoxNews, on the radio…I started wondering why the hell I was so naive to expect military service would actually mean something once I was out. Shameless selective hero-worship…Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the worst, but Ann Coulter is quite hateful as well.
Win at all costs has truly become a double edged sword for the right-wing…and I sincerely hope that in the future this type of hatred is shuned.
A registered Republican from NH in the primaries, I cast my proxy for McCain, and he was smeared so shamelessly by the group in power right now…only to turn around and condone torture, cut VA benefits and deny troops top of the line body armor.
This is a lesson we need to learn this time around, because Vietnam didn’t quite sink in…still hasn’t with a lot of people. Once Americans are coming home in boxes, politics can no longer define whether or not one of those veterans has ‘earned the right to be heard’, let alone have their service mischaracterized by folks who didn’t have the cahones to walk a day in their shoes when it was their time.
John Kerry was truely a fraud and deserved what he got but, unless there is evidence, this shouldn’t be coming up with Murtha. You get into a “cry wolf” mentality and when the true frauds show up then no one will believe it.
Chris,
The treatment of the troops before during and after is a tradgedy. We ask so much of these people and the respond. Then we do things like forgetting about the benifits we promised and always years aftert their service and usually during budget time.
We have the best trained armed services in the world. And despite the handful that disgraced the unifrom recently, in Abu-grab, they are the best performing and the most humane army in history of the world. To turn our backs on them after they put thier buts on the line is a disgrace and we as citizens should be ashamed of letting it happen.
Frodo – we surely agree on that! Why doesn’t this situation get play in the media? I’ve been rattling off articles about active forces and veterans getting the shaft for well over a year now, and it creates less than a ripple.
If I talk to adults in my immediate family, their ears are welded shut upon mention of anything negative concerning Iraq, and that includes the soldiers. It hits me in the gut because my brother and I could have been in a situation like this if it weren’t for luck and timing, so my perception is that the public is tone deaf when it comes to this stuff.
I know you’re hot on the media bias, but it goes both ways. Not so much on the TV (which I watch next to nothing of these days), but on the radio, these talking heads really glaze over this stuff and immediately slap ‘LIBERAL SPIN’ on every single negative story that comes out of that country. They disregard it.
Then I’ll hear a veteran call in and complain about how they’re being treated, and the dump button is always a hair trigger away from being hit on them. I mentioned a while back, Rush Limbaugh’s replacement, had a veteran call in complaining about his medical, and the host had the gaul to throw it back in his face, “aren’t you thankful the government is doing what they are doing for you? Aren’t you at least thankfull at all for that?” Then when the call gets bounced, he then says that he sympathizes with the caller…couldn’t say it to his face though, as it would have eaten up airtime with a matter they’d rather ignore altogether.
It’s not a republican-democrat thing, it’s an America thing as I see it…and we’re really showing our asses this time around. All the flag-waving is a crock if you ask me. People just pretend so they’re not shunned, when in reality nobody wants to be brought down having to listen to other peoples’ problems.
As I see it now, there are a handfull of us who are hammering this stuff, and other than that, it’s the families of those who have died that have taken up the cause.
God forbid one of them happens to integrate ‘Bush’ into one of their speeches denouncing the treatment of our soldiers…then it’s panned as ‘LIBERAL BIAS’ and ignored. They cut these victims no slack whatsoever, and the first opportunity they have to justify not caring, they do. I’m not saying Cindy Sheehan is perfect, but she lost her son…everyone expects her to be a pollished product out there and she’s not…she’s a mother who’s pissed off.
Say Cindy Sheehan gets up tomorrow and articles carry her speech about body armor…what happens? It gets paned as ‘Soros funded gobbely gook’ whether she’s hit the nail on the head or not.
And when that happens, we consciously put politics before the troops…we make that choice to disregard it because something else she says, we take offense to. I don’t see everything as an us vs. them game…when it comes to providing for those who fought for us, the matter should transcend politics, but it doesn’t…and it probably never will!
I’m saving all these essays and articles for my sons to read once they get the ridiculous notion of signing up into their head. It’s so not worth it…I don’t care what anybody says. You’ll get hung out to dry, killed and forgotten by everyone but those you leave behind. Because to the 99.5% of the country who never enlist, it’s too much of a downer to waste any of their precious time on.
And as for these hogs in charge who allow it to be this way, where’s the accountability? I’ll tell you what, the second someone points out something like the body armor issue and points the finger at the leadership, it’s suddenly BIAS instead of a real problem that needs to be fixed.
The fallout from having to acknowledge a mistake and then go fix it is too much to ask apparantly. Which I always learned was the exact opposite of leadership. That’s beurocracy at it’s worse.
I know when the IRR got activated, my friends and family were concerned that I’d get called back. Luckily, I didn’t.
Nobody cares for the tropps because a lot of folks have never acquainted themselves with a soldier. All they know is that a war is going on way over there and it doesn’t affect them.
It also doesn’t help that troops are chickenshit. When asked about their treatment or opinions on the state of the military, they clam up at a time when their voices need to be heard.
The probelm lies in the fact that you listen to Rush Limbaugh at ALL!!! Just kidding, what ever floats your boat I guess. I can not listen to him or Howie Carr which we also get in our area.
The real porblem is public perception. Looking back at Vietnam a big big (huge even) part of the problem was the publics treatment of the Vets. No one wanted the US in the war but more than that if you went and served in the war you were the worst scum of the earth. Peoples treatment of those who served was a disgrace. The only thing I could get my dad to talk about when he got back was this issue and he was bitter until he died.
The perception genreated by the biased media and DNC is that Iraq is a quagmire. Not only does embolden the enemy it makes things like getting proper funding for equipment for the troops harder as everyone is not raising a fuss until Washington finally listens because they all the whole thhing to go away. I have written my senator about this very issue. Not enough of us have I fear.
Anyway, the media bias and the way they choose to cover the war, only negitive nothing positive, is helping this image.
Many Iraq vets that I talk to and/or read online paint a very diffeent picture of what is happening over there. While I will admit many big mistakes have been made progress has and is being made. Weather the MSM and DNC want to admit it or not.
Many many links to share but I have shone them all already. My problem with the Democrats is that they are taking the MSM, which is firmly in thier back pockets, and trying to swing this whole thing to win in the uncoming elections. Power it is all they want. I think this is a mistake that will hurt them badley come ’06 and ’08 elections.
I think the medias problem in Iraq is that they are covering the back line of the war in Iraq. Some famous General once said all armies look bad at the back. Disenters and digrunteled, wounded and sick and dying.
Wisenheimer I do not even know where to begin with your chickenshit comment … so I wont.
This war is more than Osama and Zwarhari (SP?) and Afganistan and Iraq. Syria and Iran to name just 2 more countries that are problems. The thing with Iran now is how long do we wait? Until a mushroom cloud hoovers over what is left of Israel? Will sanctions work? Never did in Iraq but thats another story. After IRaq will there ever be enough evidence to justify military action? It is a puzzle and I think Iran is banking on that and taking advantage of it.
In closing read this eassay. It hits home with me. Some of you may actually get something out of it if you have an open mind. This guy is anti-liberal to warn you a little. He is also very pro war on terror. He explains it much better than I could. Chris you once suggested I write an essay. I could not even begin to hold a candle to this guy.
He addresses some of my concerns of the politcal nature of the reporting and how the Democrats are playing this thing. Again he is the master at explaining himself.
3 links 2 essays the second is in 2 parts. Warning this is long …
Tribes: http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000129.html
Sanctuary part 1:
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000125.html
Sanctuary part 2:
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000126.html
A little sample”
“Now to hear some fellers tell it, the entire idea of “Unlawful Combatants” came to Sith mastermind Darth Rover in a vision, and he instructed his familiars Chimpy McBushitler and Torture Master Rumsfeld to use it as an excuse to begin the unjustified savagery that is such an essential part of the American character.
Absent from this worldview is…well…just about everything.
During the actual Major Combat Operations of Iraqi Freedom, US generosity and grace toward defeated elements of the Iraqi regular army was in the highest tradition of the US Military, which is justifiably well-known for its benevolence toward a defeated adversary on the battlefield. Surrendering Iraqi regular units were given rations and medical care, and their officers were allowed to keep their sidearms as a show of respect and authority. I have not seen or heard of a single case of anything less than exemplary conduct regarding enemy regular-army soldiers.
So why were the Taliban and Al Qaeda and Fedayeen insurgents treated so differently? Why the hoods and shackles? Why the humiliation at Abu Graib?
It is not because these men shot at US soldiers. Regular Iraqi units, NVA units, North Korean Units, Germans, Japanese, Confederates and Redcoats have shot at American soldiers and upon their surrender their treatment has been, on the whole, exemplary. Why are these different?
It is not because they are opposing us. It is – to put it as bluntly as possible – because they are cheating – cheating in a way that none of the above ever did.
They have willfully and repeatedly broken the covenant of Sanctuary.
Let’s speak to the Perennially Outraged as if they were the fully grown, post-pubescent children they pride themselves on being.
What is the obvious difference between an enemy Prisoner of War, and an Unlawful Combatant? Suppose two of them were standing in a line-up. What one glaringly obvious thing sets them apart?
That’s right! One is wearing a uniform, and the other isn’t.
And why do soldiers wear uniforms?
It certainly is not to protect the soldier. As a matter of fact, a soldier’s uniform is actually a big flashing neon arrow pointing to some kid that says to the enemy, SHOOT ME!
And that’s exactly what a uniform is for. It makes the soldier into a target to be killed.
Now if that’s all there was to it, you might say that the whole uniform thing is not such a groovy idea. BUT! What a uniform also does — the corollary to the whole idea of a uniformed person – is to say that if the individual wearing a uniform is a legitimate target, then the person standing next to him in civilian clothes is not.
By wearing uniforms, soldiers differentiate themselves to the enemy. They assume additional risk in order to protect the civilian population. In other words, by identifying themselves as targets with their uniforms, the fighters provide a Sanctuary to the unarmed civilian population.
And this Sanctuary is as old as human history. The first civilized people on Earth, these very same Iraqis, who had cities and agriculture and arts and letters when my ancestors were living in caves, wore uniforms as soldiers of Babylon. This is an ancient covenant, and willfully breaking it is unspeakably dishonorable.
Now, imagine you are involved in street-to-street fighting…
We should actually stop right here. No one can imagine street-to-street fighting. It is a refined horror that you have lived through or you have not, and all I can do with the full power of my imagination does not get to the shadow of it. Nevertheless, there are men who have peered around corners in Fallujah, and Hue, and Carentan and a hundred unknown places; places where the enemy’s rifle may be leveled inches away from your nose, awaiting the last split-second of your young life.
Most of the time, you do not have time to think. A person jumps up from below a window three feet away. If he is wearing a grey tunic and a coal-scuttle helmet, it’s a Kraut and you let him have it before he kills you and your buddies. But what if he is wearing street clothes? What if he is smiling at you?
For brutal soldiers – like the Nazi’s those of the far left accuse us of being precisely equal to – this is a moot point. The SS killed everything that moved. They executed prisoners in uniforms, partisans, hostages and children. They were animals.
Our soldiers are civilized, compassionate and decent citizens doing a tough, horrible job. That means when they see someone who might be a civilian, they hesitate. That hesitation can and has killed them. And some people wonder why enemy soldiers without the honor and courage to wear a uniform are treated less than honorably after being captured by men full of courage and restraint.”
More here:
“They violate the Sanctuary of the Uniform. They violate the Sanctuary of Surrender. And the most reprehensible of all is the violation of the Sanctuary of Mercy.
Throughout the insurgency, and especially in places like Fallujah, enemy fighters with real or feigned wounds have called for aid. Not often does a soldier who has been in combat look down upon the wounded of either side without horror and sympathy. In places like Fallujah and Iwo Jima and Antietam it is an easy thing to see one’s own reflection in that grimace and that agony.
So when a soldier out of uniform, who may have faked surrender to kill unsuspecting Americans, calls for aid and then willfully kills medics with a concealed grenade… where does that leave us? What unplumbed depths remain? When mercy is used as a weapon against the merciful, what horrors and abominations remain unplayed?
THAT, dear left-wing Citadels of Conscience, is what we are up against. That is what you support against the decency, honor and kindness you mock in your own countrymen as they build schools and hospitals and, indeed, an entire democracy. That is the definition of “Unlawful Combatant.” It is not a legal nicety, and it is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a pattern of ruthlessness, deception and murder. And regardless of your motive, it is the side you find yourself taking.
These are the kind of men in Guantanamo. Who controls such men? And when busloads of men from Afghanistan and Syria and Jordan and Egypt and Iran, men without uniforms, men not under the control of any officer, men who follow no code of conduct other than an oath to kill any American, anywhere – who among us with a gram of understanding and perspective can be surprised when such men are hooded and shackled on air transports? And being left to sleep in the open air is one thing in Northern Germany in the winter of ’44, and something else entirely in the middle of the goddam Caribbean! I mean, for the love of God, some of the people screaming themselves into a lather over such an outrage will pay tens of thousands of dollars for the same privilege a few miles away on a catamaran anchored off the coast of Jamaica.
And when people acting on the stage of their own moral outrage wonder when such men will be released, what do we say to them? When Osama bin Laden officially surrenders Al Qaeda on the deck of the USS Ronald Reagan? They have no government, they have no command structure, they have no objective but death. That is their great strength, and by God, it is also their weakness, and we would be fools – absolute drooling idiots – to let them have it both ways.
These fanatics have been rigorously coached to lie about mistreatment and torture, and despite this transparent fact, every utterance they make is breathlessly quoted and trumpeted by the press as absolute truth. The naked human pyramids, intimidation with dogs, sexual humiliation and threat of electroshock torture that marked a day or two of mistreatment at Abu Graib were the tools used by immature and untrained individuals precisely because the methods previously employed at that location – removal of fingers and tongues and genitalia, electrified wire brushes, and the rape and murder of relatives before the eyes of the prisoner – are so far beyond the horizon of what American interrogators are able to imagine doing that any comparison between the two betrays the moral blindness of those making the comparison.
Is humiliation the same as torture? It is not — that’s why the words are spelled differently. To get to the heart of the difference, assume you were a prisoner at Abu Graib, and your interrogator started to remove your fingers one by one with bolt cutters. How long would it take you to beg to be posed with women’s panties on your head? Yeah, I thought so.
This is not to excuse in any way the shameful behavior committed there by a few individuals who clearly are not fit to wear the uniform of the United States. They have disgraced us all and done incalculable damage. But if producing humiliation and fear is now to be defined as “torture,” what international human rights organization will be appointed to help the surviving readers of The New York Times?
No system built on human behavior is perfect; they can only be good. What’s a reasonable guess as to the number of sadistic, brutal and infantile Americans who so dishonored their uniforms at Abu Graib? Shall we say, perhaps fifteen? Fifteen who knew about what was happening, and countenenced it? So those fifteen, out of a total force of 150,000, completely negate the hard work, restraint, courage and compassion of the rest of the American presence in Iraq?
That is not ten percent bad apples. That is not one percent. That is not one-tenth of a percent. It is, in round numbers one percent of one per cent. What is the percentage of of criminals in the general population? A hundred times that? A thousand? Can college professors boast that kind of quality control? Can reporters? And yet this is all the press can obsess about, for over a year…the behavior of .0001 of the U.S. forces employed to liberate Iraq?
But remember, there is no bias in the media.”
That last line kinda hits home with me. What media bias? If you read the above links you might know understand why it pisses me off so much.
The comparisons are startling to me. He doe sit well. Better than I ever could.
Our troops should be accorded respect and anything that they need to battle Islamofascists. We owe them that much!