With their smear of Congressman John Murtha, including a hysterical attack by Congressman Jean Schmidt calling him a coward, and the GOP House Leadership writing a bill requiring Bush to leave Iraqi immediately and portraying it as Murtha’s bill, the Republican Party continues their brand of lies, hatred, smears, and political opportunism. Their smear of John Murtha shows that they appeal to the worst instincts in American culture by treating Murtha in a similar way that the segregationists treated Blacks in the Jim Crow era.
The expectations that the segregationists had for Blacks and the expectations that the Republicans have for military veterans are very similar. The segregationists expected Blacks to be quiet, not get too uppity, not make trouble for whitey, and stay on their end of the tracks. Blacks who didn’t were regularly lynched; one writer I studied in college suggested that the White segregationists did so in order to show their sexual prowess.
Now, the GOP is treating our veterans in the same way. When they talk about supporting our troops and our veterans, they mean troops and veterans who are conservative, loves their country, and who always supports the President right or wrong. This is an expectation they have for them.
But woe to the veteran or soldier who does not fit into their mold. If a veteran gets too uppity, decides that they do not approve of the President’s conduct of the war, is on the wrong side, and makes too much trouble, Rove will unleash his worst attacks on such veterans. So the GOP shows no real concern for veterans. Instead, what they do is exploit them for political purposes and create an image of a person who people ought to support. In order to maintain that image, the right-wingers must utterly destroy anybody who doesn’t support that image. If that image tumbles down, then a large part of their narrative is gone.
This explains the racially-backed attacks on John McCain. This explains the smears on Max Clelland, including the ads lumping him with Bin Laden. This explains the Swift Boat Veteran’s smears on John Kerry. This explains why the right-wingers launch Soviet-style attacks on Cindy Sheehan, including calling her hysterical and challenging her sanity. And this explains the current attacks on Murtha.
Clarification: As one poster points out, the attitudes of the GOP towards our veterans is like the segregationists towards Whites who supported civil rights. Therefore, I suggest that the GOP views veterans like these similar to the way segregationists did to what they called “nigger-lovers.” The hatred that the segregationists had towards the civil rights activists, including the shooting down of civil rights activists around the South, is now being mirrored towards our veterans.
To show the depths of hatred that the right-wingers have for veterans who don’t believe the way they are supposed to, witness this Ann Coulter smear on Max Clelland:
Former Sen. Max Cleland is the Democrats’ designated hysteric about George Bush’s National Guard service. A triple amputee and Vietnam veteran, Cleland is making the rounds on talk TV, basking in the affection of liberals who have suddenly become jock-sniffers for war veterans and working himself into a lather about President Bush’s military service. Citing such renowned military experts as Molly Ivins, Cleland indignantly demands further investigation into Bush’s service with the Texas Air National Guard.
Bush’s National Guard service is the most thoroughly investigated event since the Kennedy assassination. But the Democrats will accept only two possible conclusions to their baseless accusations: (1) Bush was “AWOL,” or (2) the matter needs further investigation.
Thirty years ago, Bush was granted an honorable discharge from the National Guard, which would seem to put the matter to rest. But liberals want proof that Bush actually deserved his honorable discharge. (Since when did the party of Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd get so obsessed with honor?)
Or, as another example, take the behavior of the man from Swift Boat Veterans after Nightline produced a piece proving that John Kerry’s account of the events in Vietnam was right. He refused to even consider the documented evidence and considered it not worthy of his valuable time. Instead, he played the victim and complained that Nightline was not getting in their side of the story enough. He was totally detached, impersonal, and hateful in that episode.
So, Congressman Jean Schmidt’s hysterical attacks on John Murtha were nothing new. They are part of an ongoing GOP smear campaign against any Veterans who dare to question the Party Line.
This sort of hatred of our veterans has its roots in segregation, opportunism, and John Kerry’s campaign to end the Vietnam War. The segregationists launched the same kind of attacks on Blacks who did not stay in their place back in the 1960’s. For example, during the debate over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Strom Thurmond and other such segregationists repeatedly lamented the civil rights agitators who stirred up trouble when everything in the South had worked wonderfully in the years after the Civil War. In other words, Whites and Blacks both stayed in their place and never made trouble for each other. They were separate, but they were equal.
The next ingredient in the GOP’s hatred of veterans was opportunism. The GOP had lost most of the Presidential elections since FDR took office. So, Nixon cut a deal with Thurmond and the segregationists that if they would flip to the GOP, he would slow down the progress of civil rights and put those hippies back in their place. Thurmond accepted the deal, and the current Republican Party was born. Ronald Reagan continued the GOP’s assault on civil rights, using the Justice Department and people like John Roberts to seek to roll back human rights for Blacks and minorities.
The final ingredient of the GOP’s hatred of veterans was the successful campaign of John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans Against the War to end Congressional support for the war. This was when John Kerry showed the kind of passion and fire that was missing until just the last few days. This was when Kerry asked how you can be the last man to die for a mistake.
The anger and desire for revenge that Nixon, the right-wingers, and the Vietnam War supporters felt at what they saw as a betrayal, combined with their penchant for opportunism has mutated into a massive hatred against any veteran who would dare to speak the truth to power. But there is another reason for this hatred by the right: fear.
The thing that a right-winger fears most is that people who are normally enemies, like left-wing tree-hugging peace activists and military veterans, come together to speak out against a cause which they both feel is unjust. And this is what happened yesterday when John Murtha came forward to propose the boldest plan yet for the withdrawal of out troops from Iraq.
Because of Murtha’s stand on Iraq and the reemergence of John Kerry’s fire and passion, the right’s worst nightmare is coming to pass. Not only has Murtha spoken out against the Iraq War, John Kerry backed him up and spoke out with a level of passion not seen since the 1970’s.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST, HARDBALL: Thank you, Senator Kerry, for having us to your Capitol office. You made a very strong statement in a press release last night. You said, “It’s hard to name a government official with less credibility on Iraq than Vice President Cheney.” Why’d you say that?
SEN. JOHN KERRY, (D) MASSACHUSETTS: I said that because I meant it. He is the person who stood up and talked about how Iraqis met with the people who hijacked the airplanes. The intelligence community never shared that information. He personally, and his small group of people, according to Colin Powell, former secretary of State’s own chief of staff, sort of took over and became a cabal that ran American foreign policy.
He opposed the inspections, going to the United Nations. And he, together with the president, provided America with intelligence that was not shared by the intelligence community, and they misled America.
Now Dick Cheney, a man who had five deferments in the course of the Vietnam war, if he’s going to challenge me with respect to my support for the troops, that’s a debate I’m prepared to have with him anywhere at any time.
MATTHEWS: Are you surprised that the president himself went after you personally last Friday?
KERRY: I’m not surprised by anything from this White House. I learned that during the course of the campaign. I’m sorry for America that on Veterans Day, a day that is sacred to veterans and certainly not a day for attack politics, the president not only engaged in attack politics, but continued to distort, continued to misrepresent to America my position, the position of the United States Congress. Point blank. The United States Congress did not get the same intelligence that was available to this administration, and for them to say so is to continue to mislead America.
MATTHEWS: What’s the difference between what you believe Dick Cheney had in hand when he pushed for the war, and what you had in hand when you voted to authorize the president’s use of force if necessary?
KERRY: Well, I’ll give you a number of examples: In the State of the Union message, the president of the United States used information about nuclear materials and Saddam Hussein trying to get them from Africa. Three times the White House had been told by the CIA, in writing and verbally, that is not accurate, don’t use that intelligence. They used it. They didn’t tell Congress it wasn’t accurate.
Likewise when they announced to people that they had the delivery ability for weapons, biological and chemical weapons, within — I think it was — 45 minutes, if I recall, but less than an hour. That was not shared by members of the intelligence community, and it was not shared with Congress that the intelligence community disagreed.
When they said that there were poisonous gas and bomb-making training given by Iraqis to al Qaeda, that was not accurate. It was discounted by the Defense Intelligence Agency. They never told us about the discount.
There were a whole series of occasions where they took evidence, took the best light of the evidence only, kept the worst or alternatives from Congress, and fed the American people with the imperative for war.
On the attacks on John Murtha:
I won’t stand for the `swift boating’ of Jack Murtha. It disgusts me that a bunch of guys who have never put on the uniform of their country venomously turn their guns on a Marine who came home from Vietnam with a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. No matter what J.D. Hayworth says, there is no sterner stuff than the backbone and courage that defines Jack Murtha’s character and conscience.
“You know why the Republicans are engaged in the lowest form of smear and fear politics? Because they’re afraid of actually debating a senior congressman who has advised presidents of both parties on military matters. They’re afraid to debate a decorated veteran who lives and breathes the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor. They’re terrified of actually leveling with the American people about the way they misled America into war, and admitting they have no clear plan to finish the job and get our troops home. Whether you agree with Jack Murtha’s policy or not is irrelevant. The truth is there is a better course for our troops and for America in Iraq, and I am going to keep fighting until we take that course for the good of our country.
“Instead of letting his cronies run their mouths, the President for once should stop his allies from doing to Jack Murtha what he set them loose to do to John McCain in South Carolina and Max Cleland in Georgia. The President should finally find the courage to debate the real issue instead of destroying anyone who speaks truth to power as they see it. It’s time for Americans to stand up, fight back, and make it clear it’s unacceptable to do this to any leader of any party anywhere in our country.”
Despite the fact that peace activists and military veterans seem like natural enemies at first site, they actually have a lot to offer each other. Peace activists are the one set of people best able to come up with solutions to problems that do not involve the use of our military. Military veterans are best able to communicate to the world what suffering as the result of wars is all about. Much right-wing philosophy is largely based on the military industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned about. If a combination of peace activists and military veterans were ever to gain power, that would greatly reduce or completely eliminate the need for the military industrial complex. There would be no more Halliburtons and no more war profiteering. Therefore, many right-wingers feel threatened as a result and would do anything to stop this from becoming a reality.