Say what you will about the war in Iraq, or Bush, or Republicans in general, I’ve always been impressed with the fact that no one on any side of the debate has attacked our soldiers. Until now. The MoveOn attack on General Petraeus–a man who is putting his life on the line every day–as a traitor is something that’s new to the discussion. Today, there was an amendment adopted in the US Senate to repudiate MoveOn’s attack on the General that passed 72-25. Hillary Clinton of New York and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut voted against. Obama missed the vote. MoveOn publicly claims that it has “bought and paid for” the Democratic Party? Isn’t any Democrat going to say differently?? Other than John Kerry, is there a Democrat willing to say that personal attack on our active duty soldiers is out of bounds? Or should I just assume this is the direction of public discourse in America and move on?
I don’t know about that; he’s a general, not a front-line infantryman. He’s obviously an honorable man and an important person, but as far as actually putting his life on the line, I’m sure that cops and firefighters are in more danger on a day to day basis. (I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a REMF.)
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p>(That said, IMHO, MoveOn was childish and out of line with the Patraeus-Betray-us comment. Those guys seem to be heading into Yippie territory. I’m half expecting them to show up with a pig for the 2008 Democratic Convention.)
Respectfully, he’s in Iraq, based in Camp Liberty, well within range of mortars and rockets and a prime target. That pretty much seems like life on the line to me.
It wouldn’t be…the….Hildebeest???
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(I’m sorry! I’m sorry! It’s late, and the comment demanded to be released from my brain….)
Who in congress is wasting the people's time reacting to newspaper ads?
Interestingly, Obama voted in favor a few minutes earlier on a version of the resolution that would have added attacks on Kerry and other former military members of Congress as within the scope of the repudiation. (It failed to pass.) Then magically he disappeared for a vote against MoveOn…..
was about which senator introduced that amendment? Do you know? I really don't care about that type of theatrics on the senate floor except to be slightly embarrassed by it.
I just wanted to know who introduced the amendment. If it was bipartisan, I don't mind a list of co-sponsors, but I was hoping you could tell me who wrote the thing.
here.
So I hope noone is offended if I state my firm belief that John Cornyn is a malodorus pile of squirrel scat?
Very well then.
Thank you… Ms.
Good reading at that link too!
The fairytale is my favorite part:
Would at least double their ratings if they used Blind Date style “thought bubbles” to let us know what our esteemed representatives are really thinking behind all that polite rhetoric. đŸ™‚
I find it interesting that in the sudden petition MoveOn flashed into many of our inbox’s to protest the senate vote there is no opportunity for MoveOn Members to agree with the resolution. Calling Petraus a traitor was just a Stupid move but to continue to defend it is taking the original foot in mouth insertion and continuing to the point where they don’t see what an ass they’ve made of themselves due to having swallowed that part of the anatomy also.
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Disappointing because they did so much good for the first few years.
If you'd like to provide a list of people who should always be above reproach I'll forward it on to MoveOn so that they never again offend you with some future criticism of, say, Lawrence Welk.
đŸ™‚
…the story is now about MoveOn and not Petraus.
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An old friend said to me once that if someone is heading full speed into a brick wall (like say Bush’s entire Iraq policy) then if you try to get in the way you just get smashed into the wall yourself with them. If you stay out of the way they crash into the wall by themselves and at that time it may be possible to have a dialogue with them. It is too bad that Republicans for the most part did not distance themselves from the Swift boaters but the Democrats are from MoveOn so a voice that was very effective in 04 and 06 will be scraping off brick and mortar dust in 08.
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For the record I am pretty sure Lawrence Welk was apolitical (even he was a bit saccharine sweet)
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Have you noticed that we have not had a discussion about Patreaus testimony and the future of the war independent of this topic? At least for us, it's obvious that this is a shiny key strategy. For the rest of the world:
“and now the news blah blah blah 15 soldiers dead in kirkuk MoveOn insults general patreaus president says troops stay put he listened to his generals on the ground tomorrows weather blah blah blah…
MoveOn is effective because it's membership is enormous. That will not change anytime soon.
MoveOn has a whole Betrayal of Trust campaign going on. The comments about Petreaus are that he betrayed our trust and not that he is a modern day Benedict Arnold.
Yes, I agree. Seems MoveOn is suffering from a severe case of rectal-cranial inversion.
Have you even read the ad? Or does that not matter to you because to you this is all a game?
Moveon called Petraeus a liar. And he is. The dude is, was, and will apparently always be a shill for Bushie – he’s lied in the past too, it’s documented. Maybe the title was a little goofy, but they didn’t say he was a traitor, they said he was betraying the American people. Because he outright lies. Get it?
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And where the hell does Cornyn get off doing this when his hypocritical side never condemned the Swift Boat shit?
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Rock on, Move On. SOMEONE has to say it.
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You have to go down to definition 7 to get your definition. Words have meaning.
In fact #2 describes the Bush Administration and that is the central part of MoveOn’s recent campaign.
The word was chosen because in the military context–as for General P., betrayal means treason. I’m sure someone felt that turnabout is fair play.
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Trouble is, it revives the ancient image–true or not– of lefties spitting on Vietnam draftees. An image that has harmed Democratic credibility on matters military for near 40 years now.
Ask some of those families whose kids are dead now thanks to Bush and his puppets. shrug I bet you’d see pretty strong language from a lot of them. I bet it doesn’t stop at “betrayal.”
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Too bad that spitting on vets thing’s a freaking myth started in the 1980s. There’s no evidence that it happened. (In fact, there was a whole ton of vets coming back against the war – so doubly stupid to spit on them, IMHO. So far as I’ve ever heard they were welcomed into the ranks of the protesters).
I’m sure the gold star families would wind up all over the political map. And even Lembke acknowledges that veterans have always found betrayal by their governments, perhaps as a means of coping with trauma.
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But this freaking myth (or maybe not so much) has been a political albatross for Democrats since 1972.
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So this shot fired Move On gets them plaudits from the grassy netroots or netty grassroots, but the only damage inflicted with respect to the actual voting public is that the anti-war movement is now missing a few toes.
After reading through them, I didn’t see the part where it was Democrats or progressives who allegedly spat on the returning ‘Nam Vets.
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But the freakish myth remains. Huh. Hard to believe after all this time, what with the concern trolls trotting it out every time a Democrat criticizes dear leader’s War, or one of his lackeys.
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Maybe it was John Kerry or Max Cleland. Murtha perhaps? Could have been Jim Webb, he seems like a guy who might spit.
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You’re right though. The left has done it again, another self inflicted wound. Looks like we’ll be in Iraq until the oil runs out. Damn Move On. We were thisclose to getting out.
In 1972, Korean and WWII vets refused to allow VietNam vets to march alongside them on Veterans day because they were murderers. Segregated at the end of the V-Day parade, behind the fire trucks, they had food, paper and curses hurled at them from the sidewalks. Many people turned their backs to shun them right in front of City Hall. I din’t see anybody spit – but did they need to?
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IT WAS OVER 30 YEARS AGO. There was no YouTube, a V-8 camerra was an upper-class rarity. People had slides or photos by and large. You can’t apply standards of ‘evidence’ from today in retrospect.
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These were kids I went to high school with. I didn’t grow up in the kind of neighborhood where people went to college, or got academic deferments by going to Oxford and agonizing. It didn’t occur to my classmates to gutlessly run to Canada. They were drafted, they served, and didn’t know until they got home that they had been tried and convicted in absentia on the CBS Evening News.
The last thing I read indicated that there were no confirmed occasions on which lefties spit on returning troops from Vietnam.
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Further, the polling is very different, very different from 2003. Look at the Pew Research polling on this.
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By an 48%-18% margin independents think the Democratic Congress has not gone far enough in opposing the war. Not Democrats. Independents.
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Really, we don’t have to act as if we are going to relive the McGovern debacle. We’re not. Public opinion is in a very different place.
“True or not”???? Exactly what do you contend happened?
“Urban Myth”?
“The last thing I read”? Huh?
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I’ve seen this lightweight revisionist history more and more over the last few years?I won’t let you guys minimize this stain on our national history without calling you on it?
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I am not trying to rehash a 40 year old debate. I am just trying to educate you. It is dangerous for us to not understand what was done to our veterans. I won’t let that sort of evil stand. Yes, I said evil. You guys should be ashamed.
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On to what you somehow blindly accept as “proof” of this “Freakish Myth:
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Lembcke’s argues like Rush Limbaugh. For starters, he creates a straw argument that every Vietnam veteran claims to have been spit on. Simply untrue. However, he is kind enough to try and provide proof to counter an argument nobody has made….His proof you ask? He can’t find any proof! Huh? At least in the op ed piece, he doesn’t explain or refer to how he researched it. Are we to understand that every “Disorderly Conduct” report was researched by this joker? What did he do, a Lexis Nexis search for “Spit” and “Vietnam”? Visit a library?? Really, I’d like to know since he’s using his failure to find proof of something as proof that it did not happen.
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Hey, I guess if he can get guys like you to buy it, why not try? Here’s a little secret guys?that sort of assertion can NEVER be proven wrong. Second, he takes the most egregious exaggerations to dismiss any facts that may come up. Third, he inoculates himself against any individual accounts that may be true by saying that individual stories are too numerous to counter.
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Do you guys realize that this is EXACTLY how holocaust deniers debate? I’m not kidding?
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Of course, EVERY Vietnam Veteran was not spit on…the rest were either called baby killers to their face or at protests around the country. Better yet, many were called that as their plane landed in Oakland after a year of being shot at…But make no mistake, protesters DID spit on soldiers.
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I know too many men who suffered to allow you to minimize their pain by dismissing it with your, “true or not” bunk or to quote a poorly researched op ed piece who’s only point is to assuage his own or his movement’s guilt.
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The truth is that older veterans treated them horribly, dismissing their service. However it was the protester that did, in fact, turn on the troops and made them out to be baby killing villains. Uncomfortable as it that may be for you it is the truth. “Hey, Hey, LBJ, How many Kid’s did you kill today?” – Sound familiar?
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As I said, I am the son of a Vietnam era veteran who was spit on in an airport as the man called him a babykiller. I am also a veteran myself who works with veterans every day of my life. I wish you three could have an opportunity to hear them tell their stories and see the pain in their eyes as they describe to me how they were treated by protesters. You should all be ashamed of yourselves for attempting to invalidate that for political purposes. I am not exaggerating and I rarely speak in those sort of indignant terms. But you guys really should be ashamed.
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Just know that this isn’t some “spin” fostered on our party by the evil GOP or some bit of flawed history that our sexist, racist and homophobic past has yet to flush out?that is the truth of what many people who are now in our party did. It’s what many of your fathers, uncles and aunts did?own that. If we don’t it is our party that suffers. Worse, until we really understand the pathology behind it we do our country a disservice.
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Beyond petty political ramifications, it is simply immoral for you deny Vietnam Veterans their experiences because it hinders your political agenda?.I cannot say that any clearer. You owe Vietnam Veterans an apology. Frankly, you owe everyone on BlueMassGroup an apology for cheapening the discourse.
…rather silly rant to be taken seriously you will have to provide evidence–from primary sources–that veterans who were returning from Vietnam were spit upon by anti-war protesters. From I have read, the preceding comment was exactly correct.
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BTW, I’ll presume that you know what a “primary source” is, but that may be a rash presumption.
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Of interest: http://slate.com/id/…
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Now, you put up or shut up.
In your zeal to insult, you forgot to address any of my points.
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It is nice to see that your self-reported intellectual superiority doesn’t stop you from devolving into insults right out of the block, huh? Congratulations on the self esteem! That is so hard to come by these days.
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You demand primary sources yet all you present is a two second Google search and a link to an article rehashing the book from which the original piece I am critiquing is based. Really?not a lot of heavy lifting. Oh, I forgot, you claimed that, from what you’ve “read” you are right and I’m wrong. Who can argue with that logic?
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So Raj, I must ask?..Do you know what a primary source is??
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I’m still curious as to why many feel a need to deny any man’s reported experiences without strong proof otherwise. I mean, you can’t seriously be claiming that he has provided strong proof to that effect. I say I’m curious, but it seems clear it’s because those facts interfere with your political agenda.
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I’m guessing that in no other situation would any of you tell a victim of crime that it did not happen without specific proof to the contrary. Rape, murder, mugging?.Yet, in this case you go all out?. Why? It has to be politics.
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So, to recap, Lembcke’s best argument is that since he cannot find news reports of spitting then it did not happen and your best argument is that you are smarter than the average bear?Wow!
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So, I’ll keep putting up if it’s ok by you?.
As you can see, your anecdotal comments will be subject to pious, ofttimes childish inquisition, and some rather fatuous demands will be made. If you can’t appease the deniers, your assertions, however true, will be summarily dismissed.
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History is malleable to these folk. The shame of my generation for it’s manifestly irresponsible behavior towards ‘Nam Vets is now assuaged by simply pretending that it never happened.
Why no link?
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I contend that it rarely happened and that the lack of solid confirmation of its occurring is a sign that this is a politically useful fable.
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And yes, over a million Vietnamese, from a tiny country to begin with, died because of a war that accomplished, well, what? There was plenty of moral outrage. Some, not all, opponents of the war felt that it was so deeply immoral that fighting in it was complicity. The memory of World War II and the Nuremberg trials was still fresh in 1968. Americans felt the Germans were morally required not to obey. Many in the peace movement in the sixties had similar expectations of draftees.
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Do you not recall the use of napalm? the bombing of the dykes around Hanoi? the use of Agent Orange that causes birth defects to this day? the program of targeted assassination?
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There was plenty of reason for the peace movement to be morally outraged. Sometimes morally outraged people go over the top and do destructive stuff. In fact, most people with anger issues are simply blinded with moral outrage.
I notice that we have moved from “urnab myth that never happened” to “rare.”
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Specific confirmation of “rare” is attached here. There are two links there. These links do great violence to Lembcke’s original assertion that there were never any contemporary reports of these incidents, and that they are all therefore urban myth.
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I’ll repeat that the tactics of that 1960s peace movement, regardless of their rightness, wrongness, or indifferentness, have been extremely destructive to Democratic political fortunes, at least since 1972.
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I’m not so sure that Iraq is all that much more unpopular than Vietnam, certainly toward the end. But the anti war movement still seems to think that being correct somehow insulates it from being utterly repellent. It is wrong.
I respect what you are saying because I think that on issues like this we just need to be careful not to overstate things….too many people have suffered.
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Thanks for being fair…
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I also cannot agree with you more about the impact it has on our party. I’m not sure what our option are other than not allowing MoveOn.org to hijack our agenda. I am biased…I admit. I believe there are always more votes in the center and that one does not have to be a sell out to be moderate. It’s a false choice based on the vapid premise tha in some sort of natural political state we are all hard core Right or Left.
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But again, on your comments…well said.
You might to look at this article on Free Republic. This is from a guy who specializes in urban legend and Free Republic is a conservative site. In fact, it is made famous by liberal invective. They might call us “moonbats”; we call them — when being dragged down to their level, of course — “wingnuts” or “freepers”.
And as I also said, I didn’t see anybody spit – just curse, throw garbage, and shun.
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I ask again – did they really NEED to spit?
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That opinion poll stuff is a crock. No distinction was made in the VietNam years that we support the trops and attack the war the way it is done now with Iraq. If they were drafted and went, they were soulless murderers. Period and case closed. Along with David Susskind minds.
I think people tend to remember what is most heated or most salient. I don’t recall Senators McCarthy, McGovern, or Mansfield ever using such language. Opposition to the Vietnam War spanned the staid, Yankee American Friends Service Committee to the SDS and its later Maoist offshoots.
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For years, the Sparticist League, a weird Trotskyist party, would show up at demonstrations with bizarrely radical banners. To make matters worse, their banners were very well-made and readable. They were shunned by most everyone and their positions never made any sense but always cause offense. I last saw them at a Deval Patrick rally.
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Now, I’m sure there’s some enterprising conservative photographer out there who has albums full of pictures purporting to show how the Sparticist League represents what liberals think “when we let our hair down.” Demolisher was kind enough to point me to a recent collection with a similar purpose.
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However just because something is as salient as the Sparticist League’s bright banners does not mean it is typical. Just one accusation of being a “baby killer” can go a very long way. (I’m thinking too about the work of Tversky and Kahneman. See a discussion of the availability heuristic.)
Opposition to the Vietnam war also included a movement to dodge the draft. Advocates of draft dodging were no doubt busy trying to make an ethical case against being conscripted.
These were ordinary lunch-bucket Democrats, not the champagne bucket crowd. The college kids chanted, and the elders, who were WWII vets, shunned.
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Criminy! I feel like I’m trying to describe Richard II and the Second Crusade, and it’s only 30 years ago!
that MoveOn is akin to the Spartacist League?
You guys keep referring me back to discussions about the same book that spurred the op end piece in the globe. You can restate his poorly researched and argued book all you want…a pig is still a pig, even if you put a dress on it.
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However, earlier Today you said the following:
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“I contend that it rarely happened and that the lack of solid confirmation of its occurring is a sign that this is a politically useful fable.”
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With all due respect, you didn’t say this yesterday. You referred to, “No confirmed occasions”, which is much different than over reported. I would disagree and love to debate the real reasons our most affluent turned on our working class soldiers, but it is at least it is intellectually and morally defensible position. So I respectfully take back my heated comments in reference to you assuming you hadn’t flushed out your point completely…seriously.
Not a lot, but not zero. See my links posted above.
MoveOn is running a “betrayal of trust” campaign. They chose the word on that basis.
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And just for you, I offer some supplemental reading!
If that was intended, then why not the more common “breach of trust?” Why “betrayal”? I think I know why: because of the trason connotation.
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I don’t even disagree with Moveon that much, but they just always go for shitty tactics. Knuckleheaded and sactimoniuous.
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Democrats just don’t have the votes to oppose the war in more than a symbolic manner. Their attempts thus far have divided their own caucus and have united the GOP members, failing to peel off any moderates (all of whom must be watching their right flank instead of their left).
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In my view, they ought to quit the stupid cease-funding crap, and start having hearings on the “now what” question.
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Accusing soldiers of betrayal (or worse– Last spring a saw invective, but not spittle, directed at what appeared to be a BU ROTC student, because that student “has volunteered to be a murdering slave for Bush”) is counterproductive in the extreme.
on the supplemental reading.
1 is the only one I see that’s possible but not what was meant. (That’s the one that’s equivalent to “traitor” – and even that’s arguable, ask those kids who’ve lost their lives in this surge which isn’t doing a damn), #2 is spot on, #3 is irrelevant, #4 without the friends thing at the end is also spot on, #4-6 are whole other definitions entirely which are also irrelevant, #7 is spot on, and #8 would be applicable if you can say he deserted his morals, if he had any to begin with.
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I dunno, the only one that possibly is dicey is just one…generally, in the context most often used, “betray” is a reference to a backstabbing between friends, as far as I can think of (I was an English major once..) Well, I feel pretty backstabbed if you ask me.
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I doubt anyone in their right mind thinks Move On was calling him a traitor in the Benedict Arnold sense of the word. But it’s easy to see where he betrayed our ideals as Americans, betrayed the country and the constitution. Is anyone arguing that? He lied to Congress for pete’s sake! I know that’s par for the course in Bushworld but that doesn’t make it any less egregious.
Petraeus misled. That’s the point of the MoveOn ad.
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The only fault with the ad was the headline, which was a distraction.
I present Glenn Greenwald from July.
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This account is almost definitive. He also points to a briefer account by Lawrence Korb of CAP at the Philadelphia Inquirier:
However, Greenwald’s dismantling is thorough, well-documented, and worth reading.
You do realize, don’t you, that Mr. Korb was writing an opinion piece clearly labeled as commentary by the Inquirer?
Korb was making a series of assertions of fact. The issue, as I read it the comment, was whether Korb’s assertions of fact had anything to do with reality. Computer says no.
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Korb, and, for that matter, Petraeus, might have believed his assertions of fact to be true then when they were made. But they are obviously not true now, in that the predictions have not come to pass, so why should anyone believe them now? It is the latter that you fail to address. Why should they be believed now given their obvious failings a couple of years ago?
..isn’t whether he failed. The question is whether he lied.
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Evidence that he lied has not been presented here. Not by KBusch nor by the pundits cited.
(i) Korb, and, for that matter, Petraeus, might have believed his assertions of fact to be true then when they were made.
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Lets presume that.
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(ii) But they are obviously not true now, in that the predictions have not come to pass…
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Obvious. Which calls into question Korb’s and Petraus’s judgement, particularly regarding the failure of Nr i.
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(iii) …so why should anyone believe them now? obviously refers to their most recent predictions in regards Iraq. Let me ask you this. If someone gave you a prediction on a momentous issue and had so precipitously failed, would you really trust them when they came along and offered you another prediction on the same topic. If you would, I’m sure that a high risk/sub-prime mortagage specialist would be banging on your door.
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(iv) Why should they be believed now given their obvious failings a couple of years ago?</i) Well, obviously circumstances have changed. The religious cleansing in and around Baghdad has proceeded apace, is probably almost complete viz Sunni & Shi'ia (the christians are apparently mostly gone from the region), and now the civil war south of Kirkuk will be among the various Shi'ia factions jockeying for power.
You, like many, fail to understand Clausewitz. War is a continuation of politics by other means. I seriously don’t care whether Petraues intentionally told falsehoods, or if he was playing fast and loose with the truth (both would lies, in my book). What I do care about is the judgement of the people who are in charge of the operation. If they can’t work backwards from “what is our desired result” to “how do we attain our end result,” they are as worthless as a bull in a china shop.
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Note to webmaster: your formatting has serious problems. I can’t get rid of italics.
When you’re ready to answer his carefully documented history of David Petreaus, I’ll answer.
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Are you always dismissive when you’re wrong?
I read it. A lot. And it would have counted a lot with me for Democratic leaders to say that MoveOn doesn’t speak for them. Or something to that effect. They said the General has betrayed us. Or do you disagree? Excerpt from the wikipedia definition of betrayal references treason as follows:
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In law, treason is the crime of disloyalty to one’s nation. A person who betrays the nation of their citizenship and/or reneges on an oath of loyalty and in some way willfully cooperates with an enemy, is considered to be a traitor.
Haven’t we already been through the definition of “betrayal”? Could you ask a different question? We do have an excellent examination of it.
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For public officials, lying is a betrayal of trust. Full stop.
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The Bush Administration has poisoned our democracy by making lying commonplace and acceptable.
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Let’s take 2 random examples:
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If you enjoy the authoritarian thrill of being lied to by someone in a uniform, might I suggest you’d enjoy military dictatorships more than a pesky democracy where the tender feelings of liars might be hurt on occasion.
This is the third time we’ve had a post on this. If conservatives spent a fraction of this amount of time considering the people actually dying in Iraq because of Petreaus, there’d be fewer grieving parents these days.
SO, did the Rep.cite any evidence for his assertions, or do we just assume that his position on the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee gives Mr. Stark (never served) some particular insight or military expertise that he might share with us?
Since you seem to have Idle time, read up.
http://www.washingto…
than any of the conservative candidates…. now the people of America get a good close look at the kind of radical left wing lunatics control the likes of Hilary, Obama, et al. The “silent majority” will turn out in numbers as never before to prevent the likes of “move on’ radical liberals from gaining power. Their folly in attacking an American hero a blessing in disguise
The Silent Majority !! An American Hero !!!
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Don’t forget to mention The Ponies !!!!
The right wing has succeeded in browbeating liberals into self-censoring truth. No more. Petraeus did betray the truth, and if you’d read the ad you’d know that.
…you decide…how you want to characterize the good General. He decided to write an OpEd in The Washington Post on September 26, 2004 in which he states…
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So…
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He chooses to involve himself in the presidential election despite every possible ETHICAL reason to the contrary.
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He claims three years ago far more Iraqis in security operations than there are US troops.
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The week before he testifies, another General and his panel recommends the disbanding of the Iraqi police.
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So I have it narrowed down to liar or fool…whose mistakes in POLITICAL judgment have resulted in thousands of deaths. Once he injected himself into the political arena he can not hide behind the uniform … his judgment and testimony are fair game.
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PS – He backtracks in 2005
His report was not an independent revue. I don’t trust Patraes as far as I can throw him. His testimony meant nothing, you need not look further from the lies he’s reproted – such as the unexpected success in Anbar. We knew about whatever success was going on there months ago – it wasn’t unexpected. Furthermore, it was highly exaggerated, as we’ve seen recently.
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No general should try to “sell” a war to the country and, sadly, that’s exactly what he did.
Wouldn’t it be a better use of our time to investigate the war than attack a stupid NY Times ad and act like Rush Limbaugh and every other conservative having a field day, ignoring the facts and taking the easy swipes.
This is the kind of post that makes me wish I could “unrecommend”, and I’m appalled that BMG is spreading this idiotic right-wing “MoveOn called Patraeus a traitor” spin. BMG should be ashamed of itself.
Cos, please don’t resort to censorship. For the most part, this thread has featured some great points on various sides of the discussion, with links, and a minimum of personal attack. All I wanted to know was why the Dems hadn’t distanced themselves from MoveOn. I recall a similar question was asked of the Republicans about the Swift Boat ad too. But in this thread, I have my answer. We’re better for the debate no?
I’ll repeat that the tactics of that 1960s peace movement, regardless of their rightness, wrongness, or indifferentness, have been extremely destructive to Democratic political fortunes, at least since 1972.
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In point of fact, Democrats have been playing catch-up on national defense issues since at least 1948. That was when the Republican discovered a way to mitigate their obstructism regarding US entry into WWII by claiming that a lower level functionary in the FDR administration (I believe it was Alger Hiss, but I’m not sure) persuaded FDR to allow the Eastern European countries that the USSR to remain under USSR control.
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That was in 1948. Shortly thereafter came Mao’s overtaking of China. Remember “who lost China”? Well, the incredibly corrupt former Kuomintang government of China lost China. The Kuomintang government fled to Taiwan to set up what was, for a long time, a dictatorship under control of Chiang Kai Scheck. But, it happened under Truman’s watch, so Republicans could call it a Democratic failing.
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The 1972 incident that you refer to had little to do with the tactics of the 1960s peace movement. Recall that the demonstrations of the anti-war peace movement occurred primarily at the Democratic national convention in Chicago, not so much at the Republican national convention of the same year.
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The 1972 (actually, it was a few years later) incident was the Democrat-controlled Congress’s vote to defund the war in Vietnam. That is what allowed the NVIetnamese to consolidate with SVietnam. And that is what the Republicans refer to. It is a further example of what the Germans call the Dolchstosslegende==the “stab in the back legend.” The Democrats “stabbed us in the back” by rescinding funding for SVietnam. By way of information, the military government of Germany used precisely the same excuse for their loss of WWI: the center-left Social Democrats wanted to rescind funding for that war as early as 1916. Right wingers like to use the Dolchstosslegende to demonize even center left parties for their failures.
I am aware of the historical implications of the “stab in the back” myth. I suspect that the relatively greater sacrafice of life and treasure in Germany 1914-18, and the disasterous consequences of the Versailles treaty from 1919-1931, lent that instance far greater power and venom than in the US post 1975, or (we hope) post-Iraq.
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I disagree with you regarding the national defense issue. To the same extent that “Who lost China?” was a Republican issue in 1948 (Who won in 1948, anyway?”, JFK beat the Republicans up with the missile gap in 1960.
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I say that the national security issue did not favor one party over the other until the end of Vietnam.
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I point to 1972 because it was during that election that the radicals protesting outside the Chicago convention became part of the party establishment. In other words, 1972 saw the Yippification of the Democratic party.
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It is this perception– and it is not an unfair perception– that lead to a not-particularly-likable-or-popular president absolutely crushing McGovern in the general election. And it is no coincidence that, since 1972, the Democrats have required a gale force wind at their back in order to capture the white house, even though, for most of that time, people were perfectly happy to send a Democratic Congress to Washington. National secrutity is the one big issue that distinguishes presidential politics from Congressional politics, and the Democrats have been hamstrung on the issue for 35 years.
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MoveOn is’nt helping.
We would all be better off if MoveOn had called Colin Powell on his BS before the UN. The Bushists have a long history of hiding behind generals they have thoroughly co-opted. It’s time for that to end. You’d think that a lesson America learned from watching LBJ and Westmoreland at a cost of 58,000 dead would have stuck a little longer.