John Murtha is an American hero. He served his country honorably for thirty seven years as a marine Combat veteran and is a highly decorated war hero (something neither the President or Vice President can claim). Yet he recently made a fatal political mistake – he spoke out against the Bush foreign policy. Now, John Murtha is portrayed by the administration as another Michael Moore…a liberal extremist with radical views outside the mainstream. The next phase of the character assassination is the Swift Boat treatment, made famous last year when people suspiciously discovered that Senator John Kerry’s military record made George Bush look like a draft-dodging hippie. The perception of Kerry was subsequently reduced to an unpatriotic anti-war protester and now Murtha has been linked by Scott McClellan to ”the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party.” Once again, the American people are privileged to observe a firsthand account of what the President calls uniting, not dividing.
If John Murtha is a liberal, George Bush is a compassionate conservative. Murtha was one of the biggest supporters of the Iraq War and advocated for the invasion by American troops. However, in this administration, acknowledging inconvenient facts and making policy changes accordingly makes one a “flip flopper” or even worse a “coward.” Absurd comments by Ohio Republican Congressman Jean Schmidt notwithstanding, the repeated pattern of attack the messenger, ignore the message has reappeared – and the Swift Boating began.
Choosing to prioritize political gain over the welfare of our troops, the Republican House leadership last week drafted a ridiculous resolution to immediately withdraw troops from Iraq, a position Murtha and most other House Democrats never articulated nor supported. Predictably, the resolution was rejected overwhelmingly (403-3) yet the image of our leaders employing a stunt to mock the majority of Americans that oppose this war and the families of the soliders that have sacrificed is permanently engrained in our collective consciousness. Winning the war has taken a backseat to next year’s midterm elections, with our troops in Iraq caught in the middle between a common sense policy debate and political positioning.