Attack the Messenger

I don’t claim to have been aware of who Congressman Jack Murtha is, though the Pennsylvania Democrat has been in Congress for over thirty years and is a powerful member of the House. This decorated veteran of both the Korean and Vietnam wars has long been acknowledged as a solid hawk on military and defense issues including voting for the Iraq invasion.

But a few days ago, in a powerful speech pointing out the failures of the Bush Administration course in Iraq following the initial military victory, Murtha advocated redeploying our troops out of Iraq and letting the Iraqi people take over their own matters, while we keep sufficient troops nearby, perhaps in Kuwait, in case their use back in Iraq as peacekeepers becomes necessary. Today on Meet the Press, Murtha explained his position further, as shown in the online transcript.

Murtha is not a grandstander. He is a sincere advocate for our troops. He makes weekly visits to the wounded at Walter Reed Hospital. He has the respected attention of our top military brass, who give him their true assessment of the war. He definitely knows what he is talking about and his views deserve to be heard by the American people and properly debated in Congress. But the Bush administration does not operate that way. Instead of addressing the issues, they personally attack anyone who challenges their positions, or more accurately, their slogan, in this case being “stay the course” [addressed in the Sense piece, “Cut and Run”, back in September].

The attacks on Murtha were so outrageous that they went full circle through ludicrous and back again to outrageous. Cheney promptly implied people like Murtha lack backbone, to which Murtha responded, “I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done”. Various House Republicans said Murtha was “surrendering to the terrorists” and “emboldening our enemies”, but the low point came when Neophyte Congresswoman Schmidt of Ohio said, “cowards cut and run”. Outraged Democrats who had been jeering the Republican attacks on the House floor stormed the podium in response to the Schmidt attack, causing the session to be recessed until order was restored and Schmidt apologized and had her remarks stricken from the record.

The neocon strict father George W. Bush first found that his Iraqi children were unappreciatively disobedient, and next that the American public has come to realize that the Bush parental skills are deficient. Now his tyrannical parenting attempt is being challenged by an increasing number of previously submissive Congressional supporters who are starting to stand up to him and his character assassins. Neocons have salivated for a long time over the prospect of serving the American people Iraq as a meal, but now that they have put it on the plate, they are finding the American people have little taste for it.

In a new book, “Attack the Messenger”, Congressional Quarterly columnist Craig Crawford writes about how politicians turn the public against the media, an obfuscation tactic he says was first notably turned to advantage by George H. W. Bush in 1988, to deflect media attention from his involvement in the Iran Contra affair.