Few threats spook politicians like unfriendly facts congealing with public distrust. For Republicans, the routine has become all too familiar. Hounded by a burgeoning awareness that whatever they're doing is a sham, they get desperate. Predictably, their immediate instinct is to grab mud and sling hard. Usually the hope is for a momentary diversion, but unfortunately, some liberals play along.
Republicans, on the precipice of defeat, managed to turn Al Gore and John Kerry into pariahs by impugning their trustworthiness and lifetimes of public service. From Max Cleland to John McCain, the right-wing establishment has broadcast clearly the consequence of resistance: personal destruction.
Too often, Democrats join in the fun. With his riveting portrayals of the crass injustices committed by the gun, national defense and health care industries, Michael Moore was poised to expose the soft underbelly of conservative depravity. Quick to avert any dignified policy debate, Republicans caricatured Moore as an overweight egoist of questionable patriotism. And soon enough, Democrats started mumbling that he's "one-sided" or a poor filmmaker, completely obscuring the fact that people keep dying from unregulated assault rifles, profit-obsessed military contractors and heartless insurance companies.
But this column isn't about Michael Moore. It's about MoveOn.org. Two weeks ago, the liberal grassroots organization ran a full-page ad in The New York Times to coincide with David Petraeus' congressional testimony on Iraq. MoveOn.org called out Petraeus as a Bush lackey, another loyalist more inclined to political spinning that truth telling. Under the banner "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" the advertisement questioned the inconsistent statistics, half-truths and rosy predictions that have kept our troops mired in Iraq for four and a half years.
Republicans, panicking that the veil had been pulled on their General With No Clothes, struck back at the messenger. And thus the party of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth decried any criticism of military men as inexcusable. John McCain, apparently appalled by the ad's shrillness, said MoveOn.org "ought to be thrown out of this country."
On Thursday, 23 Democrats, trained better than Pavlov's dogs, wagged their tails between their legs and voted for a Republican resolution condemning the ad. In fact, there was a piece on this very page a week ago by a "liberal columnist" telling MoveOn.org to "shut their mouths." President Bush concurred, calling the ad "disgusting."
Let me tell you what's disgusting.
Thirty thousand Americans have been killed or wounded in an unnecessary war. Veterans are welcomed back to the squalor of Walter Reed. A total of $500 billion have already been flushed down the toilet, and we're arguing about a newspaper ad.
Seventy-five senators said they would rather vote to condemn a page in The New York Times than bring our soldiers home. Twenty-three Democrats would prefer to cower before a discredited political party than stand up for what voters put them in office to do - end this war. That absolutely disgusts me.
And I'm not the only one. As presidential candidate Bill Richardson pithily put it, "Ads don't kill people, wars do." Arianna Huffington rightly asks, "Does anybody really believe the problem with the war in Iraq is too much questioning of those in authority, too much bluntness and not enough deference to those who have been in charge of the war for the last four years?"
The fact is, President Bush and all his minions have betrayed our trust for far too long. Hiding behind a self-promoting general isn't going to change that. Enough already on the wittiness of a pun. Let's move on.
Jacob Shelly is a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs and a liberal columnist for The Eagle.
