[Previously posted at Grok Your World by David Caploe.]
It’s yet another sign of how weak / pathetic / disoriented the Democrats (and, yes, I do mean to include most Kossacks, both new and old) have become … how desperate they are for anyone at the national level to say something they want to hear … that they are cumming in their pants over John Murtha …
Let’s not go too overboard here, dudes …
First and foremost, his speech – while impressive in its emotion, and appropriate attack on BushCo’s integrity and honesty – has all the problems of the whole “Bring Them Home” line :
no attention at all to the complexities of the Middle East, and the fact that the US cannot simply leave the region, no matter what happens in Iraq –
not to mention how easily it helps the GOP blame him, and every other anti-Iraq person, for the inevitable disaster that will ensue if the US just picks up and leaves … just as they did with Vietnam, and Hitler did with WWI.
Second, this guy has voted for every single lame-brained defense spending bill to come down the pike since he got into Congress in 1974 … which may give him some credibility when it comes to criticizing a truly hare-brained scheme … but is certainly no great overwhelming endorsement of the guy’s career …
And last but not least, think again of how easily you guys accept the Republican / right wing’s criteria for legitimacy …
Is Murtha’s elemental and unsophisticated speech to be glorified because he’s a Marine who was wounded in Vietnam, and has uncritically voted for a completely out-of-control defense spending policy for decades ???
Hope not … because if so, that implicitly IN-validates any sort of similar – hopefully more cogent – critique from anyone who does not have an equally “valid” set of personal characteristics …
If anything is ever going to improve in this fucked-up country – which really doesn’t look to be the case until we experience further decades of pain and agony – it has got to start now by rejecting as irrelevant – especially from chickenhawks like Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the rest of the GOP elite who always want to send the sons and daughters of others to fight their nonsensical wars – these ridiculous criteria about who has legitimacy to speak on matters that concern all citizens of the United States … if such a category has any meaning left at all.