Intro: Lost in all the Republican scandals is the scandalous Republican tactic: Blaming the troops for everything. This must be stopped.
I know there are too many Republican scandals to keep up with this week, but I think it is important to make sure we don't let any pass by.
I also know last week's smears against Sen. Durbin were outrageous and frustratingly effective--the Republicans managed to distract Americans (with the help of the MSM) from one of the worst weeks in any administration's domestic policy that many of us can remember. (Which is pretty bad considering the recent revelation about the Bush administration lying to Congress to stop a supplemental appropriation to Veterans Affairs this week).
One scandal of last week actually came to light in the Republican smears of Sen. Durbin:
REPUBLICAN POLICY-MAKERS KEEP SCAPEGOATING OUR TROOPS FOR THEIR POLICY FAILURES.
This, to me, is the most disgusting part of the Republican chickenhawks' Un-/Anti-American tactics. Remember Rudy Giuliani reflexively blaming the troops for reports of missing weapons caches in Iraq in the weeks before the election?
Remember the Abu Ghraib torturers? The Republicans perpetuated this narrative of ignorant poor white trash doing things on their own. Nobody really called them out on it, but they took the fact that most of our troops are underprivileged and from lower economic classes (and thus not connected enough to get out of harm's way a la War President Bush) to insult them while blaming them for following orders! Yes, however horrible the acts at Abu Ghraib, our troops were following orders. None of the troops actually risking their lives had any part in writing the torture memos.
And last week, when Sen. Durbin described the acts at Guantanamo Bay as those of an immoral regime, any decent person could understand that he was criticizing our Republican leaders for their immoral, inhuman, and harmful policies. The Republicans chose to spin this criticism of their policies as a reflection on our troops.
Scapegoating our American troops for every failure of Republican policies and buying magnetic ribbons made in China are pillars of Republicans' version of patriotism.
There are innumerable things I wish the Republicans did not do. More than anything, though, I WANT THE REPUBLICANS TO STOP BLAMING OUR TROOPS FOR THEIR POLICY FAILURES. I WANT THE REPUBLICANS TO STOP INSULTING OUR TROOPS TO DISTRACT THE PUBLIC.
And I am not alone. Below is one of many letters to Sen. Durbin's hometown newspaper, the State-Journal Register in Springfield, IL, expressing disgust at Republican exploitation of our troops to distract from the real policy scandals. I should point out that the State-Journal Register is an ultra-conservative newspaper and yet letters in support of Sen. Durbin have been outnumbering right-wing hate mail 2-to-1.
Here it is:
I am amazed by the rapid-fire attack on Sen Richard Durbin by groups and individuals who seem to be barking up the wrong tree. Sen. Durbin was reading an FBI report and asked people what would they think if the authors of the memo were unknown. He was not making a personal statement. Will his attackers deny that such a report exists?
It is amazing that the vicious right has turned to maul them rather than take a pause and digest what he was actually saying. The right machine loses no opportunity to deflect attention from our bushwhacked state of affairs, where lies go unchallenged and atrocities are never denounced. The Right has made a calculated move so that people don't ask why we are scaling down tobacco penalties by some 90% to some paltry $10 billion. That sum, if recovered as originally planned, would have paid for a significant portion of our expenditures in the Iraq war. It is not surprising, therefore, that Sen. John Warner of tobacco-rich Virginia was critical of Sen. Durbin, lest Sen. Warner be asked to explain this backpedaling on tobacco penalties. The real scandal is not what Durbin said. He simply read a report penned by an FBI agent.
The real scandal is the Bush government lying to the public and taking us to a war that was his personal war. The real scandal was eight southern Republican senators, including Trent Lott, still not summoning the [decency] to denounce lynching. More than 1700 troops have died in Iraq and billions have been spent on a war that seems to have no end in sight. I hope we have more courageous people like Sen. Durbin who don't shy away from the moral duty of a citizen to point out right from wrong, no matter how painful the truth is.
[Also, don't forget the revelation that a white house staffer / oil lobbyist "edited" scientific reports on climate change to increase the appearance of uncertainty.]
BOTTOM LINE: The Republicans consistently scapegoat our troops for everything that goes wrong because of their Iraq policy. They even scapegoat our troops to distract from the harm their domestic policies do. This Republican tactic must be stopped. We cannot continue to let Republican insinuations that the troops are to blame for everything go unchallenged.