You knew it would happen. As soon as Jack Murtha called for a withdrawel from Iraq, right wing congressmen who never served in the military started going after Murtha, using terms like “cowardly” and “aiding the enemy.”
As a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania for the past 31 years, he has been a fierce hawk, championing conflicts in Central America and the Persian Gulf.
On Thursday, he was called a coward.
After Murtha stunned the Capitol with a news conference calling for a pullout from Iraq because our “troops have done all they can,” the denunciations came quickly and furiously.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., accused Murtha of delivering “the highest insult” to the troops. “We must not cower,” Hastert told the former Marine.
Majority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., told Murtha that his views “only embolden our enemies” and lamented that “Democrats undermine our troops in Iraq from the security of their Washington, D.C., offices.”
Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., told the 73-year-old Murtha that “the American people are made of sterner stuff.” And Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, said the likes of Murtha want to take “the cowardly way out.”
Murtha, whose brand of hawkishness has never been qualified by the word “chicken,” was expecting the attacks: “I like guys who’ve never been there that criticize us who’ve been there. I like that.”
Carter, Hastert, Blunt and Hayworth have no military service record.
John Kerry is now on the floor of the U.S. Senate, blasting these clowns and Dick Cheney for these attacks on Murtha. There’s nothing wrong with a debate on what we should do to deal with this mess in Iraq, but anyone who dares to present an alternative to the disastrous policies of this incompetent administration is attacked mercilessly. What a joke.
