Are you getting really sick of John Murtha? Latching onto allegations of a massacre to get media attention is pretty low. Here’s a succinct statement of how the left uses massacres (or alleged massacres-we don’t know yet):
“No matter how quickly military investigators work, and no matter how firmly any crimes are punished, the anti-war left won’t be satisfied unless Haditha becomes the lever that pushes President Bush to admit the war was wrong and set a time to withdraw from Iraq. My Lai – the March 16, 1968 massacre of about 500 Vietnamese by US soldiers – was first covered up and then exploded in headlines, courts-martial and congressional hearings. (Maureen Dowd, one of the New York Times’s hyperliberal columnists, has already labeled Haditha a ‘My Lai acid flashback.’) Screamed about by protesters, shown endlessly on television news, My Lai and the court-martial of one of the perpetrators, Lt. William Calley, provided the final political nail in the coffin of American involvement in Vietnam. We withdrew from Vietnam in 1975, abandoning our allies and hanging our heads in shame. This is the political result the left wants from Haditha, and we cannot allow it to happen for one very big reason. The Vietnam War ended in Vietnam, leaving America incapable of taking action in defense of itself or its allies for decades. The end of the war against the terrorist nations won’t occur in Iraq, and we must be prepared – psychologically and politically – to continue the fight. When we lost Vietnam the enemy didn’t follow us home. Radical Islamists will. If they win, we will literally lose America.
“If it were up to Cong. John Murtha, Duke University rape case prosecutor Mike Nifong would be transferred to the Haditha case. Fortunately for both the victim and the accused, the military justice system doesn’t satisfy media hunger for the bread and circuses of civilian criminal trials. Those who may be charged with war crimes won’t be arrested after dramatic chases down Los Angeles highways, nor will we be subjected to judges and lawyers preening before the television cameras during the trial. But because the military justice system moves much slower than politics, and because of the opportunity it poses for the antiwar crowd, the Haditha incident will create three lasting effects that will carry through to November and beyond.”
Here’s what infuriates me most about Murtha: He wants it both ways. He has sought to get out front and make hay with the Haditha story-but not too far out front. Murtha sneakily says that the U.S. soldiers who allegedly killed civilians did so because they were “under pressure.”
That’s too soft on massacres for my taste. But then I sincerely hope that the massacre did not take place.