Respect

Representative John Murtha is from my neck of the woods. His district is close to where I grew up. He was the first Vietnam veteran to be elected to Congress. He saw combat, and he has the medals, including two purple hearts. He is the highest ranking Democrat on the House appropriations defense subcommittee. He is considered a hawk. He voted for the Iraq war.

Thursday he said it's time to bring U.S. soldiers home.

This is the Washington equivalent of an earthquake. As the AP report put it "The comments by the Pennsylvania lawmaker, who has spent three decades in the House, hold particular weight because he is close to many military commanders and has enormous credibility with his colleagues on defense issues."

This was the first huge blow of the day suffered by the Bush administration; the other, which came late Thursday night, is from a former CIA Director in the first Bush administration, and a Navy Admiral, who accuses the Bush administration of a policy of torture, and of lying about it.

It is to be expected that such devastating statements would make Bushcorps and their apologists defensive. But that spineless bunch of hate-filled moral bankrupts knows only how to attack the messenger. While the president repeatedly accuses Democrats of being irresponsible, repeating it like the Rovian mantra it likely is, his White House spokesperson did his best to villify and marginalize John Murtha for daring to speak his mind. Some other Republicans and the Rabid Right blogs were even more defamatory.

I haven't agreed with many positions taken by Rep. John Murtha on military and foreign policy matters. But I never disrespected him.

I saw some of his press conference. I saw the emotion with which he spoke about the wounded soldiers he's visited. And I say to those who vilify him now, have you visited with the soldiers you so easily send into hell, every week? Do you talk with men who have lost both legs and an arm, or to the family seated around the bed of a young son in a coma? How dare you disrespect a man who has.

I fully expect to disagree with John Murtha again, to oppose some bill that he supports, to support some candidate he opposes. But I hope I never degrade myself or degrade the political process by the kind of cowardly vilification that characterizes the supposed guardians of our morals, the holier than thou zealots that blithely send others to bleed and burn and die so they can enrich themselves, in this orgy of cynical corruption known as the Bush administration and the repulsive right.