Decision ‘08

The Wrong Thing To Say

Time and time again the extremist elements on the left (and occasionally on the right, as well) overestimate their reach among the rank and file and go way, way too far. This time, it was MoveOn.org:

Republicans have seized on a liberal advocacy group’s print ad attacking Gen. David Petraeus and have called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to denounce it.

In the ad, running in Monday’s edition of The New York Times, bold letters under a picture of Petraeus spell out “General Petraeus or General Betray us?”

MoveOn.org Political Action, which paid for the ad, accuses Petraeus of “cooking the books for the White House” on progress being made in Iraq and calls him “a military man constantly at war with the facts.”

You might recall that the New York Times editorial board accused Petraeus of the exact same thing.

However, some Democrats are not having it:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, also called on the Democratic leadership to “denounce MoveOn.org’s attack on Gen. Petraeus.” Lieberman has been supportive of President Bush’s efforts in Iraq.

Congressional Democrats showed an eagerness to distance themselves from the ad.

Asked early Monday if this was the right message for his party to send, a member of the Democratic leadership, speaking on background, curtly answered, “No.”

Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, called the ad “over the top.”

“I don’t like any kind of characterizations in our politics that call into question any active duty, distinguished general who I think under any circumstances serves with the best interests of our country,” said Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate and a decorated veteran.

“I think there are a lot of legitimate questions that need to be asked, a lot of probing that ought to take place; there’s a lot of legitimate accountability that needs to be achieved. It ought to be done without casting any aspersions on anyone’s character or motives,” he added.

Moving on from MoveOn, I cannot let a September 11th pass by without paying my respects to the 3,000 fallen, and giving my prayers and best wishes to their survivors. This is one American who will never forget…

17 Responses to “The Wrong Thing To Say”

1 Chris J. Breisch Says:
September 11th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Never Forget.

Never Surrender.

http://geekswithblogs.net/cbreisch/archive/2006/09/11/90862.aspx

I would say something about the MoveOn.org ad, if I found it surprising or atypical of MoveOn.org’s practices in any way.
2 Fargus Says:
September 11th, 2007 at 10:04 am
I think that any attacks that are more based on clever soundbites (General Betray Us? Please.) than substance are to be loathed. But that’s just a distraction from the legitimate questions that have arisen about Petraeus’s presentation. For instance, IED hoaxes? How are IED hoaxes counted in total IED attacks? How would the data compare with IED hoaxes removed? We can’t tell because it’s classified. Stuff like that, you know?
3 Andy Says:
September 11th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Hey Mark, long time…

Did anyone catch that little verbal exchange between REP. Illena Ros-Lehtinen and the off-camera howl of protest by some Donk?

Classic knee-jerk response when a rock thrown into a pack of dogs causes one, or two to yelp. The nutroots just can’t help themselves — just as if she had just questioned one’s patriotism.

It happened during the opening remarks. Moments earlier, REP Duncan Hunter first brought up the ad and wondered if the Dems would disavow it. Nary a murmur nor peep in response.

Then when REP Ros-Lehtinen brings it up again, her “esteemed” colleague-across-the-aisle felt it OK to snarl, “No one needs to apologize for that ad”!!! (Paging Dr. Vick, Paging Dr. Vick. We have a raving pitbull in need of sedatives… tut-tut)

Classic gender/superiority bias at work here. The party of tolerance is only tolerant of those who toe the line.

Too bad that REP Ros-Lehtinen could only think to retort, (IIRC) “Cool it”.

I’ll bet if she could re-do that scene, she’d recite the adage about stoned-dogs for the public record. What a golden sound-bite moment that would have been!

I’ll bet not one DNC Donk, would have shown any eagerness to distance themseleves from the ad, were it not for the GOP REPs constantly bringing it up. That, plus putting into the public record, the earlier comment of one Donk in effect saying that they didn’t need to directly besmirch the General since they have others to do the dirty work for them.

That is one heck of a blowback, when even sKerry & Pelosi could see those chicken-littles coming home to roost.

On another tack. As much as I dislike Maliki, the Dems have little room to berate Iraq on their political ineptitude when they themselves failed to achieve even the same % of self-imposed benchmarks.

Yes, I heard them crowing about raising the minimum wage. Get real!!! Their original benchmark was $7/hr and they only succeeded in raising it by 25 some cents to what? five & half bucks? Pot - Kettle - Black…

As Osama duly noted, what a bunch of miserable failures since taking over in 2006. Harry might as well say it, “The party is lost. . . Searchlight notwithstanding”.
4 Andy Says:
September 11th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Fargus, think of it this way. Setting up a fake IED takes time and effort to set up, however, the fear that it might be the real thing affects everyone else that encounters it until EOD can get to the scene to dispatch it.

IOW, Jihadiis don’t have to have a real IED to disrupt civilian and/or military operations. When it happens often enough, they become quantifiable and tracked accordingly. No voodoo here.

“How would the data compare with IED hoaxes removed? We can’t tell because it’s classified.”

On one hand, just because it wasn’t broken out, doesn’t mean it’s classified, on the other hand, does it really matter? It’s been said that once you get past a small number, for most people a large number is abstract and may as well be infinite. Bottomline, the charts show that Jihadiis are spending more time running & hiding rather than fighting and laying traps.
5 Ryan Bonneville Says:
September 11th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Point of order: Joe Lieberman is not a Democrat.
6 Andy Says:
September 11th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Hence DNC Donk.

They threw Ole Joe out in the last election, but he’s b-a-a-ack as an Independent. I think, and hope, his saga will be repeated across the land as blowhard lefties get tossed by Indie Dems and resurgent GOP conservatives.
7 Searchlight Crusade Says:
September 11th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Weblog Award Endorsements…

Weblog Awards Voting is in progress until December 15th. I’ve been voting, but at the request Letters From The Bostonian Exile, I’m going to make some endorsements. Not that I think it’s going to make a difference, but here they……
8 too many steves Says:
September 12th, 2007 at 10:36 am
More argument by soundbite, silly and puerile, a bit of “sticks and stones may break my bones…” schoolyard stuff really. It is clear to all thinking persons that the advert is:

1. Inaccurate.
2. Offensive.
3. Wrong (morally and factually).

I won’t engage in the counter-smear of holding the Democratic leadership responsible for what moveon.org say. Cheers to Senators Lieberman and Kerry for defending the man who’s appointment was, by the way, confirmed unanimously by the Senate.

Jeers to Harry Reid, Majority Leader in the US Senate, for this:

“He’s made a number of statements over the years that have not proven to be factual.”

Really? Where was Mr. Reid with this charge when the General was confirmed? To what, specifically, does he refer?

To pile on with others: Iraq is a very important subject and one that we should leave no stone unturned to discover the right course of action. To that end the General should be questioned thoroughly, as should others. Falsely accusing the man of treason is, at best, a poor and counterproductive way to do so.
9 peter Says:
September 12th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Presumably Reid was referring to the op-ed piece Patreus wrote in the Washington Post six weeks before the 2004 election which described progress in Iraq in far more glowing terms than proved to be the case, and gave a glowing review of the training of Iraqi forces (which Patreus was then in charge of).

The fact that he wrote an editorial shortly before a close election which was politically helpful to the GOP — and which turned out to be wrong — is a legitimate reason to have some doubts as to the objectivity of his testimony, especially given the contrast between his testimony and that of other observers.
10 too many steves Says:
September 12th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Ok. So why raise this now? Why not withhold his vote during confirmation? And what, exactly, is he accusing him of, lying? Then he should do so in a less cowardly way. To accuse someone of asserting something that later proved not to be factual is a timid, and cowardly, way of impugning character and motivations. I have, in my life that approximates the length of yours, uttered, asserted, and said things that later proved to be not factual. The only time they rose to the level of lies were on those occasions that I knew of the falsehood in advance and uttered it for the purpose of deceit. Is that what Senator Reid is asserting? Then he is derelict in his duty for voting to confirm the man.
11 peter Says:
September 12th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I certainly am not accusing him of lying (nor did the Times, incidentally), and if I were a Senator, I would have voted for his confirmation.

However, asking him for his views on Iraq is not unlike asking Joe Torre if the Yankees will overtake the Red Sox even though they are five games behind. (They will, incidentally. It only remains to be seen who will be this year’s Bucky Dent or Aaron Boone). Or asking Lee Scott, the CEO of Wal-Mart, if they will take share from Target. You can’t be an effective manager if you don’t have a can-do, optimistic spirit, and if you expressed serious doubts about the success or feasibility of your enterprise, you will be unable to lead those who follow you. Patreus is heavily invested in achieving some modicum of success in Iraq, and it would be naive to expect his testimony not to reflect that.

The Senate — and, more broadly, the American public — has to evaluate the situation in Iraq from different viewpoints, all of which are expressed by people who have a vested interest in things being resolved one way or another. The op-ed piece is an example of accentuating only the positive, and its timing is an additional doubt-creator. Patreus’s views should be balanced against those of others who could be expected to be more objective, such as the GAO report.

I haven’t seen the moveon.org ad, but from the way it has been described it seems both offensive and counter-productive. However, the howling about the ad from the right is a lot of crap. The right wing has often accused decorated war veterans of betrayal and treason when it served their political purposes: John Kerry, John Murtha, George McGovern, Max Cleland, and others. Bringing it up in the House hearing — when none of the Congressmen had anything to do with the ad — is a smokescreen, and a pretty thin one at that.
12 too many steves Says:
September 12th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Keep dreaming on Sox - Yankees. I was around in 1978 (at school with a pile of obnoxious Yankees fans, oh, wait, is there any other kind?) and this Yankees team is no comparison to that one. Remember, they have A-Rod, the bad luck charm for every professional team he’s ever played on. My friends who are Yankees fans (I have liberal friends too!) admit they are a flawed team and are quite worried about the Angels in the post season mostly because Yankees pitching is thin. As a conciliatory gesture I would point out that the lead is really just 4 (in the all-important-loss-column) as the Sox have played two more games to this point. This weekend should settle things.
13 peter Says:
September 12th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Having spent four great years in Massachusetts (Amherst and Martha’s Vineyard), I’m not a Red Sox hater — so let’s just say that September has not historically been a kind month to Boston sports fans –
14 peter Says:
September 12th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
And I can understand how Bucky Dent got his middle name.
15 too many steves Says:
September 12th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
All in good fun. I live in MA but spend lots of time in NY. Maybe it’s the circles I travel in but I have yet to come across anyone I would classify as a “Red Sox Hater”. And, so right you are, September has often been the cruelest month!
16 peter Says:
September 12th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I was at Shea for game seven in 1986 (not the Billy Bucker game — that was game six) — I’m not a big Mets fan, so I had mixed feelings about seeing the Red Sox lose — but as they say, any team can have a bad century…
17 peter Says:
September 12th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Buckner, not Bucker