Treason-baiting and today's Republican Party

Benedict Arnold, whose name is synonymous with "traitor" in the United States

Saint John McCain the Maverick says of the MoveOn.org ad criticizing our Saviour-General David Petraeus:

It's disgraceful, it’s got to be retracted and condemned by the Democrats, and MoveOn.org ought to be thrown out of this country. (From McCain To MoveOn: Get Out ABC News 09/14/07)

The Republican treason-baiting kicked up into a new level with the Republicans theatrical outrage over the MoveOn.org ad criticizing our Saviour-General David Petraeus. McCain's little "love or leave it" crack there is only one instance.

David Kurtz at TPM reports on Giuliani Uses Petraeus in Attack Ad 09/15/07, and Tim Russert made Benito Giuliani's ad a major topic on Meet the Press Sunday morning. What his ad tries to do is link Clinton to the MoveOn.org ad, which to her credit she has so far chosen not to condemn. (See also Pentagon: Rudy Ad's Use Of Petraeus Image Done "Without His Consent" by Greg Sargent TPM Election Central 09/15/07.)

This was the obvious link-up the Republicans were intending to make during the Petraeus hearings: condemn the MoveOn.org ad, link the ad to Democrats and then use it as what Josh Marshall calls a "bitch slap" issue. The idea is to bring up some controversy like this and demand that the Democrats either apologize for something for chant the Republican Party line over it.

It's a risky strategy, because if the Dem responds by ramming it back down the Republicans throats, the Reps look bad. A classic instance of that would be Bill Clinton in one of his debate with Old Man Bush in the 1992 Presidential campaign. The Reps were spreading the McCarthyist rumor that Bill Clinton had once worked for the Soviet KGB spy agency. Clinton confronted Old Man Bush with it directly in a debate when Bush alluded to it, and Bush wound up having to then try to shrug it off. That pretty much killed that particular slander dead.

But if the Dems respond to the "bitch slap" by scolding the Reps for bad manners and demanding an apology from them, or if they apologize the way the Reps want them to, or if they declare themselves in favor of the Republican position, they wind up looking weak and the Reps score a point. An example of caving completely would be liberal pundit Mark Shields on the PBS Newshour this past Friday:

The activist antiwar wing of the Democratic - I won't even call it the Democratic Party, because they're not Democrats, but particularized by MoveOn.org this week, with it's just offensive and tasteless full-page ad in the New York Times, playing a pun on General Petraeus' name, "General Betray Us."

I think, in a strange way, it did two things. One, it gave the Republicans something to talk about all week, rather than trying to defend the president's policy, which many of them are uncomfortable doing. But it also may very well liberate the Democrats, that they don't - from that antiwar base. And they say, "Look, I think there's a chance of a compromise." (my emphasis)

That's just goofy. First of all, no one had brought this up in the interview, at least as broadcast; Shields brought it up out of the blue. Then, unless Shields had somehow personally endorsed the ad, he could have simply said he wasn't involved with the ad but that it was ridiculous for the Republicans to be huffing and puffing about it when their own Party up to and including the President had been treason-baiting war critics for years.

And this isn't new, either. In Rumsfeld Strikes Back at Critics of U.S. Effort on Terror New York Times Online 09/08/03, Douglas Jehl reported:

Mr. Rumsfeld did not mention any of the domestic critics by name. But he suggested that those who have been critical of the administration's handling of the war in Iraq and its aftermath might be encouraging American foes to believe that the United States might one day walk away from the effort, as it has in past conflicts.

"We know for a fact that terrorists studied Somalia, and they studied instances that the United States was dealt a blow and tucked in, and persuaded themselves that they could in fact cause us to acquiesce in whatever it is they wanted to do," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

"The United States is not going to do that; President Bush is not going to do that," he said.

But, he went on: "To the extent that terrorists are given reason to believe he might, or, if he is not going to, that the opponents might prevail in some way, and they take heart in that, and that leads to more money going into these activities, or that leads to more recruits, or that leads to more encouragement, or that leads to more staying power, obviously that does make our task more difficult."

Similar points were made by President Bush in his address to the nation on Sunday night in regard to Somalia and an attack on a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983. Mr. Bush said that terrorists had asserted "that that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge," adding, "In this, they are mistaken." (my emphasis)

The speech to which that article refers was Bush's address to the nation on 09/07/03, in which he said:

There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world. In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken.

... And for America, there will be no going back to the era before September the 11th, 2001 - to false comfort in a dangerous world. We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness. And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.

Bush's comments were fear-mongering rather than treason-baiting, though he has long since started indulging in the latter. And Rummy in this case was putting the treason-baiting spin on the framing that Bush laid out there.

A spokesman for House Republican leader John Boehner this past week responded to criticism of his minimizing the significance of American soldiers' sacrifices of life and limb by treason-baiting the Democrats: Boehner Spokesman: Dems Are Criticizing "Small Price" Because They Want America's Defeat by Greg Sargent, TPM Election Central 09/15/07.

I listened to about an hour and a half on CSPAN Sunday of the 09/14/07 prowar rally in Washington sponsored by the Gathering of Eagles prowar group. It was nominally a "Rally in Support of Troops". And some of the speakers I heard did mostly talk about the sacrifice and service of soldiers.

But in reality, it was a rally supporting the Cheney-Bush policy of endless war in Iraq. And from the speakers I heard, they think the main way to do that is to stigmatize war critics in the nastiest ways.

"Buzz" Paterson of the Move America Forward pro-Cheney-Bush group and author of the book, Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America's National Security (2003). His speech was straight treason-baiting. Specifically referring to Bill Clinton, Paterson ranted against "leftist politicians". He told the approving crowd, "They hate their country. They're Communists."

He ranted for most of his short speech about "treason" and got a call-and-response thing going where he listed the names of various "leftist politicians" with the crowd responding "Treason!" He named Dick Durban, Howard Dean, Harry Reid, "Teddy" Kennedy, and Jack Murtha.

Basically, the speakers didn't talk much about specifics, not even Kimberly Kagan (Robert's wife) who addressed the crowd saying the Army had cleared terrorists from Baghdad and Fallujah and several other spots in Iraq. But they made it clear that their main argument for the Cheney-Bush policies was to stigmatize and incite hatred against war critics.

These people who support the Cheney-Bush war policies are very much a minority in the United States. What the hell makes them think that only their small minority are patriotic Americans? And are they taking their speeches from clippings of John Birch Society pamphlets?

This is the nightmare vision of American life and politics that Dick Cheney more than any other single individual resurrected from the Nixon administration and carried it farther: an endless war, an Executive trampling on the Constitution and a Presidential administration orchestrating the stigmatizing of war critics as traitors and subversives.

The Scalia Five's decision in 2000 that put Dick Cheney and George Bush into the Presidency affected American history in enormous ways.

Tags: antiwar movement, authoritarianism, buzz paterson, gathering of eagles, iraq war, john boehner, move america forward, prowar movement, republican party, treason-baiting