“Betrayal” is a crucial concept when it comes to understanding conservative failure. When it comes to national security, it may the most important concept of all.

The word’s been invoked in anger a lot in Washington this week, but not because people are angry at the people doing the betraying. They’re much angrier at the people pointing it out. You’re not allowed to call betrayers betrayers. Especially if they’re military men. As our vice president recently put it, with a mawkishness which hardly becomes him, “It’s bad enough when politicians turn their backs on a war they voted for and supported when it was popular But no one in politics, regardless of party, should hesitate to object when an American soldier at war is mocked and insulted.”

No, you’re supposed to put a general up on a pedestal. Because generals never tell a lie. Only, we’ve tried this before. It didn’t work out so well.

Back in Vietnam, another politicized general, William Westmoreland, always claimed enemy force levels were no higher than 300,000. They were actually closer to half a million. But Westmoreland suppressed the CIA reports that showed this was so. This so General Westmoreland could come to Washington in the fall of 1967 and say, “The ranks of the Viet Cong are thinning… The end begins to come into view.” He supported this with the claim that the number of enemy in 1966—285,000—had now declined to 242,000. Even though, according to the CIA, the number was as high as 600,000. Westmoreland simply refused to include irregular guerrillas in his count. Kind of like the way Petraeus’s people only count Iraqis shot in the back of the head as victims of sectarian violence. “If it went through the front, it’s criminal.”

Twenty years later, during his unsuccessful libel suit against CBS, Westmoreland defended his subterfuge: “The people in Washington are not sophisticated enough to understand and evaluate this thing, and neither was the media.” (My source: my favorite Vietnam book—it’s short!–Working-Class War, by Christian Appy.)

In retrospect, who would disagree that General Westmoreland’s politicized book-cooking was a betrayal? Indeed, here he was all but admitting it—not in the soft sense of “to be false or disloyal to” (American Heritage, def. 2), but the hard-core “commit treason against.” Because here was a man who’d sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution freely admitting he (to use yet another definition) betrayed it. Because that document says he works for “Washington.” Not the other way around.

So why isn’t the book-cooking Petraeus a betrayer in precisely the same way?

Of course, he’s not the only one. George W. Bush goes on television and says he’ll deign to let troops “return on success”—what, if they don’t succeed, does that mean he’ll keep them there forever?—he’s obviously betraying the troop. He’s holding them hostage to forces beyond their control, but well within his control. He’s making them his chattel, servants of his ego—not servants of the Constitution.

When Rudy Giuliani signed on as a member of the Iraq Study Group, then bagged on the meetings in order to give big-buck “motivational speeches,” he was obviously betraying, well, all of us.

And when Senators voted against Senator Webb’s amendment to give Iraq soldiers the same rest between deployments as the soldiers who defeated Hitler and Tojo got, aren’t they betraying us too?

If you are represented by a Republican congressman or senator who has nestled him or herself soundly within George W. Bush’s Forever Caucus, you should contact them and use the word—”betrayal.” It will get their attention. They will stand up and take notice. Because deep down, I fear, they know the word is true.

Here are some especially stubborn holdouts:

Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) DC: 202-224-6665 Anchorage: 907-271-3735

George Voinovich (R-Ohio) DC: (202) 224-3353 Cleveland: (216) 522-7095

Elizabeth Dole (R-North Carolina) DC: 202-224-6342 Raleigh: 866-420-6083

John Warner (R-Virginia) DC: (202) 224-2023 Roanoke: (540) 857-2676

Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) DC: 202-224-2541 Louisville: 502-82-6304

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll be so lucky, and years from now Petraeus will sue a network for telling these truths, and will finally be backed into admitting he had been lying in 2007, only for a “good” cause: The people in Washington are not sophisticated enough to understand and evaluate this thing, and neither is the media.

Then the truth will finally have been vindicated: he truly was a betrayer.