On September 11, General David Petraeus betrayed his office and abdicated his duty when he let himself be ventriloquist’s dummy for a disingenuous propaganda campaign designed to hold American troops hostage in Iraq and keep up the useless carnage indefinitely, exploiting cherry-picked or even invented statistics, under cover of the stars on his shoulder.

I don’t know how you can disagree with that at this point. But don’t take my word for it. Take theirs:

• Chuck Hagel called his performance “a dirty trick on the American people… It’s not only a dirty trick, but it’s dishonest, it’s hypocritical, it’s dangerous and irresponsible.”

• The chief of CentCom, Admiral William Fallon thinks
Petraus is “an ass-kissing little chickenshit” for the way he sucks up to politicians.

• This army wife points out: “General Petraeus is using normal circumstances and turning them into some big idea…. I don’t understand how this can be called a troop reduction since Andy was alrady scheduled to to come home in November and was not scheduled to return to Iraq.”

• This retired colonel says: “To preten that this plan is a product of some real-decision making by General Petraeus is appalling, and I’m sure the Marines in this is appalling, and I’m sure the Marines in this unit and their families are not happy about being used… It’s deceitful and ultimately destructive to teh credibiltiy of the military and the Bush administration.”

The people holding Petraeus to account, with language that reflects the task’s manifest moral urgency, are truthtellers doing God’s work. And now I learn this: conservative senators are ginning up an amendment to say that the people telling the truth about General Petraeus impugn “all members of the United States Armed Forces.”

Here’s one of those truthtellers, in a letter to me late last night:

Friends,

Republican Senators are using the false claim that MoveOn called General Petraeus a traitor to whip up their base, and tonight they introduced an amendment in the Senate to condemn MoveOn. The resolution indicates that MoveOn’s newspaper ad impugns “all members of the United States Armed Forces.”

This is McCarthyism reborn, and if they’re successful in getting the Senate to condemn MoveOn, they’ll be coming after the rest of the progressive movement next–it’ll only embolden them. The amendment may come up for a vote tomorrow morning.

And, they are doing this because we are relentlessly going after them in their home states. New polling shows big drops in their approval ratings, re-elect figures and GOP standing in trial heats.

So, we’re asking our friends in the movement to help fight back tonight or first thing tomorrow. Please urge senators you have a relationship with to vote “No” on the amendment to condemn MoveOn.

Please reach out to your friends in the Senate and encourage them to help take the Cornyn amendment off the table. We expect Democrats to stand by their allies.

Thanks,

Tom Matzzie

MoveOn.org

The word among the supposedly right-thinking people in Washington is that, of course the Bush Administration is wrong on this, and on the merits, MoveOn is right—but that they shouldn’t be so shrill about it. They shouldn’t have used such blunt words. They’re loud. They’re rude. And this won’t do. So maybe it’s even OK to vote for this anti-MoveOn resolution—love the sinner, hate the sin!—to get our side back on the respectable path. They “hurt the anti-war movement’s cause” more than they help it.

I thought of this as I read a review in the Texas Observer about a new book on Maritn Luther King. The reviewer reminds us of all the Americans who believed King was right on the merits, but shouldn’t be so shrill about it. Shouldn’t have used such blunt words. He was loud. He was rude. He who “hurt the Negro cause” more than he helped it—in fact, Gallup did polls on this very question, and learned that “even liberal whites,” as the book’s author points out, “interpreted nonviolent protest as a prelude to violence, rather than its politically efficient alternative”:

In June 1963, when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that King headed was in the midst of the Birmingham campaign that brought images of Bull Connor’s police dogs into Americans’ living rooms, 60 percent of all Americans thought the public demonstrations with which King was by then synonymous “hurt the Negro’s cause” more than they helped it. By May 1964, that percentage had risen to 74 percent. By October 1966, following the SCLC’s nonviolent direct actions in Selma and Chicago, it reached 85 percent.

“Your right, but you’re too rude” is the response of a party well down the path to surrender to evil. Let’s start using proper words: what Petraeus did, what President Bush ordered Petraeus to do, was evil. A Democrat—and, yes, a Republican—who votes to censure MoveOn will be no better than one who voted to censure Martin Luther King. What we’re up to here is a crusade to save the country from mountebanks and blackguards. It’s not a schoolhouse sing. Only strong words will work. Only strong words are effective.