Caught in the downward vortex of the worst economic crisis in eighty years, in an environment where polls show that eighty five percent of the respondents feel the country is on the wrong track and with the war in Iraq and terrorism polling in single or low double digits the McCain campaign had chosen to make an issue of Barak Obama’s patriotism to the extent that it has now gone beyond the pale of what is fair and reasonable. The Democratic Party as a whole has likewise been tarred with the same brush. Making patriotism an issue to the extent that the McCain campaign has is clearly an effort to divert the attention of the voters away from what really affects them most and into an arena where gut emotions reign supreme and quantifiable metrics are hard to come by. That this tactic has gotten out of control is evident by the jeers at McCain rallies about shooting Obama, lynching him, emphasizing his middle name, implying he is a Muslim or an Arab, the obsession with Bill Ayers, the socialist label and culminating with the clamoring of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) for a media investigation of “anti-American” elements within the U.S. Congress. Likewise, Sarah Palin’s image of an America divided between pro and anti elements is nothing more than a cheap propaganda stunt that will harm the McCain campaign in the long run. In reacting to the latest news cycle the McCain campaign has tried to shift to a discussion on taxes but the patriot game still has legs in the rhetoric of Sarah Palin and in the rightwing media. All of this in spite of John McCain’s pronouncements that Barak Obama is a good family man, patriotic and someone who would be a good president.
The Republican strategy of employing patriotic agitprop against politically progressive elements in American society has had the effect of causing patriotism to become the Achilles heel of the Democratic Party. Democrats have allowed this to happen because they have failed to point out what I call the aggregate of hypocrisy within the Republican Party regarding this issue. First and foremost there are a large number of prominent Republicans who when it was their turn to serve in Vietnam willingly choose to apply for multiple deferments so they could pursue “other priorities”. The list of Republican luminaries includes Vice President Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard N. Perle and Rush Limbaugh among others. Secondly, Democratic opposition to the war in Iraq has become a useful talking point in the patriot game. It is however critical to point out that outside of the Neocons and the pro war faction, there has been more than ample opposition to the war among conservatives. From the late William F. Buckley Jr. to Pat Buchanan, Kevin Philips, George Will, Bob Novak and David Brooks there have been profound misgivings about the justification for the war and its execution. Republican senators Gordon Smith (R-OR); Richard Lugar (R-IN); John Warner (R-VA) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) have all at times criticized or questioned the rationale for and logic of invading Iraq. Retired and active military officers like Generals William Odom, Anthony Zinni, Eric Shinseki and Joseph P. Hoar all voiced concern about the need to invade Iraq, its relation to the war on terror and the inherent difficulties in occupying the country. While the McCain campaign continues to claim that Democrats will cut and run thereby cheating America out of victory in Iraq, General David Petraeus in his last testimony on Capitol Hill stated that the word victory might not be applicable in the case of Iraq. In his first appearance before Congress, Petraeus said that he could not necessarily say the war had made America safer. As a point of fact, victory in Iraq has yet to be succinctly defined but continues to be a rather amorphous concept. Is General Petraeus less than patriotic in stating his honest opinion? Ronald Reagan promptly pulled Marines out of Beirut after a relatively short stay due to the bombing of the Marine barracks in October 1983. Should we thereby accuse President Reagan of cutting and running?
McCain continues to invoke the image of victory in Iraq in spite of the fact that consistent majorities of those polled show a desire to depart Mesopotamia, as does Barak Obama, so that we can deal with the real terrorists in Afghanistan and the frontier provinces of Pakistan. According to former Secretary of the Navy, Vietnam combat veteran and Republican turned Democrat, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA), 72 percent of American troops polled in Iraq in 2006 favored a withdrawal; 60 percent polled in 2006 by the publishers of military newspapers disagreed with the Bush Administration’s war policy and in 2007, 60 percent of military families polled said that the war in Iraq was not worth the cost. Is it logical that a significant majority of Americans both civilian and military are unpatriotic due to their views on the war in Iraq? American attitudes about withdrawal remain consistent despite recognition of the tactical success of the surge. The Republicans are trying to transform the American military into a political prop thereby undermining its traditional role as a neutral player in electoral politics. To quote Senator Webb:” It is both patronizing and condescending for politicians to use our military people as backdrops or “color commentary” for their own political goals. The implications of such political posturing are even more troublesome when the military’s competence becomes the sole bright spot in political wars gone awry. Between the Bush Administration and the more extreme elements in Congress, the Republican Party has further endangered our nation’s entire strategic posture through the way it has conducted the war in Iraq.”
The image of a nation at war has been invoked with regularity on the campaign trail and the concept that calling into question the rationale and conduct of the war in Iraq has become indicative, a proof positive if you will, of a lack of patriotism. With one percent of the population serving in the armed forces and three tenths of one percent of those in upper class America in uniform can we really say that the country is at war? In fact this is the first war in American history where the wealthiest have been given a tax cut and there is no hardship borne outside of the military families whose members are deployed to the war zone. I can only think back to an episode in Iowa when Mitt Romney was asked if he supported the war in Iraq and he said yes. He was then asked how many sons he had and if any of them were in Iraq to which he stated that he had five sons, none of whom were in the military but that:” They were serving the country by driving him around Iowa so that he could get elected.” This incident is just part and parcel of the myriad hypocrisy that has come to affect the Republican Party and contributes to the lack of intellectual and moral honesty in its claim to be the party of patriotism and the true defenders of American values. It is no secret that the majority of military officers that have left the service and entered politics, both former flag officers and Iraq veterans, have joined the Democratic Party. Can we conclude that these warriors turned politicians are less than true patriots?
In the final analysis the patriot game as now employed by John McCain and his surrogates will prove to be a major part of his undoing and could be second only to the economic downdraft in the list of factors leading to defeat in November. He is in effect sacrificing so much of the goodwill, admiration and respect that people in this country have had for him over the years. Appeals to patriotism hold little appeal to people who are seeing their retirement savings; investments, homes and jobs dissipate in the current economic tsunami. For the Republican Party it will only further undermine its appeal and message to the American people. At this point the corrosive effects of hypocrisy have reached a critical mass, a development that makes the claim of being the party of patriotism ethically, morally and intellectually untenable. Lost in all of the controversy surrounding William Ayers is the fact that many prominent Chicago Republicans sat on the same board alongside of Obama and that even the conservative Chicago Tribune has endorsed some of Ayers’ undertakings on behalf of the city. Moreover, for all of the effort to tie Obama to Ayers, a man who committed acts of domestic terror when Obama was eight years old, little has been said regarding the Palin family’s ties to a secessionist in Alaska who has totally rejected the tenants and institutions of the United States. Is it likely that Christopher Buckley, son of the acknowledged father of the rebirth of conservative intellectual thought would endorse an unpatriotic socialist? Those who continue to raise the specter socialism ignore the fact that Obama has been endorsed by or is being advised by Warren Buffet, Paul Volker, and Robert Rubin, not exactly the people who would be involved in an effort to engineer a leftwing economic revolution. Very little is said about how the Democrats initially gave the Administration solid support in the run up to invading Iraq. Likewise as was pointed out on Frontline (PBS) earlier this year the media was also less than critical in its coverage of the Bush Administration at the onset of the invasion. In maligning the Democrats’ opposition to war policy John McCain and the Republicans have ignored a chorus of opposition within the conservative movement among writers, politicians and generals including the testimony of General Petraeus, a man who will not parrot the party line or bend to the political will of the right. Regarding Iraq, the problems inherent in this misadventure have nothing to do with patriotism, political parties or the media and accrue totally to the Bush Administration; there is in reality no one left to blame. Absent from the discussion is the endorsement of Barak Obama by Colin Powell or Kenneth Adelman former Undersecretary of Defense, the man who said: “Iraq would be a cake walk”. There is something very telling about the stream of military officers joining the Democratic Party and even more ominous for the Republicans is the lack of strident support for the war on the part of prominent blue collar “Reagan Democrats”. There have been no Honor America Parades or hardhat pro war demonstrations reminiscent of the Vietnam era. Republicans should not fool themselves in thinking that working men wearing Wounded Warrior shirts or sporting “support the troops” magnets on their pickup trucks equates with support for the current Iraq policy.
The idea that it is somehow unpatriotic to question national policy in “wartime” is to totally disregard the very fundamental American value of political debate and discussion that we rely on so as to insure that this country does not drift into some form of undemocratic governance or dictatorship. Those who favor a political environment of compliance and quiet should pack their bags for Russia, that form of politics is quite popular there. To quote Thomas Jefferson: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”. True patriots need to be ever mindful of threats to democracy both from the left and the right and not to be conned by the current patriot game so popular in the election of 2008.
Steven J. Gulitti
N.Y.C.
25 October 2008
Member Iron Workers Local # 697
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