Guilt By Association And The Left’s Hypocrisy
By Turk on Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at 2:30 pm
On the same day that the Obama defenders are rallying to his side and suggesting that years of working alongside a domestic terrorist don’t make Obama a bad person, the left is also trying to attach the actions of random crowd members at a rally to McCain-Palin.
Now, I’ll first repeat my firmly held position that John McCain is no great shakes, but come on. How do you, with a straight face, suggest that Obama, who even CNN admits largely owes his political career to someone who targeted his fellow Americans with explosives, should be held harmless for that association? How do you then, in the very next breath, suggest that McCain and Palin are somehow responsible for what one or two unhinged nutbags say or do while attending a rally?
Further, when most of the Democratic party online has spent the last five years calling Bush a war criminal, a traitor, or worse, how do you feign indignation when someone suggests that calling our military a bunch of baby killers is tantamount to treason? Here is Obama’s exact quote in context:
Now you have narco drug lords who are helping to finance the Taliban, so we’ve got to get the job done there [in Afghanistan], and that requires us to have enough troops that we are not just air raiding villages, and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.
Compare that to John Kerry’s now infamous winter soldier testimony:
I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command….
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
This portrayal of our military as a bunch of mongols ravaging the countryside with little regard for “killing civilians” and “air raiding villages” is epidemic in the Democratic Party. It is part of the anti-military talking points. You can’t possibly act surprised that people take Obama’s remarks as an attack on our military.
Yet we’re supposed to look the other way when a man who wishes to be Commander in Chief denigrates our troops?
At the same time, we’re supposed to give a candidate a pass for associating with a man who apparently believed, and remains without remorse for the belief, that the only appropriate use of military power should be against civilians working in our own government? A man who, after bombing his countrymen, still says he wishes he could have done more for his cause.
Honestly? You will defend Barack Obama’s associations with that man, and his own disdain for our troops, yet you will try, with flimsy reasoning, to connect the GOP ticket with some random crowd members?
What if the roles were reversed. What if John McCain had spent 15 years cuddling up to Tim McVeigh? What if Terry Nichols had held a campaign kickoff event for J-Mac in his home? What if McVeigh had worked to secure tens of millions of dollars for an initiative that John McCain ran? Would you give him a pass? I doubt it.
While I am shocked by the Democrats’ indifference to Ayers, I also think the events of the Vietnam war were, as Obama says, 40 years ago. People have moved on.
However, I do not see how you can ignore that, also ignore your candidates defamation of our military’s service on behalf of our nation, and then try, laughably, to make McCain and Palin responsible for some random nutjob in a crowd of thousands.
It makes you look hypocritical and ridiculous.
Comments (3)
Category: Barack Obama,Candidates,Craziness,Democrats,Elections,John McCain,Political Parties,Politics,Republicans,Terrorism,War
Comment by mattv
Made Tuesday, 7 of October , 2008 at 5:26 pm
Typical false equivalence from the right again.
A better comparison for Obama’s relations with Ayers would be McCain’s membership on the board of the “US Council for World Freedom,” a group of Nazis and fascists described by the ADL as “a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and Anti-Semites.”
Obama has a tenuous relationship with Ayers, at best. “Cuddling up” is exaggerating to the point of lying.
As far as the comment regarding Afghanistan goes – our troops have killed more civilians there than the bad guys have. This is not a swipe at them, though, because they are limited by a poor strategy that reduces them to dropping large bombs all over the place because they don’t have the manpower to stage more focused ops.
Obama’s remarks aren’t an attack on the military – he was asking for more troops so that they could do the job (that he knows they can do) effectively, instead of flailing around and making a mess of the region.
And let’s not forget Palin’s assosiations – she actually does cuddle up (literally) to a secessionist, who belonged to a group whose leader said “The fires of Hell are glaciers compared to my hate for the American Government, and I won’t be buried under their damned flag!”
Lastly, the issue wasn’t even about the kooks in the crowd. McCain’s not responsible for them. The issue is he didn’t stand up to them any more than he stood up to the woman who called Clinton a bitch. He may not be responsible for a guy yelling “kill ‘em,” but he implicitly endorses the sentiment by not saying anything.
It’s not reallt that surprising, though. McCain’s never shown himself to have any understanding of the real meaning of ‘honor.’ He could have learned something about it from his fellow POW John Dramesi, who in contrast to McCain, never gave up information to the enemy, who tried repeatedly to escape, who never made propaganda tapes for the VC, and who says of McCain that “he’s still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in.”
Comment by mattv
Made Tuesday, 7 of October , 2008 at 5:31 pm
Oh, and there’s quite a bit of evidence that Bush has in fact committed war crimes (depending on your interpretation of the Geneva conventions and your definitions of POWs and torture), though whether he’ll ever be held accountable is another story.
Comment by mattv
Made Tuesday, 7 of October , 2008 at 5:38 pm
And speaking of hypocrisy, look who else is calling the troops babykillers:
“In the most obscene chapter in recent American history is the conduct of the Kosovo conflict when the president of the United States refused to prepare for ground operations, refused to have air power used effectively because he wanted them flying — he had them flying at 15,000 feet where they killed innocent civilians because they were dropping bombs from such — in high altitude.”
– John McCain
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