More Chicken Hawk Hypocrisy
Our representatives on Capital Hill like to engage in the quaint tradition of using the prefix “The Honorable” to add a little sheen to their dusky names. Those good and decent Republicans on Capitol Hill are once again engaged in a mindbendingly vicious and hypocritical attack on a Democratic candidate. This time of course, it’s John Kerry.
The line of attack is on Kerry’s anti-war activities since the Republicans have found it frustratingly difficult to create doubts about the candidate’s Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. So now they’re calling him “Hanoi John.” The Honorable Sam Johnson, Republican of Texas (where else), said that when Kerry criticized the war, he showed “his true colors, and they are not red, white and blue.”
As Dave Barry says, I’m not making this up - see EJ Dionne’s angry column in today’s Washington Post.
In my view, John Kerry should not be defensive in the least about his anti-war advocacy. He should remind Americans of the difference between his Vietnam-era years and those of George W. Bush: Kerry was a serious young man, engaged in the the towering issue of the time. He didn’t take the easy way. He had the guts to put himself in the line of fire on a swift boat in the Mekong Delta and then had the courage to speak out against an unjust war. Meanwhile, the Yale legacy admittee George W. Bush was leading his fraternity, drinking a lot of beer, cheerleading for the Yale Bulldogs in his plentiful spare time and then using his name to get into the “Champagne Unit” of the Texas Air National Guard.
Can you believe we’re even having this discussion?