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Thursday, September 20, 2007
A cheer for Sen. Cornyn for sponsoring Senate resolution condemning MoveOn.org's "Gen. Betray-Us" ad
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) made me feel today like he was directly representing me in the United States Senate. He introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 in order to add a "Sense of the Senate" resolution for the following purpose:
To express the sense of the Senate that General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.
It passed by a vote of 72 to 25. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) wasn't present to vote. Neither was Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), but from his previous public disapproval of the MoveOn.org ad, it's safe to assume that he would have voted in favor.
But among the 25 who've cast their lot with MoveOn.org, instead of with Gen. Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces, was Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), a/k/a She Who Would Be Commander-in-Chief.
Thank you, Sen. Cornyn — you've made a lot of Texans who voted for you feel proud today, and you've put a much-needed spotlight on the precise portion of the U.S. Senate of whom MoveOn.org is obviously speaking when it says that it has bought and paid for the Democratic Party.
And here's a metaphorical tip of my hat, as a recognition for bravery and decency notwithstanding particular personal political risk, to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who voted in favor.
Posted by Beldar at 08:19 PM in 2008 Election, Global War on Terror, Politics (2007) | Permalink
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Comments
(1) nk made the following comment | Sep 21, 2007 10:46:04 AM | Permalink
Hillary is no better than she should be. The only one who surprised me, and disappointed me, is Senator Inouye.
(2) EW1(SG) made the following comment | Sep 21, 2007 12:42:48 PM | Permalink
nk said:
The only one who surprised me, and disappointed me, is Senator Inouye.
Unfortunately, Senator Inouye stopped surprising me some time ago.
(3) mmf made the following comment | Sep 21, 2007 2:21:36 PM | Permalink
Thank goodness the US Senate is now taking time to comment upon stupid ads. I can't wait to see what happens when they start condemning Saturday Night Live skits.
(4) Beldar made the following comment | Sep 21, 2007 2:50:12 PM | Permalink
mmf, you're not struck by the irony of MoveOn.org and its supporters (of which I presume you're one) simultaneously faulting the Senate for "wasting its time" on this resolution while threatening to attack Democrats who condemned them through massive funding of primary opponents (a la Ned Lamont)?
Generating tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions does entitle MoveOn.org to be paid attention to. The fact that it can buy full-page ads in the NYT without a second thought — and then get hundreds of times as much public exposure for that ad via other media by making it flagrantly offensive — makes its efforts worth at least the brief attention of the U.S. Senate.
If Saturday Night Live starts funneling tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions into the system, then yes, that might become worth a few minutes of time on the Senate floor too.
(5) mmf made the following comment | Sep 21, 2007 8:46:56 PM | Permalink
Not a supporter of MoveOn, and I said the ad was stupid.
I might even go so far as to say it was offensive, except that much in political discourse is offensive and I don't want to see the Senate getting together to condemn every offensive statement made by every group w/ millions of dollars to spend.
I thought the Swiftboaters were offensive. Also the push poll used by the Bush campaign in the infamous South Carolina primary attacks on John McCain. The fact that I and my friends and some MSM op-eds, and bloggy types criticized them were sufficient. We didn't expect the Senate to decry them.
There are many more examples,from both ends of the polictical spectrum, and they are all objectionable. If the Senate weighs in on them all, not much serious work will happen (although, maybe keeping them busy with irrelevencies such as deciding what kind of political speech is worthwhile is a just a clever "stragery" to keep them from taking more of the crazy votes we've seen in recent years).
(6) Paul Zrimsek made the following comment | Sep 21, 2007 10:05:37 PM | Permalink
I suggest that mmf take a look at the Congressional Record sometime and find out what sort of frightfully important business takes up most of the Senate's time when they're not busy condemning MoveOn.
(7) Beldar made the following comment | Sep 21, 2007 10:33:50 PM | Permalink
Fair enough, mmf. We just disagree on whether a hard Left organization that can cause even Hillary Clinton to cower from its wrath is worth the notice of the Senate. But you've expressed a coherent opposing viewpoint in a very civil fashion, and comments like that are always welcome here.
(8) jpe made the following comment | Sep 23, 2007 10:16:23 AM | Permalink
Thank goodness the US Senate is now taking time to comment upon stupid ads.
My thoughts exactly. I wasn't able to sleep for several days knowing that there was an uncondemend ad out there.
(9) jpe made the following comment | Sep 23, 2007 10:20:28 AM | Permalink
We just disagree on whether a hard Left organization that can cause even Hillary Clinton to cower from its wrath
The politics of MoveOn (far from hard left, by the by) are shared by many voters, especially primary voters. Democrats ignore those voters at their peril.
We see the same thing on the right when GOP candidates "cower" in front of Grover Norquist and do everything for him but spit shine his shoes.
(10) Beldar made the following comment | Sep 23, 2007 5:09:34 PM | Permalink
jpe: Let's be real here. An organization that suggested "moderation" toward al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan on the day after 9/11 and that now calls Gen. Petraeus "General Betray-Us" is HARD LEFT. There are some who are harder left, I will agree — die-hard communists, anarchists, and terrorists. But among those who actually try to work within the political process, MoveOn.org's leaders are HARD LEFT.
(11) jpe made the following comment | Sep 23, 2007 9:19:29 PM | Permalink
I'm mighty skeptical of the notion that MoveOn urged moderation toward al-Qaeda. If they did, it's reason to question their centrism, but I don't find that very likely.
(12) Beldar made the following comment | Sep 23, 2007 9:45:34 PM | Permalink
Per Byron York:
At a time when polls showed a huge majority of Americans favoring military action against the terrorists who attacked New York and Washington, MoveOn put its energy into opposing the war in Afghanistan. Shortly after the terrorist attacks, Boyd and Blades circulated a petition that read, “Our leaders are under tremendous pressure to act in the aftermath of the terrible events of Sept. 11th. We the undersigned support justice, not escalating violence, which would only play into the terrorists’ hands.”At the same time, an activist named Eli Pariser, recently graduated from college, circulated a petition of his own, calling on George W. Bush to use “moderation and restraint” in responding to 9/11 and “to use, wherever possible, international judicial institutions and international human rights law to bring to justice those responsible for the attacks, rather than the instruments of war, violence or destruction.” Boyd and Blades were so impressed by Pariser’s work that they hired him; he now is a top MoveOn official.
Other confirmation here from PRWatch.org. And from Peter Beinart at TNR (brackets and ellipsis his):
Wes Boyd and Joan Blades write that I am "simply wrong to state that MoveOn opposed the war in Afghanistan." But the petition MoveOn circulated after September 11 speaks for itself. It demands that the United States "support justice, not escalating violence," calls for "ending the cycle of violence," and says that "[i]f we retaliate by bombing Kabul and kill people oppressed by the Taliban dictatorship ... we become like the terrorists we oppose."By any reasonable standard, that is opposition to war in Afghanistan. War, by definition, does not end "the cycle of violence." And any military action that avoided "bombing Kabul" would have left the deeply interwoven Taliban-Al Qaeda regime in power. Had the United States done as MoveOn counseled, we might have avoided killing Afghan civilians. But prolonged Taliban-Al Qaeda rule would surely have killed many more while threatening American lives as well. It is this insistence on absolute American purity, and the refusal to make real world moral tradeoffs, that produces the practical hostility to U.S. power that Arthur Schlesinger Jr. termed in The Vital Center "doughface" progressivism.
Hard. [Angry.] Left.
(13) jpe made the following comment | Sep 24, 2007 8:03:11 AM | Permalink
So the petition wasn't MoveOn's; thanks for confirming. He could've been hired by MoveOn for either a) the substance of the petition (which doesn't strike me as objectionable in the least; to the contrary, urging that nukes not be used or that killing innocent civilians be avoided is pretty reasonable. I'll note also that the petition reads like a plea for classic just war: culpabilitiy + proportionality); or b) for his internet organizing acument.
Nevertheless, the point stands: Clinton is no more a lackey of MoveOn than any of the GOP candidates are lackeys of Club for Growth. (I realize that can be taken either way!)
(14) Beldar made the following comment | Sep 24, 2007 8:10:41 AM | Permalink
I'm getting grumpy about people who comment here without reading what I've just written in response to their last comment. Yes, there WAS a MoveOn.org petition opposing the war in Afghanistan. Jeez. Did you read the Beinert quote? MoveOn.org wasn't saying "Be careful to limit collateral damage." Trying to re-cast what they said then into that now is intellectually dishonest.
I'm sorry, I'm not going to waste more time debating with you whether MoveOn.org is a Hard Left organization. That's the kind of thing that is so ridiculous, I can't help but conclude that you're a troll who's just trying to raise my blood pressure. I refuse to play any more. Shoo! Hie thee back to DU or dKos or wherever, jpe.
(15) Beldar made the following comment | Sep 24, 2007 8:36:39 AM | Permalink
Courtesy of the Wayback Machine — because MoveOn.org has nacht und nebeled this from their own website, of course — here's a link to the online form petition, intended to be sent to the president and Congress, as of September 25, 2001:
"Justice, not terror"
Our leaders are under tremendous pressure to act in the aftermath of the terrible events of Sept. 11th. We the undersigned support justice, not escalating violence, which would only play into the terrorists' hands:
In bringing terrorists to justice, the U.S. must commit to protecting innocent civilians everywhere and ending the cycle of violence....
To combat terrorism, we must act in accordance with a high standard that does not disregard the lives of people in other countries. If we retaliate by bombing Kabul and kill people oppressed by the Taliban dictatorship who have no part in deciding whether terrorists are harbored, we become like the terrorists we oppose. We perpetuate the cycle of retribution and recruit more terrorists by creating martyrs.
Please do everything you can to counsel patience as we search for those responsible. Please ensure that our actions reflect the sanctity of human life everywhere. Thank you.
(They continued running essentially the same thing throughout 2002 and into early 2003.)
That's not support for taking out the Taliban or al Qaeda or anyone through military force. That's not support for any kind of war, period. You can't have a war, even a war in which all reasonable care is taken to avoid collateral damage to innocents, without escalating the amount of violence. "Search[ing] for those responsible" was what was being argued by those who insisted that, gee, we ought to just ask the Taliban to extradite those mean naughty al Qaeda folks.
Read the damned headline. They've carefully scrubbed the phrase "Justice, not terror" from their current website, but in MoveOn.org's leaders were arguing that we Americans are the terrorists while the smoke was, quite literally, still rising from Ground Zero. Okay, fine. Free country, First Amendment, yada yada. But don't come to my blog and tell me that's not Hard Left. Just ... don't.
(16) Beldar made the following comment | Sep 24, 2007 9:17:14 AM | Permalink
MoveOn.org had allies, of course. Here's what Amnesty International was writing at the same time, by the way (Sep. 26, 2001):
The victims of the 11 September attacks, like all victims, deserve justice, not revenge. But how should that justice be delivered? Governments are fast defining their options in terms of force. Our concern as human rights activists must be to insist that justice is rendered according to the rule of law. Both the pursuit and any subsequent trial of the suspects must be in accordance with internationally recognized standards governing the use of force and fair trial procedures. The death penalty should not be imposed.The 11 September attacks highlight once again the need for a system of international justice. Some atrocities demand international accountability. In some circumstances, international cooperation to bring suspected perpetrators to justice can be more easily forthcoming through an international tribunal. Unfortunately, many governments including the USA have not ratified the International Criminal Court and resisted, during the drafting of the Rome Statute, broadening its jurisdiction. As the need for international cooperation to address transnational crimes become evident, the US Government should consider supporting the establishment of the court.
Same song, slightly different choir. Hard Left.
(17) maynard made the following comment | Sep 24, 2007 10:50:02 AM | Permalink
Why is it so gosh-darned unconscionable to use admittedly harsh language about Petraeus? He has been regularly wrong about the events in Iraq at least since 2004 when he wrote his "everthing is hunky-dory" op-ed for the Washington Post right before the presidential election.
Conservative blogs and spokesmodels have been calling Democrats traitors since the war started.
The "sense of the Senate" resolution was pure theater. What's amazing to me is that so many Democratic senators were cowed into voting for it.
(18) jpe made the following comment | Sep 24, 2007 6:11:49 PM | Permalink
Did you read the Beinert quote?
Yeah, there's someone to turn to to accurately interpret MoveOn. No one's got credibility like a hawk that repeatedly condemned people that didn't think the Iraq War would be a cakewalk.
Priceless.
(19) Jonathan Sadow made the following comment | Sep 24, 2007 8:08:58 PM | Permalink
maynard wrote
Why is it so gosh-darned unconscionable to use admittedly harsh language about Petraeus? He has been regularly wrong about the events in Iraq at least since 2004 when he wrote his "everthing is hunky-dory" op-ed for the Washington Post right before the presidential election....
Even accepting your assertion, that would represent an error in judgement by Petraeus at worst. The MoveOn.org ad accused him of manifest bad faith in presenting his progress report, a viewpoint for which no evidence exists.
The "sense of the Senate" resolution was pure theater. What's amazing to me is that so many Democratic senators were cowed into voting for it.
What's amazing to me is that so many Democratic senators had enough of a functioning conscience left not to be cowed by MoveOn.org and voted for it.
(20) Beldar made the following comment | Sep 24, 2007 8:52:28 PM | Permalink
Maynard:
Democrats and MSM members were outraged when, in the 2004 presidential campaign, critics of John Kerry (including many of the SwiftVets) accused Kerry of "betraying" his country.
Of course, in addition to his Congressional testimony falsely accusing his fellow servicemen of widespread war crimes, Kerry had actually gone secretly to Paris to meet and negotiate with the enemy at least once, and possibly twice. Not all of Kerry's critics were willing to make the inferential leap that in these meetings, Kerry "betrayed" his country or committed treason. (I didn't, for example, although I condemned the meeting(s) in very harsh terms and thought they were among many things that disqualified Kerry from being C-in-C.) But given that he was meeting secretly with the enemy contemporaneously with his condemnation of American troops still on the battlefield, while he still had a Naval Reserve officer's uniform hanging in his own closet, "betrayal" was not a completely unreasonable inference to draw with respect to young John Kerry.
And now, if Gen. Petraeus had a history of having tried to sell out Americans in uniform through secret meetings with al Qaeda, "betrayal" would be the right thing to say about him too.
But he hasn't. And you can say he's wrong, or he's biased, or that for any number of other reasons his conclusions are invalid and ought to be rejected, without accusing him of betraying his country.
MoveOn accused him of betraying his country. How can you not get that? How can you not see the distinction between good-faith disagreement and shameful slime with no even arguable basis in fact?
Hillary and other leading Dems voted for the Boxer version of the resolution that refused to condemn MoveOn.org's ad specifically or to even mention MoveOn.org's name, but would have blessed John Kerry. Does the irony of this completely miss you?
jpe: That you're now savaging The New Republic for its hawkishness pretty well puts an end to our discussion about the Hard Left. (Lenin and Trotsky had similar arguments.) Thanks for capping our discussion off so brilliantly; my blood pressure dropped 10 points from the belly laugh you gave me.
(21) Neo made the following comment | Sep 25, 2007 10:29:25 AM | Permalink
As soon as the quotes of FEC regulations appeared on some of the blogs, it became obvious that this "arrangement" was illegal, and I predicted that MoveOn.org should have their checkbook handy as that was the only way out.
Now we see that it had about the same effect of the public as the Senate vote to show displeasure.
The only remaining question is ... will the FEC do anything to show their displeasure with the "arrangement" ? Afterall, if not for the exposure of the "arrangement" to the sun, this bit of illegal in-kind campaign finance would have been swept under the proverbial rug.
Utimately, isn’t this sweet .. The New York Times shown the power of the press to investigate criminal activity.
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