Rhetoric and Responsibility - Now!?

Paul Kane of WaPo dutifully twists the truth to arrive at what is palatable for the left:

…Speaker Nancy Pelosi choked up…recalling the anti-gay rhetoric in the late 1970s…which culminated in the assassinations of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay S.F. Board of Supervisors member, and Mayor George Moscone.

The killings of Democrats Moscone and Milk by deranged Democrat Dan White had nothing to do with any kind of inflamed rhetoric, anti-gay or otherwise. The theme used here is the same as that which blamed the assassination of JFK by a communist on a ‘climate of hatred’ in Dallas, fueled by – of course - the right wing! As author and consultant Thomas P.M. Barnett recently wrote:

Remember: before Oswald got Kennedy, the climate was clearly encouraged by all manner of right-wing groups…

See Jonah Goldberg’s ‘Liberal Fascism’ for an in depth detailing of this Kennedy assassination phenomenon.

Speaker Pelosi then went the next obligatory step in warning (telegraphing) that the left, including the Palace Guard Media (PGM), intends to see that the right is blamed for any violence that occurs, no matter who the perpetrators or what the motivation. As she said:

Anyone voicing hateful or violent rhetoric, must take responsibility for the results.

Frank Rich of that PGM, NYTimes division, joins in:

It is getting louder each day of the Obama presidency. No one, not even Fox News viewers, can say they weren’t warned.

There can of course be a valid connection made between inflammatory rhetoric and ensuing violence, even if certain connections made by the left are absurd on their face and self serving politically. Some are pushing back and legitimately pointing to the inflammatory rhetoric we have heard and still hear from the left about the right, very notably during the Bush years, that did not cause any qualms in the PGM or among Democrats. However, I’d like to give three examples among many of rhetoric and affiliated actions by Democrats for which a convincing argument can be made that they encouraged, supported and even culminated in violence against - our men and women in uniform.

The Kerry Campaign - 2004

In September of 2004 we were engaged both in an increasingly violent war in Iraq and a domestic election. The previous June, Ayad Allawi was unanimously elected by the Iraqi Governing Council to be the Interim Prime Minister of Iraq, thus receiving the handover of sovereignty from the U.S. Allawi had received what would normally for a Democrat be the closest thing in this world to a Divine mandate – the unanimous endorsement of the 15 nations of the United Nations Security Council!

That September Allawi came to address the U.S. Congress as the head of an allied state in a time of war. Allawi’s people were fighting and dying in the same cause as our troops and Allawi himself (and his family) were in constant extreme danger. Yet a significant number of Democrat Senators and House members boycotted the speech in which Allawi thanked the United States for standing with the Iraqis and for freedom! They were concerned that listening to an ally might help the Bush campaign!

If that weren’t enough for the Democrats to seek to undermine an ally of a fragile but free government (The Poles and Czechs understand this) in a time of war and provide some good PR for Al Qaeda in Iraq, candidate John Kerry’s senior advisor and spokesman Joe Lockhart was quoted saying of Allawi’s speech:

The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips.

The actions of Democrats followed by the political rhetoric of a high level functionary close to the man who might be the next President certainly gave credence to what were recruiting and propaganda claims being made by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni Insurgency and Muqtada al Sadr – that the Iraqi Interim Government was a puppet of an imperialist America and Iraq was not and would not be free.

Former Vice President Al Gore -2006

In February 2006, former VP and questionable prognosticator Al Gore was paid a sum believed to be well into six figures to speak in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Gore used the occasion to stir up anti-American sentiment. He told his Saudi audience and was quoted in the Middle Eastern media as saying that in the aftermath of the 911 attacks, Arabs were:

…indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa and not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable.

Those claims by Gore were lies, yet these too could certainly promote and feed an atmosphere and climate of anti-American hatred in the Middle East, thereby providing recruiting help to, say, Al Zarqawi! Gore, from a credible position of former VP presented the US as a bigoted anti-Arab country, which country had fought to liberate Arab Kuwait, prevented the slaughter of Shia Arabs in Iraq for well over a decade (No-Fly Zones) and was then fighting for the freedom of all Iraqi Arabs.

Congressman Jack Murtha – 2006

It is common knowledge that Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are close, Murtha having helped Pelosi gained the Speakership. Pelosi then endorsed Murtha to be the Democratic Majority Leader in November 2006, well after Murtha made his inflammatory and false remarks the previous May about the Haditha Marines:

It [Haditha] is as bad as Abu Ghraib, if not worse. (May 2006)

They [the Marines/Military] knew the day after this happened that it was not as they portrayed it. They knew that they (Marines) went into the rooms, they killed the people in the taxi. There was no firing at all. And this comes from the highest authority in the Marine Corps, so there's no question in my mind… (May 2006)

There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood… (May 19, 2006)

They actually went into the houses and killed women and children. And there was about twice as many as originally reported by Time… (May 19, 2006)

Of the four Marines that faced charges for the actual deaths in Haditha, three have been exonerated or had the charges dropped. The last one, who might still face court martial, SSgt. Wuterich, is charged with nine counts of voluntary manslaughter. Even if eventually found guilty, voluntary manslaughter is a far cry from cold blooded murder! Within two months of Murtha publicly judging and condemning the Marines before they had a chance to defend themselves or the facts were fully established, Al Qaeda released a video with Adam Gadahn, aka Azzam the American, claiming:

You [American soldiers] know you've already killed enough innocents to make Ghengis Khan recoil in horror and revulsion and that the atrocities you committed at Haditha...represent only a small part of the larger bloodier picture…

That a Democrat Congressman of many years who was routinely described in our media as an expert on the military would make such inflammatory charges of course gave them credence, in the Al Qaeda recruiting ground of the Middle East and even in the Democratic political environs of Illinois.

Lest anyone think that the Gates/Crowley affair was the only time our President took a left ‘politically correct’ position before learning the facts, Senator Barack Obama from a June 28, 2006, interview on Hannity and Colmes being specifically asked about Murtha’s rhetoric:

Alan Colmes: When Jack Murtha talks about civilians being killed in cold blood by troops, is that hurtful to the Democratic Party (Ed note: not harmful to the troops? Is that rhetoric difficult for you to embrace...?...Did Murtha say that in the right way?

Senator Obama: You know, I don't have the exact quotes in front of me. What I know is here is a guy who served our country. I would never second guess John Murtha... I think he's somebody who knows of which he speaks.

If the charge by a Democratic Congressman was good enough for a brilliant Democratic Senator and future President, it must certainly have been good enough to enrage recruits for the purpose of killing our sons and daughters.

Congressman Joe Wilson was rebuked by a resolution of the Democratic Congress for not apologizing to the Congress for shouting “You lie!” at President Obama. Congressman Murtha has resisted years of requests for an apology to the Haditha Marines. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the other Democrats in Congress to be concerned with a Murtha apology for a slanderous accusation made by one of theirs that was a propaganda boon for those who recruited the killers of our young!