Murtha in the Spotlight
The Hidden Columnists--Paul Krugman Edition (21 Nov)

Professor Krugman comes to the side of Representative Jack Murtha in Monday's column, "Time to Leave" (here's the link for Times Select subscribers).

Representative John Murtha's speech calling for a quick departure from Iraq was full of passion, but it was also serious and specific in a way rarely seen on the other side of the debate. President Bush and his apologists speak in vague generalities about staying the course and finishing the job. But Mr. Murtha spoke of mounting casualties and lagging recruiting, the rising frequency of insurgent attacks, stagnant oil production and lack of clean water.

Mr. Murtha - a much-decorated veteran who cares deeply about America's fighting men and women - argued that our presence in Iraq is making things worse, not better. Meanwhile, the war is destroying the military he loves. And that's why he wants us out as soon as possible.

I'd add that the war is also destroying America's moral authority. When Mr. Bush speaks of human rights, the world thinks of Abu Ghraib. (In his speech, Mr. Murtha pointed out the obvious: torture at Abu Ghraib helped fuel the insurgency.) When administration officials talk of spreading freedom, the world thinks about the reality that much of Iraq is now ruled by theocrats and their militias.
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One is tempted to say that they should have thought about that possibility back when they were cheerleading us into this war. But the real question is this: When, exactly, would be a good time to leave Iraq?

The fact is that we're not going to stay in Iraq until we achieve victory, whatever that means in this context. At most, we'll stay until the American military can take no more.
[...]
So the question isn't whether things will be ugly after American forces leave Iraq. They probably will. The question, instead, is whether it makes sense to keep the war going for another year or two, which is all the time we realistically have.

Pessimists think that Iraq will fall into chaos whenever we leave. If so, we're better off leaving sooner rather than later. As a Marine officer quoted by James Fallows in the current Atlantic Monthly puts it, "We can lose in Iraq and destroy our Army, or we can just lose."

And there's a good case to be made that our departure will actually improve matters. As Mr. Murtha pointed out in his speech, the insurgency derives much of its support from the perception that it's resisting a foreign occupier. Once we're gone, the odds are that Iraqis, who don't have a tradition of religious extremism, will turn on fanatical foreigners like Zarqawi.

This WaPo story adds some of Murtha's commentary on today's Meet The Press (with some added props from Repbulican Senator Richard Lugar):

Murtha, speaking on NBC's Meet the Press, declined to repeat his comments chiding Bush and Vice President Cheney for not serving in combat and said he wanted to depersonalize the debate.

"It's not me," he said. "It's the public looking for an answer to this thing. They want us to solve this problem. They don't want a war of words."

The war in Iraq, he said, was "obviously" a mistake. "All of us were misled by the information that we had," he said.

" . . . We have increased terrorism in the Middle East," he said, "and since we're the target, we've increased instability in the Middle East. So the only way to do this is to redeploy our forces inside and let the Iraqis handle this themselves."

Asked if he thought the administration had misled the public, Murtha responded: "I wouldn't say that. I don't think that any president would mislead the public on the intelligence. They certainly exaggerated, but I don't think that they misled us."

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) appearing on Face the Nation, said that rather than a lot of "caterwauling, like people coming out of a baseball dugout," the country was in need of some real answers.

Check out the video at Crooks and Liars or Daily Dissent. Now, there is a bit of a potential dark underbelly to the current Jack Murtha saga, as Josh Holland over at The Gadflyer explains:

John Murtha -- an über-hawk Dem -- stood up and proclaimed his opposition to the fiasco in Iraq. He deserves credit for doing so.

He's getting a belly-full of political buckshot instead.

In addition to calling him a coward, as Jean Schmidt did on the House floor Friday, or saying he had adopted a policy of "cut and run," as Dennis Hastert did the day before, Republicans are talking about launching an ethics probe into some of Murtha's dabbling in the old military-industrial complex.

Sadly, on the face of it, it looks like there's much to probe. This is from Rollcall (I don't have a subscription, so no link, but a hat-tip to MoveOn's Tom Mazzie):

Republican lawmakers say that ties between Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and his brother's lobbying firm, KSA Consulting, may warrant investigation by the House ethics committee.
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According to a June 13 article in The Los Angeles Times, the fiscal 2005 defense appropriations bill included more than $20 million in funding for at least 10 companies for whom KSA lobbied. Carmen Scialabba, a longtime Murtha aide, works at KSA as well.

And I gotta say I agree with his sentiment:

Some on the left will call for a fight against this "smear," but they can count me out.

I say that not because I don't think the Repubs' going after Murtha isn't absolutely despicable, because it is. And it's not because it isn't transparently motivated by politics - it is certainly that, too.

It's because we'll never get anywhere until we stand for something, and that something should, obviously, be reform.

And while those who say there's no difference between the two parties -- that they live on the same dime and represent the same interests -- are clearly not paying close enough attention, I also don't believe for a second that saying 'we're 50 percent less corrupt than they are!' is going to move Joe voter. And it shouldn't.