Took a car pool down to the Rosemount VFW for the John Murtha/Coleen Rowley event today. Wege had a sheaf of Post-Its and was actually taking notes, so I defer to his account, with a few additions.
A couple of the signs carried by the Murtha protesters:
Support OUR troops.
Oberstar + Murtha
=
Higher gas prices
One Rowley supporter was arguing mildly with the gas prices sign guy. It reminded me how pointless it is to try to engage people who still agree with Dick Cheney, "If Saddam Hussein were still in power, we would be in a vastly worse position." And "if we had to do it again, we would do exactly the same thing."
Early Bush supporters should be able to figure out the obscenity in those remarks on their own, as more and more are. But arguing won't open the eyes of those who can't see it on their own.
This event belonged in a VFW, not just because the Rowley campaign is trying to enlist veterans. It belonged in the plain meeting hall with the linoleum floor and cinderblock walls and generic ceiling tiles and the Xmas lights still up from last year because this reflects the non-slick world that sends boys to war and bears the burdens of Iraq.
Murtha told of receiving a letter from a boy whose school had lost its physics teacher because she was being sent back for a second tour of duty in Iraq. Her assignment — civil affairs — was not what she was trained for, but it was where she was needed. Meanwhile, her school had to do without a trained physics teacher.
It reminded me of a comment from Gen. George Washington despairing during the dark year of 1776. We can't fight a bloody war with a militia, he said. Washington, unlike his latest successor, combined great resolve with the ability to learn from his mistakes.
Wege quotes Murtha as saying, "One of the biggest complaints I get is that Democrats aren't speaking out," but leaves out what Murtha said next after the applause stopped. That Democrats are speaking out but they aren't heard because they haven't taken as strong a position as he has.
Does being against the Bush war policy count if no one hears it? Does nuance have any effect when we have leaders who run headlong into disaster and then would do exactly the same thing again?
Murtha and Rowley are not show horses. They speak the plain and inconvenient truth in places far away from Brackett's Point and other sources of stay the course money.
