Surprise has been expressed that I would choose to call Jack Murtha a hero. I was about to respond in comments, but the response was too involved so I moved it up to a post.
I understand the surprise. Murtha left college in 1952 to join the Marines and go to Korea. In 1966 he volunteered to serve in Vietnam. When my time came to make similar decisions, around 1971, I became a conscientious objector. Part of the paperwork to become a CO is an essay specifying why you believe that all war (not simply the current one) is wrong.
People can certainly have different ideas about the military-industrial complex. I think that executives from companies like Northrop-Grumman are part of it, whether or not they served in the military.
But I wouldn’t necessarily call soldiers part of the military-industrial complex. Murtha, for example, came from pretty low-level circumstances, and apparently remains a strong supporter of labor, despite his conservative positions on abortion and gun control. In other words, he’s a conservative Democrat who seems to try to support people like himself. The fact that he spent 38 years as a Marine doesn’t get him an MIC membership in my book. True, he was an early supporter of the war against Iraq:
Murtha voted for the October 10, 2002 resolution that authorized the use of force against Iraq. However, he later began expressing doubts about the war. On March 17, 2004, when Republicans offered a “War in Iraq Anniversary Resolution” that “affirms that the United States and the world have been made safer with the removal of Saddam Hussein and his regime from power in Iraq,” Murtha called for a recorded vote and then voted against it.
I call him a hero because I think lives are lived in a context. A hero, in this sense, is someone who transcends his or her own personal view of the world, and constructs a view that includes a wider circle. I think this is why people call soldiers heros when they go off to kill large numbers of people they’ve never met: because a soldier who responds to the country’s call concludes that the country is a greater cause than the self, and wants to adopt and advance the greater cause.
This is not to say that we from the outside always agree with the greater cause. But the hero’s journey, to use the Campbellian vocabulary, involves transcendence more than pure rightness. After all, what is pure right? (If you can define it, please do so, and we’ll promote your definition here on Bad Attitudes. But it has to be convincing to other people, not just you.)
In my opinion, John Kerry is at least as much a member of the MIC as Jack Murtha. Early in life, Kerry was heroic; first he volunteered for Vietnam when he could have avoided the danger, then he testified before Congress and spoke truth to power, which helped to nudge the war machine off its tracks. But in his Presidential campaign, he showed no spark of that early heroism. He was afraid to say the truth: that the war was wrong, that he was lied to, that he voted incorrectly. He was afraid because he thought it would hurt his chances of realizing a personal ambition. That is the opposite of heroism.
Murtha, on the other hand, knew that a firestorm of criticism would erupt from the Rovian machine when he came out for “redeploying” US forces out of Iraq. But he thought it was the right thing to do, so he did it, regardless of the cost to himself.
In the context of his life, he has continually volunteered to take on difficult and dangerous jobs knowing that he may pay a great price for his willingness to serve. But he has volunteered for what he thought was right. I don’t always agree with his views on what’s right, but I admire his selflessness. I think the country would benefit from having more people like him.
Murtha was on 60 minutes tonight, he gave a lot of insight into his thoughts and reasoning regarding the Iraqi war. Like him or not, the interview was interesting.
Raymond B
www.voteswagon.com
Your opinion of Murtha is similar to mine of Henry M. Jackson. I often agreed with him, but not about war. However, it was his stance and he believed in it. Though many of us did not agree didn't matter to him. It was his conviction and he was true to it.
Posted by: on January 15, 2006 11:43 PM[Kerry] was afraid because he thought it would hurt his chances of realizing a personal ambition.
I'm not sure that's fair. Yes, the presidency was a personal ambition of Kerry's, but I think it was more than that. I don't know why he was afraid, but if he thought - rightly or wrongly - that keeping quiet was the way to replace the Bush administration with one (his) that would better serve the nation, well, his motives were less petty than you imply.
Which is not to say that I think he was right to keep mum.
Posted by: Carl Manaster on January 16, 2006 12:24 AMOkay, Carl, fair point — perhaps Kerry thought that reversing his early-life heroic tactics and adopting the tactics of go-along-to-get-along gave him a better chance of winning, and that was a calculation of national as opposed to personal interest. In fact, I'm sure that's how he thought of it.
But this is exactly the sort of confusion of personal and universal that we deplore in Bush: both of them thinking that the nation needs them, so we citizens should ready to deal with dishonesty and killing in order to get the best person, because that's what it takes.
My opinion, which by definition cannot be backed up with data but is only a feeling, is that if Kerry had had the guts to do what he did after coming back from Vietnam and say "This is wrong, how do you ask someone to be the last soldier to die", and so on (updating our language to cover the current situation), he would have won. But when we have two candidates, one of whom clearly lied to start an aggressive war, while the other pledges to conduct the war better, with more troops, lots of people realize that neither candidate is telling the truth. So why vote? Kerry bought the DLC line. The DLC is a bunch of Republicans.
So I would claim that, either way, Kerry refused the hero's path. Undoubtedly, in his mind, it was for the best of reasons; but in fact, he decided not to tell the truth. Or perhaps he convinced himself that the country needed this war. He still hasn't disavowed that vote. That's why I despise him, and admire Murtha. It takes courage to say "I was wrong, and I wish I'd done things differently". But American history is full of people who were able to reinvent themselves through honest appraisal of the past, and straightforward acknowledgement of mistakes.
Posted by: Chuck Dupree (Belisarius) on January 16, 2006 12:52 AMThis article from The Hill. looks part propaganda, part truth:
http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/101805/spending.html
At any rate, well worth reading and a counterpoint to the glorification of Mr. Murtha. I have great respect for him, I just think a lot of people are calling him a hero because its convenient at the moment.
I rank Murtha alongside Harry Truman; two guys with similar histories. Whether thats good or bad depends upon your point of view.
I'm calling him a hero because I think he is one. I think violating expectations and surviving a shit-storm because he thinks it's the right thing to do is heroic.
Of course he gets a lot of money from defense contractors. He's the most credible member of the appropriations subcommittee. He gets things done, because he believes in the military. I'm not saying that's right, but it's how he thinks.
In fact, I'm anti-military. Does that make it impossible for me to claim that anyone who disagrees with me is a hero?
Politics is not about purity. The best you can hope for is honesty, and it seems to me that Murtha is honestly pursuing what he believes is the right thing for the country.
Posted by: Chuck Dupree (Belisarius) on January 16, 2006 1:50 AMMurtha is not running for President and, really, doesn't have much to lose at this stage of his career. History is littered with those politicians who did or said the right thing and got nowhere. My heart is with the hero; my head is worth the pragmatist. But I like to think that even my pragmatists have solid core values which will propel them to make the decisions which will be in the true interest of the nation and the planet. In the end, Kerry, like Gore, became the invisible man.
Gore, since he left office, has become visible again. But then, alas, he doesn't appear to be running for anything, does he.
Hillary is the consummate pragmatist but appears to be an empty shell with power for its own sake as her only objective. To me, she is transparent, and for that reason, will not prevail.
One can only hope that the will and ability to speak out will be the new pragmatism. Some of us yearn for the truth to be spoken but fear that the ability to speak the truth to power will not be sufficient.
Posted by: tstreet on January 16, 2006 10:37 AMI applaud acts that I see as heroic, and Murtha's action was heroic. I'm not into hero worship; heroes all have feet of clay.
At least in my mind, that clarifies what Chuck and Buck are batting back and forth.
Posted by: Joyful Alternative on January 16, 2006 2:34 PM