The Left Wing Exploiters

Here is a must-read, as The Weekly Standard's Noemie Emery eviscerates the shameless grief-based politics of the left.

Another group exploited by Democrats is the soldiers in Iraq. Today, listening to Max Cleland's response to the President's weekly radio address, I was dumbstruck (I can't find a transcript -- if you are able to do so, please email me the link at CarolLiebau@CarolLiebau.com or else please leave it as a comment). . .

The response was nothing more than a jumble of bitter accusations toward the President, toward the conduct of the war in Iraq, and about the supposed mistreatment of American soldiers by the Bush Administration. If it had been designed as a deliberate attack on the wartime morale of the American people, it couldn't have been more perfect.

Most distasteful was Cleland's purported "concern" about the "psychological" well-being of the troops in Iraq, as though they are weak people who are about to crack -- perpetuating the Vietnam-era increasingly-discredited myth of the deranged combat vet. (And if they were, in fact, psychologically vulnerable, wouldn't Cleland's attack on their mission only exacerbate the problem?)

Max Cleland is to be honored for his service in Vietnam. But whatever his valor in those days, they don't immunize him from criticism -- whether of his legislative decisions when he was in office, his over-the-top condemnation of the war and the Administration, or his (and his party's) abject failure to offer a single constructive idea (as I noted here).

And certainly the Democrats should stop exploiting the grief stricken, the embittered and the military in their unceasing concern with nothing more than their own political fortunes.