Much has been said about Congressman John Murtha, who has been routinely characterized as pro-military or pro-defense even while making repeated and ever-more-outrageously defeatist pronouncements about the Iraq War.
We've said little because we've found Murtha's position to be unstimulating and uninfluential. And we don't want to spend any more of our precious time on him. But we do have an intuition that we invite a more industrious soul to take up.
Why is it that Murtha can be called "pro-military" on the basis of his pre-Iraq record, and yet for the last six months he has done nothing but call for immediate withdrawal? Why the seeming turnabout.
We say that there is no turnabout. Based on nothing but our SWNIDish gut, we say that Murtha is the equivalent of a military union boss, and that this explains everything.
Murtha is not pro-military in the sense that he believes that the US armed forces can and should be wisely deployed to protect and advance the national interest and the cause of democracy. He is pro-military in the sense that he wants to get the best deal possible for enlisted men in the armed forces. That means better pay, better conditions, and--critically--few deployments. No deployments would be ideal.
We urge an ambitious researcher to study Murtha's voting record and public pronouncements prior to the Iraq War. We believe that it will reveal firm support for pay and benefit increases, enthusiasm for recruitment, criticism of senior military leadership, and skeptical caution about deployment. For Murtha, the military is a federal jobs program, and enlisted men are his union members. The idea is to get the most money for the most people doing the least work.
Or so we think. We could be wrong, though seldom, by definition.
Someone please check out Murtha's record. There's a doctoral dissertation in this idea, or at least an article.
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