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July 2008
‘Have you no sense of decency, sir?’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In his column today, Leonard Pitts bemoans the shamelessness of those who accuse John McCain of betraying our country when, under extreme torture 40 years ago, he read a North Vietnamese propaganda statement in front of television cameras:
“Maybe I am hypersensitive, maybe just old-fashioned by the standards of an era that regards earnestness as a character flaw. Still, it strikes me as viscerally wrong, offensive at the mitochondrial level, to trivialize, demean or diminish, particularly for political gain, a man’s service and sacrifice on behalf of his country.”
Some of you may have seen posters on this blog launch attacks on McCain just like those described in the column. Well, I’m wholeheartedly with Pitts on this one. It’s vile, it’s wrong and it ought to be stopped.
Would conservatives be doing the same thing, even more so, if the Democratic candidate had a similar history. Yes. The shameful and well-organized attacks on John Kerry — the fake Purple Hearts at the GOP convention, for example — make that perfectly clear.
But that doesn’t make it right. Not in any sense of the word. As Pitts put it:
“… it seems to me that something has gone haywire in a nation that forgets how to revere the service of military men and women, political expediencies and affiliations be damned, a nation where a Max Cleland can leave three limbs in Vietnam, yet have his patriotism questioned or a John Murtha can serve as a Marine for 37 years, yet be called a coward.”
Amen. Grow a sense of decency, people.
