A little "kerfuffle" (as James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal likes to call these short-lived, loud, but not-too-relevant-in-the-larger-scheme-of-things stories) has arisen over a toughly-worded answer from the Pentagon to a request from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for information on DOD planning for if/when the U.S. withdraws from Iraq. As the NY Times reports today, Senator Clinton claims it to be"...offensive and totally inappropriate” for a Defense Department official to suggest that information she requested about departmental plans for withdrawing troops in Iraq would help enemy propaganda." (Read the whole thing for more background on the story).
Only one problem: the Pentagon is certainly criticizing her thinking here, but it has not questioned her patriotism or used offensive language against her. James Taranto at Opinionjournal.com demonstrated this very well: Well, here is the letter; and this is the offending passage:
Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. Such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks in order to achieve compromises on national reconciliation, amending the Iraqi constitution, and other contentious issues. Fear of a precipitate U.S. withdrawal also exacerbates sectarian trends in Iraqi politics as factions become more concerned with achieving short-term tactical advantages rather than reaching the long-term agreements necessary for a stable and secure Iraq.
There's not a word in there (or anywhere else in the letter) about Mrs. Clinton's patriotism or lack thereof. Edelman only argues that it is harmful for politicians to make public demands for early withdrawal because such demands tend to embolden the enemy. He is making a claim about the wisdom and likely consequences of her actions, not about her motives.
In the early days of the Cold War, before liberal Democrats decided to bug out of Vietnam, there was an adage that "politics ends at the water's edge"--that America's political parties, whatever their differences on domestic policy, were obliged to present a united front to the outside world.
Today's liberal Democrats would invert this principle. They assert the moral right not only to undermine U.S. foreign policy but to do so with impunity--that is, they wish to be immune from criticism for their statements and actions.
We suppose it's nice work if you can get it, but we'll never understand why they think that defensively denying that they lack patriotism is a winning approach.
