Before Americans learned how cynically they'd been misled about non-existent WMDs and how badly the Iraq war was being mismanaged, early critics of President Bush and the war were pelted with withering invective for their naysaying and virtually ostracized as mouthpieces for terrorism.
They were called "unpatriotic" at a minimum. Some were denounced as "traitors."
Now, with the fourth year in Iraq beginning this week, as the toll of GI dead climbed past 2,300 and wounded past 17,000, with up front costs soaring toward $400 billion, and with a promised peace-and-harmony Iraq mostly wishful thinking, name-callers of yesteryear are changing their tune.
Emblematic of the switch among pundits is onetime hawk, commentator and author Andrew Sullivan, who once brandished fiery scolding of Bush critics, now says "people in this (Bush) administration have no principles." Eating crow can be heard throughout the gallery of onetime war hawks.
So, with a majority of Americans saying the war is a mistake, with President Bush's approval rating tumbling to 37 percent and Pew Research pollsters finding the word "incompetent" most often used to describe the commander-in-chief, are the new majority of Americans who're criticizing the war "unpatriotic"?
And what of the 72 percent of U.S. troops in Iraq that the Zogby Poll says supports withdrawing from the country? "Unpatriotic" soldiers?
The minority of die-hard war supporters will have an especially tough time smearing dozens of ex-military men and women who're running for Congress as Democrats and critics of Bush policies. A handful of ex-GI Republican candidates presumably will support the war.
On the war's third anniversary, former generals offered blistering critiques.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who commanded training new Iraqi soldiers, wrote in the New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/opinion/19eaton.html) that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically," and "has put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego," and, thereby, stifled honest criticisms from generals and admirals.
Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor also writes, with Times reporter Michael Gordon, in the book "Cobra II," that the Bush administration has blundered throughout the war with incompetent decisions.
"Unpatriotic" generals?
Reminiscent of paranoia of President Nixon as criticism of his presidency intensified, the current FBI has been discovered spying on the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, founded 30 years ago by a Trappist monk and described by FBI agents as "a left-wing organization advocating, among many political causes, pacifism."
Pacifism is a belief that violence is unjustified.
Are pacifists now dangerous suspects in the Bush war on terrorism?
Pat Murphy
