Another angle on accountability

IN THE NEWS
One area for which the Bush Administration needs to take greater responsibility is the political invective, often crossing the line into threats, that plague our national dialogue about counterterrorism. Recently, a newspaper in Crawford, Texas endorsed John Kerry for president, resulting in an avalanche of nasty letters like this one:

In the Old West days they hung people for being traitors. Quite frankly, I feel that way about the liberal press, both in the newspapers and on TV. It sounds like you’ve gotten on the “Flip/Flop” bandwagon and I sincerely hope that ALL Texans will ban your newspaper.

The Framers of the Constitution believed that democratic debate was not only possible during war, but necessary. It's the job of political leaders, therefore, to remind people like the author of this letter--or Ann Coulter, for that matter--of the American political tradition.

I'd say the same about Kerry, except I haven't run across anyone encouraging the Democrats to use the tactics of Josef Stalin or Pol Pot on their opponents. We're long overdue for the Republican leadership to rebuke someone advocating the return of Old West-style lynch mobs.

[To wage war effectively, the United States needs to cleave to its own democracy and rule of law. That's why I'm bring up this topic on a blog devoted to security affairs.]

Comments

[Bill White]

I didn't read all of the letters, but I read the first page or so. It seemed to
me to be pretty evenly split between the Kerry and Bush supporters. I'm not
sure I generally thought the Bush supporters were any more filled with hatred
than the Kerry letters. Some were, and some weren't, just as some seemed
to be thoughtful and some seemed not to.

How many supporters of hangings are there? There are certainly a lot of
letters - 2000 by the paper's count. In any 2000 person group, you are
likely to find at least one person who says something they don't mean to,
and which they will probably take back upon sober reflection.

[Kingdaddy]

It's only the latest, though, in a regular series of violent musings from the radical right. Maybe it is just a crackpot writing letters from his basement...But he certainly gets encouragement from fellow travelers like Coulter. Not once have I seen Bush or his aides denounce this extreme vitriol. Not once. No "Sister Souljah" moments, like Clinton's, when he told an African-American radical that she was way over the line. No John McCain moments, in which he befriended a man who was protesting the Vietnam War while McCain was being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton.

Coulter, Savage, Hannity, et al. claim to speak for the party that George W. Bush heads. I think it's time for him to take responsibility for what people are saying under the aegis of the Republican Party. We need the leadership of this country to state unequivocally that principled debate is the lifeblood of democracy, not sit back and say nothing.

[ali]

What I’m struck by here is we have clearly very patriotic Americans calling other very patriotic Americans traitors. Bellowing spawn of Satan would suffice and would do less injury to the concept of traitor.

There are a lot of ways of being a traitor, following a leader in blind unquestioning faith to the plain detriment of your country and its traditions is amongst the best of them.

It's something us Europeans have tended to do more than the honest folk of Lubbock.

[Oscar]

Ali - your grasp of irony is a beauty to behold. I agree that there is way too much rhetoric about treason in this country these days - even though I consider many of the Extreme Left to be enemies of the state. Yes, civilised Europe still has the lock on fifth columns and all the evil they bring. Thanks for the reminder.