This is the latest in a series of exclusive interviews with Dr. Paul Kengor, professor at Grove City College, on his recent work, Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century, which is based on a remarkable volume of declassified materials from Soviet and Communist Party USA archives and FBI files. Dinesh D’Souza calls Dupes “a significant addition to our historical understanding of the past hundred years.” Big Peace’s Peter Schweizer calls it the “21st century equivalent” to Whittaker Chambers’ classic Witness.
Kerry, Durbin, Murtha, Kennedy and Obama
Big Peace: Professor Kengor, in Dupes you detail at length the numerous awful statements by liberal politicians regarding our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those statements have given you an interesting idea regarding the $50 million reward for the killing of Osama Bin Laden. First, let’s cover some of those statements and then, second, let’s discuss your idea for the reward.
Kengor: It’s typical of liberal Democrats to hail our troops given that they’ve made President Obama look good in getting Osama. When the president wasn’t Barack Obama but George W. Bush, they smeared our troops with every name in the liberal lexicon. It’s hard to pick the most egregious, but it was probably the statement by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), who compared the thankless work of U.S. military interrogators at Gitmo to that of “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime–Pol Pot or others–that had no concern for human beings.” This was not a flip comment by a Durbin caught on tape outside a nightclub after a few drinks. Durbin said this on the Senate floor, reading from a text, June 14, 2005, amid the single worst stretch of killings of American soldiers by terrorists inside Iraq. The terrorists’ goal was to subvert support for America’s mission in Iraq and the War on Terror. Durbin helped the cause. That’s the essence of a dupe.
Big Peace: The senator clearly knew nothing about Nazis, Soviets, or Pol Pot.
Kengor: Obviously. To compare the non-lethal interrogation of Islamist POWs to these skull-laden killing fields was neither remotely approximate nor logical. The analogy was so grossly unfair that Durbin should have immediately apologized not only to U.S. troops but to victims of the Nazis, of the Soviets, and of Pol Pot. If I had been running PR for Al-Qaeda, that quote would have been streamed across the top of the newsletter every week for the next year.
Unfortunately, Durbin’s assessment was not uncommon among Democrats.
Big Peace: We can recall another senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.
Kengor: Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) put it this way in August 2007: “We’ve got to get the job done there [Iraq]. And that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.”
Big Peace: How about the senators from Massachusetts, John Kerry and the late Ted Kennedy?
Kengor: Ah, yes. Thank you, citizens of Massachusetts. Let’s deal with these two characters one at a time.
In December 2005, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Kerry insisted to Bob Schieffer: “And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children.”
In the War on Terror, John Kerry had suddenly, unilaterally reversed the terms: Who was guilty of terrorism? It was the American troops fighting the war against terrorism. Just imagine how Kerry’s assessment had served the interests of the true terrorists wreaking havoc inside Iraq. No doubt, Al-Qaeda wished it could print his words on fliers.
Milder, but still hurtful, was John Kerry’s highly degrading statement about America’s boys in Iraq in October 2006, where Kerry cracked this joke to a group of California college students: “You know, education, if you make the most of it and you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
It is almost unbelievable to imagine such a crack coming from a former veteran no less, and a highly educated one at that.
Of course, this was actually a slight improvement for Kerry. In the past, he had compared America’s soldiers to Genghis Khan and terrorists. Now, he simply said they were un-educated morons.
Big Peace: How about Ted Kennedy?
Kengor: On May 10, 2004, Kennedy went to the Senate floor and declared: “President Bush asked: ‘Who would prefer that Saddam’s torture chambers still be open?’ Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management–U.S. management.”
It was an utterly absurd analogy that absolutely, in no way whatsoever, held any semblance to reality, as practically any member of the U.S. Congress with the most rudimentary knowledge of Saddam Hussein’s “Republic of Fear” would have known. The single worst case of unauthorized abuse by U.S. military personnel after 9/11 does not begin to compare to the daily terror employed by Saddam against Iraqi women, children, Shiites, Marsh Arabs, Army deserters, dissidents, and on and on. Ted Kennedy’s statement inadvertently served the enemy; again, the very essence of dupery.
Of course, as we now know, it was via interrogation of these hideous terrorists by our military professionals–a truly thankless job–that we got the information that led to Osama Bin Laden. As always–always, always, always–Ted Kennedy was wrong.
Big Peace: Those are all nasty, but you have one case in particular that you’d like to highlight, which gets to this issue of the reward.
Kengor: Yes. Maybe the most egregious example was Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), who accused U.S. Marines of killing “innocent” Iraqi civilians “in cold blood.” The Pennsylvania Democrat said that Marines from the 3rd Battalion were “cold blooded killers” who “murdered innocent civilians.”
So horrendously inaccurate were Murtha’s bogus comments that the exonerated and acquitted Marines actually filed a lawsuit against the Congressman for slander. They wanted to clear their good names.
And even after that lawsuit was filed, and after Murtha denounced his own Democratic constituents as “racists” and “rednecks,” the Congressman cruised to easy reelection by those same constituents only a few weeks later. On top of that, a few months later, Murtha was commended by the U.S. Navy with the Distinguished Public Service Award.
Now those are some dupes.
Big Peace: Murtha was commended by the U.S. Navy with the Distinguished Public Service Award. This got you thinking, Professor Kengor, and brings you to the heart of your latest “Big Dupes” here today.
Kengor: Yes, it does. I say we split the $50 million reward among the Navy Seals who placed Osama among the fishes and the Marines that John Murtha slandered. That seems like a deserving group. I’m tempted to offer the reward to all of our troops smeared by Democrats from Dick Durbin to John Kerry to Ted Kennedy to Barack Obama, but that might be enough only for a beer or two per soldier. I think special attention ought to go to the Navy Seals who did the job and the Marines maligned by Murtha. And I would bar Durbin and Kerry and Obama from the ceremony. Kennedy and Murtha have since passed away.
Big Peace: Good idea, Professor Kengor. Let’s see if it has legs in Washington.
Kengor: I wouldn’t hold my breath.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.