Friday, May 28, 2004

The Return of the 'Stab In the Back'
"Nevertheless, the political purpose of the theory isn't hard to grasp. The groundwork is being laid for a new version of the 'stab in the back' myth that helped destroy Weimar Germany. No matter how far south things go in Iraq, the blame will be laid not at the feet of the president who initiated and conducted the war, but rather on those who had the temerity to note that it wasn't working. Rather than the critics having been proven right, or so the story goes, the critics are to blame for the failure of the very policy they were criticizing. It's an ugly tactic, and as you go down the journalistic food chain, it grows uglier still.
Former Gingrich aide, Tony Blankley, writing in the well-known bastion of journalistic propriety that is The Washington Times, likewise took the press to task, calling it 'heatbreaking, though no longer perplexing, that the president's political and media opposition want the president's defeat more than America's victory.' Standard stuff, so far, but he went on to lament that nothing could be done about it . . . yet. 'Sedition laws almost surely would be found unconstitutional, currently -- although things may change after the next terrorist attack in America.' Some might find it heartbreaking, though no longer perplexing, that the president's political and media allies are more committed to his re-election than to the basic principles of American democracy."