While Republicans smear Democrats as unpatriotic, a look at the war record of many GOP leaders -- including President Bush -- shows a remarkable aversion to the front lines. Part 3 of "Big Lies.""Conservatives truly love America and support the armed forces, while liberals are unpatriotic draft dodgers." Of all the pernicious claptrap emitted by right-wing propagandists, none is more offensive than smearing liberals and Democrats as unpatriotic. The portrayal of a liberal elite that despises its own country has allowed conservatives to appropriate the flag, the national anthem, and other national symbols -- the heritage of every American -- as their movement's private property, and to misuse those symbols for narrow partisan purposes. To the extremists, anyone who doesn't pledge allegiance to the Republican platform is a "traitor."
Rank-and-file reactionaries out in the red-state hinterland may believe this tripe, but the Republican insiders know better. Living in major cities like New York and Washington, they can't avoid knowing liberals who have proudly served in the military, revere the Constitution and the flag, and share the values of liberty and democracy -- who are, indeed, just as patriotic as any conservative. That knowledge only makes their promotion of this slanderous myth more shameful.
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In the Nixon White House, a young conservative named Patrick Buchanan penned many of the harshest attacks on the antiwar liberals. Buchanan's aggressive patriotism didn't extend to wearing his country's uniform, however. He had slipped past the District of Columbia draft board with a "bad knee." But he didn't hesitate to question the loyalty of prominent liberals who had worn that uniform with valor -- including heroic veterans and leaders of the liberal opposition to the war such as George McGovern, a bomber pilot who won the Distinguished Service Cross for flying many dangerous missions over Germany, and John Kerry, a decorated Navy captain wounded in Vietnam.
Among prominent conservatives of the Vietnam generation, the kind of hypocritical posturing symbolized by Buchanan and Limbaugh is so widespread that they have acquired a derogatory nickname: "chicken hawks." Right-wing draft evasion first emerged as an embarrassing issue in 1988, when reporters delved into the personal history of the handsome young senator nominated for vice president at the GOP convention. Thanks to the influence of his father, Indiana's most powerful newspaper publisher and an ardent editorial proponent of the war, Dan Quayle had spent the Vietnam years improving his excellent golf swing, while holding down a desk job at Indiana National Guard headquarters. (Among Quayle's contemporaries in the Senate, incidentally, those who had served in active duty during the Vietnam War included two Republicans -- and five Democrats.) The story of Quayle's privileged berth in the National Guard dominated news coverage of his nomination at the New Orleans convention and provoked much commentary in the weeks that followed.
more…
http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/08/20/conason_three/index.html
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