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May 30, 2006
Laura Ingraham - John Murtha's Tribe Problem
The first-hour topic for today's Laura Ingraham show was Representative John Murtha's commentary on the alleged massacre in Haditha. Murtha argued that the scandal could reach all they way to Joint Chiefs Chairman Major General Peter Pace.
I've been listening to Laura Ingraham for a long time, and I have never heard her so angry. Part of that anger is due to Murtha's exaggeration in the advance of the facts. As Laura's guest Gen. Thomas McInerny pointed out:
We had a case a year ago, where a Marine Colonel sat in a courtroom at Camp Lejeune, charged with two counts of premeditated murder. The prosecution made him out to be an evil demon, and then when the autopsy evidence blew their case out of the water the Marine Corps dropped all the charges. Nobody said anything.
That's a good point, but there's more to the story. Laura Ingraham went to Iraq and spent time among the soldiers there. They're not statistics to her: they're human beings.
Humans are tribal creatures, and when you actually spend time with the members of another tribe it's hard to think of them as monsters. To Laura, the real Marines are the guys she hung out with on the battlefields, and the murderers among them are the exception, not the rule.
Murtha has a completely different problem. Last November he left the Marine tribe and joined the Anti-War tribe. This made him an instant celebrity, but it put him in a position where he has to trash his old tribe in order to keep up his street credit with the new one. As a result, when the Marines make a mistake, he pounces on it as proof of widespread rot. That upsets Laura because it's also standard operating procedure for the Islamic Terrorist tribe, and the goal of Islamic Terrorists is to kill Marines.
If Murtha were a solitary hunter like me, instead of a member of the Anti-War tribe, then his first reaction to this problem would be: is there anything we can do to fix it? Murtha is upset about an alleged coverup, so the constructive approach would be to work on procedures for preventing future coverups. Instead, Murtha wants us to abandon the whole project. The Abandon the Project approach was tried in Afghanistan back in the Eighties, and we ended up with the Taliban in charge. That's not a track record I'd be proud of.
So here's my suggestion: let's talk to the leaders of the Anti-War tribe and ask them to allow John Murtha to think of Marines as human beings again. Then he can start looking for solutions instead of starting a panic every time something bad happens. It will lower the level of animosity all around, and it will increase the odds we can find real answers to our real problems.
Call me crazy, but I think that's worth a lot more than street credit.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Tue 5:49 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (3) | More Laura Ingraham | Tags: conservative Haditha Jon Murtha journalism Laura Ingraham liberals
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Comments
Murtha has used the fact that he is a Vietnam Vet to somehow aspire him to the 'worthier than thou tribe' - because he was part of a 'war.' Unfortunately for him he forgot that was then, and this is now.
He is way off base, and he is what I term a traitor. Call me wrong, but that is how I view Murtha, as a traitor.
He would rather lose the war in Iraq, let bin Laden eat cake at our expense, just so he could say, 'see, war is wrong.'
Laura Ingram has done much to educate the public about our troops, I applaud her, furthermore, I would love Murtha to talk his crap to my best friend who's son is on his second tour in Iraq.
He needs to shut up...period...he needs to just shut up.
Posted by: Layla at May 30, 2006 7:36 PM
I'm not really a youth anymore, but I always took the slang term "street cred" to be short for "street credentials," not "credit."
Though I suppose from an accounting standpoint "credit" might also fit.
Posted by: GORDON at June 3, 2006 1:14 PM
I think of credentials as a one-time thing, and credit as accumulating. Murtha needs to keep dumping on the military to stay in the spotlight, so it's more like credit than credentials. I guess next time I'll have to use a different metaphor.
Posted by: Ferdy 
at June 3, 2006 10:15 PM
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