General Pace Has Had Enough

....and the JCS chairman has called out Sheehanite Democrat Congressman John Murtha:

A Democratic congressman's remarks about the military are damaging to troop morale and to the Army's efforts to rebound from a recruiting slump, the nation's top general said Thursday.

General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked at a Pentagon news conference to comment on remarks by Representative John Murtha, D-PA, a Marine Corps veteran who has become a leading voice in Congress advocating an early withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Pace was asked specifically about an ABC News interview this week in which Murtha, 73, said if he were eligible to join the military today he would not, nor would he expect others to join.

"That's damaging to recruiting," Pace said. "It's damaging to morale of the troops who are deployed, and it's damaging to the morale of their families who believe in what they are doing to serve this country."

Pace called the news conference to discuss his weeklong trip to Iraq and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region. He said he found good troop morale and a "quiet confidence" that U.S. efforts in Iraq were on the right track. He added that Murtha's comments were among the first things he heard about upon returning Tuesday.

I don't wonder. Murtha's fifteen minutes of fame were supposed to be up already, but he doesn't appear to want to leave the stage. The spotlight, and "anti-war" sucking up, are just too inviting, I guess. Thank goodness General Pace is getting out the hook.

What is wonderous, though, is that Murtha has gotten so overboardly offensive in his sedition that a top military leader felt compelled to speak out in response. Traditionally this almost never happens, which reflects the respect within the military command structure for the doctrine of civilian control. To employ a metaphor, it is the politicians who decide where the cut is to be made; the soldiers, sailors, airmen (and women), and Marines are content to be the blade. But as recruiting is a significant and crucial factor for the armed services - reflecting the respect within the military command structure for its all-volunteer status - a heretofore respected congressman and Marine combat veteran demonizing the military makes it General Pace's duty to push back, and I hope we haven't seen the last of it.

Especially considering that Murtha just won't shut up:

Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has come to national prominence since his call for a quick withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, said Thursday night that he worries about "a slow withdrawal which makes it look like there's a victory."

Appearing at a town meeting in Arlington, Virginia, with fellow Democratic Representative James Moran [and sponsored by, you got it, moveon.org], Murtha said, "A year ago, I said we can't win this militarily, and I got all kinds of criticism." Now, Murtha told the strongly antiwar audience, "I worry about a slow withdrawal which makes it look like there's a victory when I think it should be a redeployment as quickly as possible and let the Iraqis handle the whole thing."

In other words, we are winning in Iraq and Murtha knows it, but rathering than showing a modicum of integrity and admitting his defeatism has been proven wrong, or simply clamming up in the cynical hope that people will forget his words of demoralization, he's striving even more frantically to stick a finger down victory's throat and force it to vomit up the defeat with which he is obsessed. And thus rather than reality dictating appearances, appearances will dictate reality.

Murtha even twisted General Pace's own words toward that end:

"They're frustrated by this mission," Murtha said before a town hall meeting on Iraq in Arlington, Virginia, hosted by Representative Jim Moran, D-VA. "Peter Pace told me this last night: They know militarily they can't win this," Murtha said.

That is a bald-faced lie. What the Pentagon has said is that defeating the "insurgency" is not the entirety of the mission; the new democratic government in Baghdad must be firmly established, its armed forces trained and equipped, to control and defend its own territory against external and internal threats. And all those objectives have been and are being accomplished, which is why the gradual troop "redeployment" has begun, and why Murtha is scared to death it will "look like the victory" that it, in fact, is.

Murtha is, in a word, detestable. Which is why I have one bone of contention with something else General Pace said:

"When a respected leader like Mr. Murtha, who has spent 37 extremely honorable years as a Marine ..., has served the country extremely well in the Congress of the United States — when a respected individual like that says what he said, and 18- and 19-year-olds look to their leadership to determine how they are expected to act, they can get the wrong message," Pace said.

No, they're getting the right message - that John Murtha is a traitor who has pissed on his "37 extremely honorable years as a Marine" and is no longer worthy or deserving of anybody's respect.

How fitting, if far from satisfying, that it will be irrelevance that finally silences him.