by Bill Levinson

(A letter with similar content was sent to njdc “at” njdc.org and nynjdc “at” njdc.org (Wed, 12 Sep 2007 ))

Last week, MoveOn.org published a defamatory advertisement (http://pol.moveon.org/petraeus.html) in the New York Times. The advertisement makes accusations that would be insulting to any lady or gentleman of character, but especially to a serving military officer who follows a very strict code of honor.

MoveOn.org’s propaganda, like its derogatory cartoon of Pope Benedict waving a gavel in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, along with the anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic hate speech it promoted on its now-disgraced Action Forum, is admittedly less than competent. MoveOn.org took a very dignified picture of a gentleman with four stars on his shoulder, army skill badges that include Parachutist and Air Assault, and numerous service ribbons, and applied a name that any child in a grade school playground could develop. Now let’s take a look at MoveOn Executive Director Eli Pariser, the individual behind all this.

The following is from MoveOn.org’s own Web site:

The MoveOn Peace campaign was founded independently by Eli Pariser, a Maine native and recent graduate of Simon’s Rock College of Bard. In the days following September 11th, 2001, he launched an online petition calling for a restrained and multi-lateral response to the attacks, which was quickly signed by more than half a million people. Eli joined forces with MoveOn soon afterward, and is now MoveOn.org Political Action’s Executive Director.

Right. Eli Pariser called for a “restrained” response to the treacherous mass murder of almost three thousand civilians, an action that called for nothing less than a declaration of total war against the perpetrators. This was the response delivered by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt to Japan’s treacherous attack on a military target that, unlike the flight attendants whose throats were slit by the Al Qaida hijackers, was at least armed and capable of defending itself. That conflict ended only after the use of nuclear weapons against the perpetrators. Eli Pariser’s call for “restraint” in dealing with the perpetrators of 9/11 tell us everything we need to know about him and his empathy for the people who were burned to death in the Twin Towers. Nothing this individual has to say–and as MoveOn.org Political Action’s Executive Director, he is responsible for the New York Times ad–about an officer and gentleman who risks his life to defend our liberties and freedom can possibly interest us or any other civilized and decent person.

MoveOn.org made a false public accusation that a distinguished military officer is “cooking the books” and “betraying us.” Any lady or gentleman of character is not only entitled but obliged to denounce and condemn such an accusation in the strongest possible terms. Our question to the National Jewish Democratic Council is, “Is the NJDC an organizational gentleman?”

Let’s take a look at exactly what MoveOn.org had to say about a distinguished Army officer with four general’s stars and numerous service ribbons.

Most importantly, General Petraeus will not admit what everyone knows; Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war.

“Everyone” does not know this. Only the America-haters at MoveOn.org, Code Pink, and so on know this, or at least want the rest of the country to believe it. In other words, MoveOn.org is calling General Petraeus “General Betray Us” because he will not tell the lies that MoveOn.org would like the country to hear.

Today before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.

In other words, MoveOn.org did not even wait to hear what this soldier had to say before delivering the worst imaginable public insults to a serving military officer.

We will go even further. If we were an Al Qaida propagandist, we would create an ad of this nature to drive a wedge between the American people and their Armed Forces, and between officers and enlisted men. As described by Paul Linebarger (Cordwainer Smith),

“For psychological warfare purposes, it is useful to define the enemy as: (1) the ruler, (2) or the ruling group, (3) or unspecified manipulators, (4) or any definite minority. It is thoroughly unsound to define the enemy too widely. (Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, Psychological Warfare, p. 51)

“The sound psychological warfare operator will try to get enemy troops to believing that the enemy is not themselves but somebody else- the King, the Fuhrer, the elite troops, the capitalists. … ‘We’re not fighting you. We are fighting the So-and-so’s who are misleading you.’” (Linebarger, p. 40.)

Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels added, “Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology… Hatred and contempt must be directed at particular individuals.” MoveOn.org has already suffered the consequences, by having to shut down its Action Forum in disgrace, for directing hatred and contempt at Catholics, supporters of Israel, and Jews in general. Its attempt to do the same with a distinguished Army officer should result in its destruction as a viable political entity, and we intend to make sure it suffers the full public relations consequences of its reprehensible actions.

More important, however, is how the Democratic Party reacts to MoveOn.org. Do Democrats stand behind our Armed Forces? Do they really care about the men and women in uniform who are being murdered by terrorists in Iraq, or are they more interested in using these casualties to discredit the Bush Administration? As far as we know, Joe Lieberman (D-CT), known as “Jew Lieberman” to the MoveOn.org community, and Joseph Biden (D) are the only Democrats who have denounced the MoveOn.org advertisement.* It is well known that silence gives consent, and the silence of Democratic frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards suggest that they approve of, or are at least willing to overlook, MoveOn.org’s insults to a distinguished Army officer.

It is already on record that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards posed with and endorsed Al Sharpton, the prominent racist and anti-Semite whose role in the Crown Heights riots, Freddy’s Fashion Mart incident, and Tawana Brawley scandal is well known. This by itself disqualifies them from holding any position of public trust or responsibility in a civilized nation. Their failure to denounce MoveOn.org’s most recent hate propaganda will simply reinforce this conclusion.

The National Jewish Democratic Council’s blog has a long track record of denouncing Republicans for alleged misbehavior (and to its credit Democrat Jim Moran for his statements about AIPAC). Now we need to see whether NJDC’s standards also apply to MoveOn.org, or whether NJDC is, by its silence, also going to assent to MoveOn.org’s latest atrocity against common decency.

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We understand that John Kerry later called the MoveOn ad “over the top” while Elizabeth Edwards also denounced it. Perhaps Elizabeth and not John Edwards should be running for the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, joined MoveOn.org in insulting General Petraeus by saying that his testimony to Congress required “willing suspension of disbelief.” Given her husband’s own track record, she should not be using phrases like “willing suspension of disbelief.”

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Related: Iraq, Anti-Semitism, Elections, Pure Politics

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