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Is it Time to Ask Mr. Bush the Welch Question? January 18, 2006
Comment #549 It the attached New York Times op-ed, "Purple Heartbreakers," James Webb, a winner of the Navy Cross in Vietnam, takes issue with the right-wing smear campaigns waged repeatedly by Mr. Bush's surrogates to discredit distinguished combat veterans who oppose Mr. Bush or his policies. These smear campaigns bring to mind the tactics of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and the thundering silence of the audience calls for a man to stand tall like Joseph Welsh did when he posed dramatic question to McCarthy on June 9, 1954 during the Army-McCarthy hearings. Welsh's question took place against a similar background of smear campaigns: Like the modern day attack dogs on talk radio and Fox news, McCarthy had made his career in the early 1950s by using a privileged forum to destroy people with the reckless charges. In McCarthy's case, the charge was that they were communists or dupes of communists. By repeating these charges incessantly, McCarthy, a senator of mediocre intellect and almost no legislative accomplishment, gained spectacular power by creating and exploiting a witch-hunting atmosphere that capitalized on the ignorance, fear, and anxiety of decent people. (Paraphrasing the language on a senate website) McCarthy's political terror came to head in the spring of 1954, when he attacked the U.S. Army, making the specific charge of lax security at a top-secret army facility. The army countered McCarthy's assault by asserting the senator had sought preferential treatment for a recently drafted subcommittee aide. Amidst this controversy, McCarthy stepped down as chairman of his investigation subcommittee for the duration of the three-month televised spectacle known to history as the Army-McCarthy hearings. The army hired a distinguished Boston lawyer, Joseph Welch, to make its case. On June 9, 1954, McCarthy, using the same tired formula that catapulted him to prominence, tried to smear Welsh by charging that one of Welch's attorneys had ties to a Communist organization. As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy's career: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, but Welch angrily interrupted, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency? Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Have_you_no_sense_of_decency.htm Returning to Webb's op-ed, read it carefully. Note how he describes the formula used by the right wing attack dogs to smear those veterans who oppose Mr. Bush and his minions. Webb sums it up, "To no one's surprise, surrogates carry out the attacks, leaving President Bush and other Republican leaders to benefit from the results while publicly distancing themselves from the actual remarks." [emphasis added]. This is a more subtle formula than the brutish direct assault used by McCarthy, but it is no different. Webb has inadvertently shown why it too bad we live in the United States of Amnesia, where there is no memory of Joseph Welsh to put these scurrilous attacks in context by asking Mr. Bush a question something like - 'Let us not assassinate honorable veterans further, Mr. President. You have done enough by standing by, and letting your surrogates do the dirty work. Have you no sense of decency? Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?' Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney On the Politics of Fear:
On Religious Fanaticism:
On Checks & Balances:
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