Courage just got a little bit cheaper. That’s the conclusion to be drawn from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library’s bestowal Monday of a Profile in Courage Award on Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who made headlines last year by calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
We don’t question Murtha’s physical courage, which he demonstrated while serving his country as a Marine. But the Profile in Courage Award is meant to celebrate courage in the public realm, and here Murtha is far from extraordinary. According to
the JFK Library’s statement announcing this year’s winners, the award is for “public servants who have withstood strong opposition to follow what they believe is the right course of action.” In Murtha’s case, “strong opposition” included cheers of support from prominent Democrats, lionization by the broader antiwar Left, and press coverage that approached idolatry. Public opinion had already turned against the war by the time Murtha came out against it, transforming himself from a regional obscurity into a national figure. There are many words to describe this journey, but “courageous” is near the bottom of the list.
Rather higher is “disgraceful.” We don’t mean Murtha’s criticisms of the war; we disagree with those criticisms, but he is welcome to make them. What he should not be welcome to do is slander American soldiers—as in his recent declaration that U.S. Marines have murdered Iraqi civilians “in cold blood.” This was a reference to accusations that Marines shot 15 Iraqis in the town of Haditha last November. The military’s investigation of those claims isn’t finished yet, but Murtha apparently can’t wait for all the facts to emerge before damning the accused. In doing so, he inflames international opinion against the United States and makes it more difficult not only to fulfill our mission in Iraq, but to conduct military operations anywhere in the world. Even if the allegations against the Marines are true, Murtha’s rhetoric is imbalanced: He declines to emphasize that the vast majority of soldiers perform their duties honorably and that those who break the rules are severely punished, choosing instead to cite the actions of a few sadists as though they were representative of the military.
But Murtha’s emphasis serves the award committee’s agenda well. It has a history of using the prize to promote liberal causes (though it has proved bipartisan in its willingness to toast tax-hiking Republicans along with tax-hiking Democrats). This year’s theme is apparently that the U.S. can do no right in Iraq. Accordingly, the other winner is Alberto J. Mora, former general counsel to the U.S. Navy. “Mora warned Pentagon officials two years before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that circumventing international agreements on torture and detainees’ treatment would invite abuse of the sort that was eventually exposed at Abu Ghraib,” the JFK Library tendentiously explains.
If the selection committee had cared more about celebrating courage than about attacking the Bush administration, it could have chosen any number of Iraqi politicians as winners. Foreign leaders have been honored in the past—Ukrainian president Viktor Yuschenko, for example—and it’s hard to imagine many people who face “strong opposition” like the Iraqi leaders do. These men and their families live under constant threat of assassination, but somehow they keep pressing forward. As just one example, consider
Tariq al-Hashemi, Iraq’s newly appointed vice president. At the end of April, gunmen shot his sister dead. His brother had fallen to a similar attack less than two weeks before. Yet he remains in his post.
Such courage should make us count as dross the achievements of a mere Murtha. The JFK Library’s decision to fête such an unworthy recipient dilutes the meaning of “courage” and diminishes the value of its award. But we suspect that, having gotten in a good dig against the war, it doesn’t much care.
