MoveOn.org Pulls Anti-War Ad Following Criticism
Leave it to the Right to completely ignore and bludgeon the message of MoveOn’s latest television ad by nitpicking details that, while not unimportant, hardly warrant killing the ad. Ain’t propaganda a wondrous thing?
Not being able to defend the war in Iraq on it’s merits, Conservatives and apologists for Our Glorious Leader have been reduced to tinkering around the margins. Since they cannot justify the murderous three-year fishing expedition that Iraq has become, they attack symbols, words- anything that they can use to deflect attention from the reality that every day more of our soldiers die in a war that is doing nothing to increase or guarantee American security.
Let’s face facts, shall we? There is no credible evidence that Iraq was involved, even tangentially, in the 9.11 terrorist attacks. Nor was there a terrorist threat within Iraq. Though Our Glorious leader invokes 9.11 at every opportunity, it doesn’t change the fact that Iraq had no connection with 9.11- NONE. The Administration and it’s apologists have had almost three years to produce evidence that would prove me wrong, but they have yet to do so…d’ya think it might be because none exists?
The other fact is that our invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq created the very terrorist threat that Our Glorious Leader is so adamant about staying the course to defeat. He created it, he’s fighting it. Nice, huh? And yet the propaganda artists on the Right are still chanting about their desire to fight terrorists in the streets of Baghdad instead of the streets of Manhattan. After, he who controls and defines the message controls the truth, eh?
The liberal political group MoveOn.org has yanked a video ad from its website after being criticized for using images of British soldiers to represent Americans in Iraq.
The 30-second ad, which also began running on CNN and cable stations during the Thanksgiving weekend, stated that “150,000 American men and women are stuck in Iraq” this holiday season.
So far, so good. Of course, now it’s time for the nit-picking:
But the ad showed soldiers who were “not wearing U.S. uniforms,” according to a Pentagon spokesman who was interviewed by Cybercast News Service Wednesday, approximately two hours before the Internet version of the ad was pulled from the MoveOn.org website….
Todd Vician, a spokesman with the U.S. Defense Department, told Cybercast News Service after viewing the ad that none of the men featured in the photograph was wearing U.S. uniforms. “We don’t have that style of desert camouflage,” he said.
Vician noted that combat fatigues worn by the Marines and the Army have “a pixilated design.”
OK, so the ads are sartorially incorrect. This hardly changes the message, right? Of course, now the Right has something to chip away at, and like any good Republican, they know that if they keep repeating something, it will eventually be accepted as the truth. Ergo, if MoveOn can’g get the uniforms in the ad correct, how are we to take anything else in the ad at face value as factual?
But the television ad has already reportedly drawn a sharp reaction from an Army captain who just completed his third deployment in Iraq, according to OpinionJournal.com.
James Taranto, the author of the OpinionJournal.com column, wrote that the Army captain was “an old friend” of his who emailed with his criticism. The captain was quoted as calling the MoveOn.org TV ad “completely offensive” and “a Bush-bashing ad” that “shows turkey and crying wives and blames Bush for it all.”
As “the idiots from MoveOn.org … pretend to argue on my behalf, they show a group of soldiers standing around a table in the Middle East,” the captain reportedly wrote and added that the individuals in the photo were “actually British soldiers.
“One is in shorts (we don’t have shorts as a normal combat uniform), and the others are all clearly wearing British pattern fatigues,” the Army captain wrote, noting that people at MoveOn.org “don’t even know what an American soldier looks like!”
Bingo…and just that easily, the message of the ad is completely trampled by those with a vested interest in stomping it out of the public consciousness. OK, so there may (or may not) be an issue with the uniforms. But what about the message behind the ad, that 150,000 Americans are stuck in Iraq, fighting a war seemingly without end, purpose, or planning?
The people at MoveOn know what an American soldier looks like. Taranto’s friend clearly cannot argue for the war on it’s merits, because frankly there are none. He, like any other GOP apologist, is reduced to name-calling, disinformation, and obfuscation in place of a coherent argument. They would have you believe that the Emperor really is fully dressed, while anyone with the ability to think critically can see that this is little more than Republican propaganda. This Emperor, and his miserable failure of a policy in Iraq, is stark naked, no amount of spin to the contrary will change that fact.
The problem with this ad is not with MoveOn.org. It’s with those on the Right who see propaganda and disinformation as just a normal part of doing business in Washington. I wonder if any of these folks have ever had to bury a loved one killed in Iraq?
