In praise of John Murtha
The Nation
by Nicholas von Hoffman
11/23/05
When John Murtha, Democratic Repesentative from Pennsylvania, appeared on our television screens, what he had to say was shocking -- an old guard type declaring America must get itself out of Iraq and the war. In 457 words, he stood the country up and made it blink as he told the other of the House of Representatives, 'Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.' That was a shock and Murtha himself was a shock, a man from another era, from an America most of us may have heard about but have not visited. At 73 he has an Irish working-class accent of a kind which has all but died out. It speaks of grit and iron and hard times -- and there have been plenty of those in his Pennsylvania Congressional district, where the bituminous coal industry went down when Murtha was a young man and where the steel industry went down when Murtha was a middle-aged man, and in between there were two wars, both of which he signed up for and served in...
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051212/vonhoffman
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
by Nicholas von Hoffman
11/23/05
When John Murtha, Democratic Repesentative from Pennsylvania, appeared on our television screens, what he had to say was shocking -- an old guard type declaring America must get itself out of Iraq and the war. In 457 words, he stood the country up and made it blink as he told the other of the House of Representatives, 'Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.' That was a shock and Murtha himself was a shock, a man from another era, from an America most of us may have heard about but have not visited. At 73 he has an Irish working-class accent of a kind which has all but died out. It speaks of grit and iron and hard times -- and there have been plenty of those in his Pennsylvania Congressional district, where the bituminous coal industry went down when Murtha was a young man and where the steel industry went down when Murtha was a middle-aged man, and in between there were two wars, both of which he signed up for and served in...
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051212/vonhoffman
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
Starmail - 28. Nov, 19:32
