What the Democratic trashing of General Petraeus reveals

The way that the Democrats and their Moveon.org overlords have been trashing the credibility of General Petraeus by implying that he was lying yesterday or was just a puppet for the White House is a new low. If you listened to any of the testimony from yesterday, given under oath, both the General and Ambassador denied that the White House and Pentagon have interfered with his report. They were forthright about what had been going well and what hadn't. It wasn't a happy talk moment. Some trends of violence were down, but they hadn't reached a peaceful, secure and stable state. He didn't claim that at all.

By trashing honorable men who have served this country with honor and are spending their time in Iraq rather than in wealthy retirement with their families, the Democrats have plumbed new depths. How can this party credibly claim leadership of the country if they're going to treat members of our military as if they're political hacks? And the silence from the Democratic candidates to be commander in chief is quite telling. As the Wall Street Journal editorializes,

Can this really be the new standard of political rhetoric across the Democratic Party? There was a time when the party's institutional elites, such as the Times, would have pulled it back from reducing politics to all or nothing. They would have blown the whistle on such accusations. Now they are leading the charge.

Under these new terms, public policy is no longer subject to debate, discussion and disagreement over competing views and interpretations. Instead, the opposition is reduced to the status of liar. Now the opposition is not merely wrong, but lacks legitimacy and political standing. The goal here is not to debate, but to destroy.