Hackett Calls Son of a Holocaust Survivor a Nazi

From today's "Media Blog" by Stephen Spruiell over at the National Review Online. (Which I strongly recommend checking out from time to time, and not just because I have several friends who write for them).

Paul Hackett was one of several anti-war Iraq veterans that were being trumpeted a while back as proof that the Democrats could be pro-troop and anti-war. There is no inherent contradiction between holding these two positions, to be sure, although much of the more inflammatory rhetoric against the war and President Bush tends to get cited by the insurgents as proof that we're ready to surrender. An example of this came in April 2004 when Senator Ted Kennedy described Iraq as "Bush's Vietnam," rhetoric that was almost immediately echoed word-for-word by Muqtada al-Sadr, who had never invoked Vietnam beforehand. This led to significantly more attacks against the same U.S. forces Kennedy claimed to be speaking on behalf of, in the hopes that we would withdraw. (Again, this is not to say that if you are against the war you are not patriotic, only that the enemy does listen, and because they don't understand the role of dissent in our politics takes this to mean that we're vulnerable, and therefore does increase the risk that soldiers here face).

But I digress.

I haven't followed up on how these Democratic anti-war vets are doing, but at least one is turning out to be something of a malicious nutjob.

Hackett Calls Son of a Holocaust Survivor a Nazi
08/31 11:56 AM - The Markup

Paul Hackett is an Iraq veteran who unsuccessfully ran for office twice as a Democrat in Ohio. He was the official nutroots candidate in the first of these elections, and he was an early favorite to get the nutroots endorsement in the most recent one until his primary opponent hired nutroots founding father and astrology enthusiast Jerome Armstrong to advise his campaign.

Now that he's at loose ends, he's taken to appearing with increasing frequency on the cable shout shows, where his inability to control what comes out of his mouth is destroying his political future. For instance, last night on Fox News he referred to former White House advisor Dan Senor as "Herr Senor" and "little unterfurher of propaganda, Mr. Senor there."

These nutroots slurs are all fun and games, of course, until you take into consideration the fact that Mr. Senor is Jewish and his mother survived the Holocaust. (h/t James E.)