Rep. John Murtha, Marine and Pennsylvania Democrat, dead at 77

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In the spring of 2007, I got to spend a chunk of a Washington, DC morning in a press question and answer session with Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who passed away today at the age of 77. I always liked the Congressman and members of his staff, and he gave an impressive performance that day, cogently switching back and forth between the details of the fight over funding for the Iraq War and the mind-numbing boredom of various defense appropriations issues. The assembled DC press corps that morning had its attentions split between the hardware of war machinery and the human tolls of war itself.

That was kind of Murtha in a nutshell – a man who could talk defense appropriations as clearly as he could talk about the personal cost of the national defense.

For the appropriations part of it, you can say what you want about all the pork he sent back home, and the ethical cloud it left hanging over him. But in a Congress with representatives who serve districts that elect and reward with re-election men and women who make their homes better places, it’s hard to argue with the results that the Congressman achieved – look at the number of things in the Johnstown area with the Murtha name attached to them. However right-leaning his district was (they voted McCain in 2008!), they kept sending him back to Congress, by comfortable margins.

And this whole point about the right-leaning tendencies of his district is an important one when you consider what really stands as the legacy of his final years on the national stage. Murtha probably single-handedly changed the discussion about the Iraq War in 2005.

It felt like Murtha was the one who really put some iron in the spine of the anti-Iraq War movement among Democrats in Congress. As an honored Marine, Rep. Murtha was able to speak proudly and fairly about why the American mission in Iraq had to change, and without charges that he was a coward (although there were some who tried). Until he helped galvanize the anti-war feelings that had bubbled up from the left into something that a broader swath of Americans could get behind, the Bush administration was showing every sign of letting inertia run its course, all while tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians were being slaughtered by a worsening civil war among the country’s endless assortment of factions.

The good guys rarely win in America, certainly in any outright fashion. We are not yet out of Iraq. American men and women still die there, and the political situation remains fractious. But Murtha made it possible to change the discussion from “we have to beat the terrorists at all costs” to “a moment is coming when America must leave.” And I hope that more than airports and other pork, Murtha will be remembered for that accomplishment in the annals of America’s congressional history.