I underestimated the viciousness of the right wing.

Last November, Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat and a decorated Marine
combat veteran, came out for a rapid American withdrawal from Iraq. At the time,
I wrote: "It will be difficult for Bush's acolytes to cast Murtha, who has
regularly stood up for the military policies of Republican presidents during his
31 years in Congress, as some kind of extreme partisan or hippie
protester."

No, the conservative hit squad didn't accuse Murtha of being a hippie. But
a crowd that regularly defends President Bush for serving in the Texas Air
National Guard instead of going to Vietnam has continued its war on actual
Vietnam veterans. An outfit called the Cybercast News Service last week
questioned the circumstances surrounding the awarding of two Purple Hearts to
Murtha because of wounds he suffered in the Vietnam War.

John Kerry, as well as John McCain -- who faced scurrilous attacks on his
war record when he was running against Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary
-- could have warned Murtha: If you're a Vietnam veteran, don't you dare get in
the way of George W. Bush.

David Thibault, editor in chief of Cybercast, made it very clear to The
Post's Howard Kurtz and Shailagh Murray that Murtha was facing accusations about
his 1967 service now because "the congressman has really put himself in the
forefront of the antiwar movement." In other words, if Murtha had just shut up
and gone along with Bush, nothing would have been said about his
service.

As it is, the charges are remarkably flimsy. Former representative Don
Bailey (D-Pa.), whom Murtha defeated in a 1982 congressional primary after a
redistricting, said that Murtha had told him he did not deserve his Purple
Hearts, Kurtz and Murray reported. Bailey, who won a Silver Star and three
Bronze Stars in Vietnam, recalled Murtha saying: "Hey, I didn't do anything like
you did. I got a little scratch on the cheek."

Authentic war heroes (including McCain) often play down their own heroism.
In any event, what we know about Murtha, McCain, Kerry and, yes, Bailey, is that
they served in combat in Vietnam. What we know about Bush and Vice President
Cheney ("I had other priorities in the '60s than military service'') is that
they didn't.

What's maddening here is the unblushing hypocrisy of the right wing and the
way it circulates -- usually through Web sites or talk radio -- personal
vilification to abort honest political debate. Murtha's views on withdrawing
troops from Iraq are certainly the object of legitimate contention. Many in
Murtha's party disagree with him. But Murtha's right-wing critics can't content
themselves with going after his ideas. They have to try to discredit his
service.

Moreover, the right has demonstrated that its attitude toward military
service is entirely opportunistic. In the 1992 presidential campaign, when the
first President Bush confronted Bill Clinton -- who, like Cheney, avoided
military service entirely -- conservatives could hardly speak or write a
paragraph about Clinton that didn't accuse him of being a draft dodger. In
October 1992, Bush himself assailed Clinton. "A lot of being president is about
respect for that office and about telling the truth and serving your country,"
Bush told a crowd in New Jersey. "And you are all familiar with Governor
Clinton's various stories on what he did to evade the draft."

But from 2000 forward, the Republicans had a problem: They confronted
Democrats, first Al Gore and then John Kerry, who actually did go to Vietnam,
while it was their own standard-bearers who had skipped the war. Suddenly,
service in Vietnam wasn't the thing at all. When a Democrat went to war, there
must have been something wrong with the way he did it. Gore's service was
dismissed because he worked "only" as a military journalist. You can even find
Bush's defenders back in 2000 daring to argue that flying planes over Texas was
actually more dangerous than joining the Army and serving in Vietnam the way
Gore did.

The Republicans had an even bigger problem with Kerry, who did
unquestionably dangerous duty patrolling rivers. Not to worry. The Swift Boat
Veterans simply smeared him.

"War's a nasty business," Murtha said on CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday. "It
sears the soul. The shadow of friends killed, the shadow of killing people lives
with you the rest of your life. So there's no experience like being in
combat."

Unfortunately, politics is a nasty business, too. And there is no honor
given to those who serve if they choose later to take on the powers that
be.