No Shortage of Crazy on the Left Either

The birthers have been getting lots of derisive press attention, and for good reason: “The theory that Obama was born in Kenya, that he was smuggled into the U.S., and that his parents somehow hoodwinked Hawaiian authorities into falsely certifying his birth in Oahu, is crazy stuff,” as Andrew C. McCarthy observes in National Review Online.

But why are leftists and the media silent when one of their own propagates an even more malicious and bizarre theory about our nation’s military and intelligence personnel? Worse yet, why do some of America’s leading media outlets give these crackpots a platform to propagate their lies?

This happens more often than you may realize. The latest case in point is a recent Huffington Post piece by the acclaimed director Oliver Stone, in which Stone asserts unequivocally that “the military-intelligence community” assassinated President Kennedy.

Kennedy, Stone writes, was “regarded as a virtual traitor by elements of the military-intelligence community. These were the forces that planned and carried out his assassination.”

This may seem like old news, and it is: Stone first propagated this malicious lie in his 1991 film, JFK.  He is repeating it now because, in Stone’s crackpot view, “to a large extent, the fate of our country and the future of the planet continue to be controlled by shadowy forces” within the military-intelligence community.

This is a slander on the men and women who work tirelessly, day in and day out, to protect the United States and the American people. Stone offers not one iota of evidence to support his crackpot theory because no such evidence exists.

Instead, he speculates that Kennedy was killed because the “military-intelligence community” feared Kennedy’s embrace of the peace movement. Kennedy, you see, was determined to “pull the world back from the edge of destruction,” but that was something “shadowy [U.S.] forces” would not allow─so they had Kennedy whacked.

In reality, Kennedy was a lifelong Cold Warrior determined to stop the spread of communism. Kennedy had won the presidency, in fact, by criticizing the Eisenhower administration for its supposed lack of leadership in the Cold War, and for allowing an alleged “missile gap” to develop between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Moreover, the idea that Kennedy wanted to withdraw American troops from Vietnam, as Stone and other leftists allege, is ludicrous and simply not supported by the historical record. “I think that [American troop withdrawal from Vietnam] would be a mistake,” Kennedy flatly told Walter Cronkite in 1963.

Sure, Kennedy wanted to reduce tensions with the Soviet Union; but so, too, did every American president, from Truman to Reagan. Kennedy thus negotiated with the Soviet Union―but not because he sought to change or abandon the American policy of containing communism; quite the contrary. For Kennedy, as for presidents both before and after him, negotiations with the Soviets were a tactical and political move in support of America’s overall policy of containment.

Kennedy did sign a test-ban treaty, but mainly for environmental reasons, and not because he envisioned or desired a world without nuclear weapons. In fact, Kennedy significantly increased spending on both conventional and nuclear weapons.

Perhaps because he was such a Cold Warrior, Kennedy was killed by a self-avowed Marxist, Lee Harvey Oswald. A native-born American, Oswald actually had emigrated to the Soviet Union before returning to the United States to assassinate Kennedy.

I mention this not to suggest that the Soviets were involved in the Kennedy assassination: because there is no evidence to suggest that that is the case. In fact, there is reason to believe the opposite: that the Soviets kept their distance from Oswald because they viewed him as mentally unstable.

Thus, far from being killed by “shadowy forces” within the military-intelligence community, Kennedy instead was killed by a left-wing nut. This is not surprising. The Left, after all, had ample reason to resent Kennedy, given his fierce anti-communist rhetoric and his commitment to containing communism

In short, Stone gets it exactly backward. He has inverted the historical record to propagate a malicious lie. And, in so doing, he slanders every member of the armed forces of the United States and every member of the U.S. intelligence community.

Unfortunately, Stone is not some isolated conspiracy theorist posting lonely blog posts to little known websites. That is to say, he is not a birther. Stone is, instead, a world-renowned artist and director with vast cultural clout and influence. Indeed, his movies─including JFK─are box-office hits seen throughout the world by millions of people.

In short, when Stone talks─or writes─people listen. Intently. Which is why it is imperative that the responsible Left (I know; I know! I’m being charitable and assuming that a responsible Left exists!) repudiate and disown Stone whenever he propagates his malicious lies. Lies which impugn the honor and integrity of an entire class of people─in this case the men and women who take a solemn oath to protect and defend the United States of America.

But not only does the Left refuse to repudiate and disown Stone; they actually embrace him! They honor him! They give him pride of place at their parties, dinners and award functions.

They invite Stone onto their talk shows and solicit his opinions on all manner of topics. They invite him to write articles and blog posts for their newspapers and online journals─including, notably one of the most widely read websites in America and in the world, the Huffington Post.

The Right at least repudiates its nut jobs─and the right-wing nut jobs don’t even have that much clout and influence, either cultural or political. The Left, by contrast, embraces its nut jobs and gives them a free pass.

Given their indulgence of Stone, the Left is in no position to complain about the birthers. As the old adage has it, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. However, the Left should throw out Oliver Stone.