An online biography of Markos Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga says:
After leaving the Army, he [Moulitsas] attended Northern Illinois University and wrote for, and eventually managed, the Northern Star college newspaper. Eventful.Com
While at Northern Illinois University in 1993, during the period when President Clinton was endeavoring to implement a new policy that would allow gays to serve openly in the US military, Markos A. C. Moultisas published an essay in the Northern Star, opposing the service of gays in the military. This essay, entitled "Military Right," was among the more than three dozen pieces he published in his role as "staff reporter" for Northern Illinois University college newspaper.
Clinton's 1993 initiative for gay rights was defeated. Markos A.C. Moulitsas' 1993 essay opposing Clinton's gay rights initiative is reprinted below, verbatim, in its entirety.
Markos C.A. Moulitsas wrote:
Military RightPublished on: Monday, January 25, 1993
It's truly disturbing how much ado has been made over Bill Clinton's campaign promise to lift the ban on homosexuals from the U.S. military. It's ironic how it has taken a president who has never served in the military to make a promise that affects the military in such a negative manner.
Those who have served in the military, such as myself, understand the demands and pressures of military life are incompatible with allowing integration with homosexuals. I'm neither socially conservative or prejudiced, and neither is liberal columnist Mike Royko, Gen. Colin Powell, and influential liberal Democrats Sam Nunn and Les Aspin, all who've come out against lifting the ban.
Under military circumstances, as much has to be done as possible to focus the unit's mission and keep disciplinary problems to a minimum. Worrying about whether the known homosexual sleeping next to you is watching as you change your underwear may seem trivial as you read this, but to the soldier who's short-tempered after three weeks in the field and four hours of daily sleep, it becomes a matter of great importance to his pride and sensibilities. And in any case, there aren't many people who would change clothes in a group of co-workers if members of the opposite sex were in the same room watching. There is something inherently uncomfortable about it.
Such fears would go a long way in disrupting efficiency and morale in a unit.
MARKOS C.A. MOULITSAS
Undecided
Freshman
Northern Star
John M. Shalikashvili, a retired army general, was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 to 1997. Explaining historically why gays are not allowed in the military today, Gen. Shalikashvili said this year in a New York Times Op-Ed piece,
In the early 1990s, large numbers of military personnel were opposed to letting openly gay men and lesbians serve. President Bill Clinton, who promised to lift the ban during his campaign, was overwhelmed by the strength of the opposition, which threatened to overturn any executive action he might take.
Markos A.C. Moulitsas Zúñiga (MAMZ) was one of the ex-military whose vocal opposition to gays' participation in the media made it politically impossible for Bill Clinton to make good on his campaign promise to allow gays to serve in the military.
The irony of Markos A.C. Moulitsas' political career is that if he had not been so successful in his Republican activism as a youth, then much of what is wrong with America today would never have come to pass. For example, without the Republican activism of military people like Markos A.C.Moulitas, gays might be serving openly in the military today, instead of waiting until some time in the future.
While President Clinton and his wife Hillary were taking hits from Republicans because they were trying to open the military to service by gays, Markos A. C. Moulitsas was siding with the Republicans and criticizing equal rights for gays.
Now, MAMZ accuses the Clintons of being too conservative! MAMZ accuses the Clintons of selling out progressive values, but this essay shows who the real enemy of progressive values is. When the Clintons were providing leadership for gay rights, Markos C.A. Moulitsas stood up and opposed the Clintons. And the homophobic anti-gay policy that Markos C.A. Moulitsas successfully championed in 1993 is still in place today.
I can't trust MAMZ to fight for gay rights. I can't trust MAMZ to fight for Blacks' rights. I can't trust MAMZ to fight for women's rights, and I don't want MAMZ running the Democratic Party.
I can't diary about this at DailyKos because I (and another Black lawyer whom I've come to know) have BOTH been banned from participation at DailyKos. We're too . . . controversial because we both compare what Markos says now to what he has actually done.
ReplyDeleteOne way of interpreting Markos' present statements in the light most favorable to his political interests is that Markos has changed since the days when he was the virulently anti-gay homophobe who wrote the opinion piece (below) in the college newspaper.
I don't know if he has ever disavowed his earlier position on gays, when he said that "the demands and pressures of military life are incompatible with allowing integration with homosexuals."
Do you know if he has disavowed this statement or should we just take it on faith that he has, without specifically questioning it?
Another way of interpreting this is that after he trained for six months with the CIA in 2001, he decided that he could infiltrate the progressive movement more successfully if he downplayed the fact that he had spent his youth as a Republican stalwart who strenuously supported anti-civil rights activities.
I find it terribly ironic that Markos takes such great pains to disparage the liberal Clinton legacy when he, himself, was a Republican when the Clinton legacy was being built. If Clinton had to enact policies that were too conservative, it was precisely because people like Markos Moulitsas were demanding more conservative government policies, as this essay by Markos shows.
I'm sick and tired of someone who opposed civil rights in the 90's pretending to be a progressive in the 2000's AND criticizing the records of those who STRONGLY supported civil rights when Markos was opposing civil rights.
Those who were our friends in the 1990's defending us from Republicans are still our friends. Those who were with the Republicans when they put Clarence Thomas on the US Supreme Court and defeated gays in the military are still our enemies.
Francis
Not sure if you care about this, BUT...the crowd at Marisacat's blog are reporting your story on Moulitsas' letter to the editor as if it's their own investigation (bypassing any links to you and not attributing you for having done the research). Rather impolite of them, I'd say, but about par for the course.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Mr. Moulitsas needs to be confronted about his views expressed in this 14-year-old letter...but who's going to do it? None of his critics can reach him, since he bans everyone who criticizes him on his blog.
Good luck with your research.
Thanks Curmudgeon. I don't care who gets the credit for showing that Markos is not a progressive. I just want people to see the reality before Markos does some real damage to our interests.
ReplyDeleteWell, in any case, I wouldn't worry about the information being seen at Marisacat's blog. Only her regular readers, which number less than a dozen, will see it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, you don't seem to be prepared to stage any kind of confrontation with Mr. Moulitsas himself to give him an opportunity to recant his anti-gay views. I'm not sure how you'd reach him, anyway, since he's about accessible to his critics as Greta Garbo. However, there is the possibility that a man can change his views on gays in general and gays in the military in particular in 14 years (and remember, I'm not a fan of his). The Moulitsas who wrote that letter was 22 years old and fresh out of the military culture. I admit that Moulitsas displays little, if any, introspection, but you have to honestly admit the possibility that he's changed his views. I very much doubt that he has, given the current examples of his misogyny--I never met a misogynist who wasn't also a homophobe.
I actually wanted to thank you for a comment you made at your version of the diary posted at MyLeftWing:
Actually, we are at risk of establishing a terrible premise: if you are a Republican who was against equal rights in the 1990's, then you are unfit for office. But, if you call yourself an "ex-Republican" progressive, then it no longer matters that you opposed equal rights. So, the best way for Republicans to clean up their awful records is to claim to be progressives.
That's exactly the formulation I've been struggling to make for all this time! Moulitsas changed his registration to the Democratic Party to "scrub" his past.
You missed something significant.
ReplyDeleteThis is from the letter Mr. Moulitsas wrote in 1993, when he was 22:
It's truly disturbing how much ado has been made over Bill Clinton's campaign promise to lift the ban on homosexuals from the U.S. military. It's ironic how it has taken a president who has never served in the military to make a promise that affects the military in such a negative manner.
Notice the attack on President Clinton, a Democrat. But wait...what was Moulitsas' political affiliation at the time?
From his bio at DailyKos:
After high school, Moulitsas served in the U.S. Army (1989-92) as a 13P -- Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) Fire Direction Specialist. He trained at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma and served the remainder of his three-year enlistment in Bamberg, Germany. While he entered the Army as a Republican, he abandoned the GOP soon after his enlistment.
Hm, so Mr. Moulitsas "abandoned the GOP soon after his enlistment" in 1989, but joined in the Republican attack on President Clinton 4 years later? Which means Moulitsas was still a Republican in 1993? Which means yet another lie in his "official" biography. He keeps slipping up on the little details, doesn't he?
Really, this is why Moulitsas is NOT a CIA agent--he's a terrible, careless liar who has lied about his past in so many easily discoverable ways. I think Moulitsas' story about being offered a job as an operative witht he CIA is total BS, because the CIA does have some standards for its operatives--they never would have hired Moulitsas to do anything other than empty the wastebaskets. I believe he interviewed with the CIA, and they turned him down--unless the "I" in "CIA" stands for "Idiot".
Kos doesn't say he became a Democrat after he joined the Army. He says he "abandoned the GOP". Maybe he became an independent voter not affiliated with either party. One of his editors, Darksyde, is an independent--Kos might be the same.
ReplyDeleteI never did find a statement by Kos that says "I am a registered Democrat". Somebody asked him the question during the pie fights and he just ignored the question. I would have answered, "Of course I'm a Democrat, I run a Democratic Party website!" but Kos didn't. Strange, huh?
Yes, Veronica and Curmudgeon, the more one studies the history of MAMZ and compares his statements to each other and to the verifiable facts, the more difficult it becomes to believe his protestations - about many different things.
ReplyDeleteHe said that the last time he voted for Bush was 1992, but he was still attacking Clinton like a Republican in 1993.
I think we need a RESEARCHED biography of MAMZ that doesn't simply report what he says of himself unquestioningly, like so many MSM stories have. Because the most fundamental parts of those MSM stories have turned out to be fundamentally flawed or simply flat out wrong and impossible.