Criticizing a president at war used to be called 'blaming America first'

They “blame America first.”

It’s an old phrase that’s been used against Democrats who dare to criticize America’s war efforts and foreign policy misadventures for decades. One of the first uses of it I can find comes all the way from 1984 during the Republican National Convention, with the speech made by then U.S. Ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick.

“When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don’t blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies,” Mrs. Kirkpatrick said of her party, which had just had its national convention in San Francisco. “They blame United States policies of 100 years ago. But then they always blame America first.”

She accused Democrats of abandoning the anti-communism of liberals like Harry S. Truman, Hubert H. Humphrey and Henry “Scoop” Jackson for the accommodative tack of George McGovern, Jimmy Carter and the “new liberals” she tagged as the “San Francisco Democrats.

Just to be clear, the argument then was that people shouldn’t criticize the failures of the Vietnam War or American actions such as deposing the Democratic leaders of Iran in the 50’s to install our puppet leader the Shah, and we shouldn’t criticize Reagan’s use of mujahadeen fighters against the Soviets in Afghanistan, or his trading weapons to Iran to effect the release of hostages, then taking the profits to pay for terrorist guerrillas in Central America. Because it’s not like any of that ever came back to bite us in the tuchus.

During the second Bush Iraq War, which dragged on for year after year with failure after failure including the growing Sunni insurgency, the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, growing Iraqi civilian casualties, out-of-control costs, hillbilly armor, abu Ghraib, the formation of ISIL under Bush’s nose at Camp Bucca, and a completely unbowed and unbeaten Taliban battling us in Afghanistan for his entire presidency, those who wished to paper over these failures commonly used Kirkpatrick’s frame of “blaming America first” to brush these criticisms aside. People like then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.