the word "betrayed" can mean to commit treason, but it's more often used to mean a lot of other, less serious, offenses. when jim jeffords decided to caucus with the democrats in 2001, thus switching control of the senate, many on the right said they felt "betrayed by him. but only the lunatic fringe thought that he was actually giving aid and comfort to the enemies of this country. the word "betrayed" often is used to describe someone who you expect and rely upon to do one thing, but then they end up doing something else. it's a way of saying that someone has fallen short of your expectations, that they have turned their back on you and that they have let you down.
while the dictionary definition of the word "betrayed" does include the sense of "committing treason against" it also has a lot of other definitions, such as "To be false or disloyal to", "To divulge in a breach of confidence" and "To lead astray; deceive."
if the righties had bothered to read beyond the provocative headline, it was rather clear which sense of the word "betray" moveon intended:
GENERAL PETRAEUS OR GENERAL BETRAY US?(emphasis added--and and thanks to maha for typing in the full text of the advertisement)
General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts. In 2004, just before the election, he said there was “tangible progress” in Iraq and that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward.” And last week Petraeus, the architect of the escalation of troops in Iraq, said, “We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress.”
Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed. Yet the General claims a reduction in violence. That’s because, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has adopted a bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence. For example, deaths by car bombs don’t count. The Washington Post reported that assassinations only count if you're shot in the back of the head — not the front. According to the Associated Press, there have been more civilian deaths and more American soldier deaths in the past three months than in any other summer we've been there. We'll hear of neighborhoods where violence has decreased. But we won’t hear that those neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed.
Most importantly, General Petraeus will not admit what everyone knows: Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war. We may hear of a plan to withdraw a few thousand American troops. But we won’t hear what Americans are desperate to hear: a timetable for withdrawing all our troops. General Petraeus has actually said American troops will need to stay in Iraq for as long as ten years.
Today, before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.
Cooking the Books for the White House
the ad repeatedly emphasizes general petraeus' lack of honesty. it doesn't claim he has given aid to any enemy. the entire structure of the ad--raising the question whether the general "betrayed us" and listing examples of what moveon says are his deceptions, and then reaching the conclusion that petraeus "is likely to become general betray us"--makes it abundantly clear that they are saying that he is someone who will "deceive" us or "lead us astray."
you don't even have to agree with what moveon is saying. even if you think petraeus is the greatest general since sliced bread, if you believe that he is literally god's mouthpiece on earth, incapable of lying, you can still read the ad and understand that moveon simply disagrees with your assessment about the general's veracity. and i submit that any thinking person reading the full advertisement would see that's exactly what moveon was saying.
personally, i doubt that many of the people howling about moveon have read the text of the ad at all (all they had to do was get to the first sentence!) nor do i think they have made any attempt to figure out what the organization was actually trying to say. instead we got yet another crazy howl of the right, when they lose all ability to reason or see how ridiculous they look when you're not caught up in their madness.
(semi OT: congratulations to roxanne for being ten days ahead of the curve)
