Walter Reed & the politics of dissent

I wasn't aware until this morning of Code Pink's weekly vigil outside of Walter Reed hospital in DC, where a great many wounded Iraq vets receive treatment. it popped up in a local Code Pink story:

Diane Ibbotson, a mom from Albion, Ill., whose son, Forest Jostes, died in the same attack that killed Cindy Sheehan's son, Casey, is one of them. She said Code Pink dishonors the soldiers who have been injured or killed in Iraq."People in Code Pink are protesting the war outside Walter Reed Hospital," Ibbotson said. "What kind of a welcome home is that?"

Ibbbotson's charge harkens back to claims that Vietnam vets were spat upon by venomous war protestors, an indictment that has joined the pantheon of leftist treachery apparently without any attempt to verify its accuracy. While the Code Pinkers show up outside Walter Reed each week, the point isn't to castigate wounded vets. The purpose is still propagandistic, a gathering to make visible the toll on troops, who in the tradition of US warmaking are cast to the streets once their wounds render them useless to the Pentagon. But it's another reminder of the degraded conception of dissent here that a near-silent, unthreatening protest for better vets' benefits becomes so vilified by the stay-the-course crowd. Easy enough for them to just cry treason over and again, until it enters the popular consciousness.