Allen West
By Ralph De La Cruz
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been quietly making their mark politically. Nine were elected in the 2008 and 2010 elections.
Quietly, that is, until Allen West came along.
West, who defeated 22-year Democratic legislator Ron Klein in the 22nd Congressional District, owes his political career to an act of abuse in Iraq.
In August 2003, as a lieutenant colonel, West fired a shot next to the head of an Iraqi who was being interrogated, West confirmed to the New York Times in 2004.
The shot may have led to his departure from the Army, but it also made him a hero and celebrity to hawks.
Which, in most election years, wouldn’t trump the question of abuse in Iraq. In 2008, after all, West lost to Klein by 10 points.
But these are remarkable times. Times when incumbency carried more negative connotation than torture. Times when floodgates of cash opened for conservative candidates. Times when social media and veterans’ esprit de corps made for a powerful political marriage.
West raised $6 million to Klein’s $4 million, making the campaign one of the most expensive Congressional races in the country.
And West’s campaign took over Internet traffic.
Type “Allen West and Iraq” into your search engine and you probably won’t find the New York Times article. But rather, group after group, vet blogger after conservative blogger, extolling his virtues — and pushing West’s campaign video, “Honor in Iraq.”
In that video, West offers his side of the Iraq story . Which isn’t too different than the story he told the Times.
“I just basically did something I thought was a matter of scaring an individual and threatening to shoot him,” he says matter-of-factly, music worthy of Saving Private Ryan playing in the background and an American flag standing behind his left shoulder.
West went on: “And at first he continued to stonewall me and telling me that he didn’t know anything. So eventually we took him outside and I counted down and I fired my service Beretta nine-millimeter over his head into a weapons clearing mound.”
West had never interrogated a prisoner or attended an interrogation before then.
Perhaps it was simply a poor decision made during an emotional moment.
West, however, won’t back away from that moment in Iraq. He says he would make the same decision again if faced with the same circumstances. And considering the support he received for making that decision, who could blame him?
Unfortunately it now appears poor decision-making at critical moments might be a common problem for West.
The first decision he made after defeating Klein was to select right-wing radio shock jock Joyce Kaufman as his chief of staff.
Kaufman famously said during a July 4 speech, parts of which were broadcast on The Rachel Maddow Show:
Joyce Kaufman
“I don’t care how this gets painted by the main street media. I don’t care if this shows up on YouTube. Because I am convinced that the most important thing our founding fathers did to ensure me my First Amendment rights was they gave me a Second Amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will.”
Then she went on to tell the audience that, “This is the standoff. When I say I’ll put my microphone down on Nov. 2 if we haven’t achieved substantial victory, I mean it. Because at that point I’m going to go up into the hills of Kentucky, I’m going to go out into the Midwest. I’m going to go up in the Vermont and New Hampshire outreaches and I’m going to gather together men and women who understand that some things are worth fighting for. And some things are worth dying for.”
Heading for the hills to lead an armed insurrection? Really?
And this flame-thrower is the person West chose to run his Congressional operation?
OMG.
The best move Kaufman made as West’s chief of staff was … not taking the job.
She made the announcement on her radio show. A show in which she was addressing a threat apparently made against schools by a listener who was reportedly hyped up by her rhetoric. That threat effectively shut down the 230,000-student Broward School District and Broward County’s government.
Imagine what she could’ve done in Washington D.C.
On the show, Kaufman said the threat was a set-up by opponents. She called it an “electronic lynching” by the media (of which she obviously — curiously — does not feel part).
But even after all that, West continued to court her, again invoking violent metaphors, as if the Democrats are al Qaeda terrorists rather than Americans with a different political perspective.
“You will continue to fight on your battlefield and your voice there,” West told Kaufman, “and I’ll continue to fight on the battlefield in Washington, and we’ll meet in the middle after the enemy is soundly defeated.”
I’m not sure if I want to throw up or laugh.
Which I suppose sets up, even before he’s sworn in, the storyline for West’s term: will his entertainment value overshadow his embarrassment quotient?