Few people remember the Summer of Ollie North. The year was 1987. U2 ruled the pop charts, Boston was still recovering from the baseball catastrophe of the previous October, and a young John Lovitz was teaching America how to laugh. And a bunch of doughy Senators decided to pick a fight with a highly decorated and highly articulate Marine. They lost.

Lt. Col. Oliver North had been up to his eyeballs in Iran/Contra skullduggery and had previously lied to Congress. And yet when attacked by the Senate, he emerged clearly victorious. The high point of his extended testimony was when one Senator asked him why he didn’t balk at Ronald Reagan’s order to make overtures to the Iranians even though Reagan had promised he would not trade arms for hostages. North retorted, “When this Marine gets an order from his Commander-in-Chief, he doesn’t question it.”

If eager young politicians wanted to look at a case study in how not to tar and feather a faltering administration, they should look to the Summer of Ollie North. Disrespecting the uniform is a bad idea. Disrespecting the uniform when it’s worn by a man who can run rhetorical circles around his inquisitors is a positively terrible idea.

I HAVE TO ADMIT, the events of the past couple of weeks have surprised me. When I began working on “The 9/11 Generation” piece, the left claimed to love the troops. Then The Nation published a huge spread purportedly proving that “the troops” are a bunch of sociopaths. The New Republic soon followed suit, although TNR took things a bit further by reprinting a bunch of implausible accusations while granting their source anonymity. TNR showed so little interest in corroborating their source’s stories that their Editor-in-Chief is now hailing it as a major victory that he can say after a mere week of doggedly investigating the matter that he knows with “near certainty” that his source is actually a soldier. He was mute regarding the truthiness of his source’s tales.

But even more stunning is a nascent movement on the left to demonize General David Petraeus as a partisan tool of the right. I have to admit, this one surprises me, especially since I’m so close to the left’s Casus Belli. What drove the left over the edge regarding Petraeus was the General having the audacity to grant an interview to my partner in crime, Hugh Hewitt. The left could tolerate the surge and perhaps even the progress in Iraq, but granting an audience to their longtime bete noire, Hugh Hewitt? That was beyond the pale.

Naturally, Andrew Sullivan got the ball rolling with this line of attack. Glenn Greenwald soon joined in. Greenwald continued today by saying lnoevnevm;evce[ceco3rjrbdcwpcmwpcmwcmwpcwcw[ bdb3ibci3cbwxkwxwk - oops, feel asleep at the keyboard again. I’ll try to concentrate.

Greenwald continued the attack today by inviting Petraeus to be interviewed by Greenwald on the Alan Colmes show. (Alan Colmes has a radio show? Who knew?) A couple of minor points here may have eluded Greenwald’s steel-trap of a mind. Greenwald is a blogger. Hugh Hewitt is nationally broadcast radio host. In media terms, they are not parallel entities. That’s why the response of Petraeus’ aide, Colonel Steven Boylan – “If Alan Colmes is interested on having Gen Petraeus on his program, then I would ask that someone from his program or himself contact me to discuss ” – made perfect sense.

But it didn’t make sense to Greenwald. Greenwald then spent the next 172 paragraphs documenting precisely why General David Petraeus is a partisan tool. I’m not sure Greenwald understands what a dangerous game he’s playing. Demonizing the man who is leading 160,000 Americans in combat is not something that will play well with the vast middle of the American body politic. That’s why, to date, such attacks have been limited pretty much to Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan, two generally smart guys whose hatred for all things Republican and especially all things Hewitt tends to block their intellectual faculties. More politically savvy lefty blogs like the Daily Kos (seriously) haven’t touched this one with a ten foot pole.

SO WHAT’S THE STATE OF PLAY right now? The surge is showing results. It’s impossible to get a report from Iraq that says otherwise. That doesn’t mean that the road from here to a peaceful, responsible Iraq will be an easy one. But it is literally impossible to find a military person who thinks David Petraeus is doing a poor job. He has earned credibility throughout his career, and he has continued to earn it the last several months. Meanwhile, the left is turning on both Petraeus and the troops he leads.

In September, he will testify before the Senate. If the Senators don’t like what he says, they can dismiss him a) because of their superior knowledge on military affairs; or b) because they find him to be somehow an unsavory figure.

In reading Andrew’s and Glenn’s sites, I have never perceived a remotely sophisticated understanding of the military realities in Iraq. If they have tapped people with genuine expertise on military matters to serve as their guides, it doesn’t show in their work.

Personally, I think Glenn should heave a sigh of relief that he’s not going to have to discuss the intricacies of the surge with David Petraeus. And it wouldn’t surprise me if Alan Colmes declined the opportunity to do so. These guys can’t dismiss Petraeus over how he’s doing his job, because they neither understand his job nor what he’s doing. So they dismiss him over politics and petty grievances, terrain that they are much more familiar with.

The grown-ups in the Democratic Party will have their crack at Petraeus in September. If they go the same way that Greenwald and Andrew and The Nation and The New Republic have, the public won’t stand for it. It will be Ollie-mania redux.

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