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thedrifter
07-02-05, 12:45 PM
The War That’s All About Her
Written by Bob Parks
Saturday, July 02, 2005

I'm not sure if it’s genuine burnout or if I’m just growing increasingly tired of having to engage in endless repetition, having to come up with new arguments against the same old liberal recitations. It’s getting so old, I find it hard to get motivated to write, despite this column being event-driven.

It's hard to get motivated… that is until something provocative setsme off and the words just seem to flow.

President Bush gave his address to the nation, enumerating for those who would listen, his reasons for seeing the war in Iraq to a victorious, thus democratic, conclusion. Liberals would have none of it, citing (or reciting) their talking points on this being an illegal war, his secret plan for invasion long before 9/11, our now being stuck in an Iraqi quagmire, and our young men and women dying.

There are many that have countered this illogic with logic, historical perspective, and eloquence. What set me off was an interview that I saw during the Wednesday, June 29 episodic of “Democracy Now!” Now don’t ask me why I’m watching DN, like I enjoy it or something. I work at a station that airs it; I sometimes have no choice.

To set this up, DN hostess Amy Goodman was interviewing Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed last April in Iraq. Now I know I irritated that writer at Salon when I criticized the 9/11 widows and their apparent opportunism. So, here we go….

CINDY SHEEHAN

Hi, Amy. Thank you. It’s nice to be here.

AMY GOODMAN

Your response to President Bush addressing U.S. service men and women and what his message was.

CINDY SHEEHAN

“Well, first of all, I think the best way to honor my son’s death would be to bring the troops home, and that’s what we in Gold Star Families want our children to be remembered for: peace and not war and hatred. For him to use my son’s blood to continue the killing, to me, is despicable. I don’t want one more drop of blood spilled in my son’s name or in my name. We never should have been there in the first place. It was a mistake. It was a mistake when we invaded. It’s a mistake now, and I want my son’s sacrifice and the sacrifices of the other brave Americans to stand for peace and to bring peace to the world and not to spread more hate. You know, he said that my son died to spread freedom and democracy in that region. We’re spreading imperialism and death and destruction everywhere we go. And, no, not one more drop of blood in my son’s name or the names of any other of our brave young people who have made the ultimate sacrifice for basically nothing.”

Where does one begin without sounding like the proverbial broken record? And as I comment on her comment, check out the number of times she refers to herself. It’s all about Cindy and what Cindy wants and what Cindy thinks.

How does one properly dissect illogic? Mrs. Sheehan says Gold Star Families want their children to be remembered for peace and not war and hatred. Unfortunately, peace is not what the MILITARY is in existence for. Peace is most usually only achieved by war or threat thereof.

Now while I don’t know Mrs. Sheehan personally, I’m sure she must have a television set. Unless she’s not paying attention, she surely has to realize that terrorist insurgents are the ones doing the most killing today. After we successfully freed the Iraqi people from the tyranny that was Saddam Hussein, we could have left in six months. However, there is this problem with very bad people, coming into Iraq to kill American soldiers, and scare Iraqis into rejecting their newly found freedom in favor of primitive and barbaric Islamic law.

I would be willing to bet that the terrorists setting off street-side car bombs in Baghdad would thank her for not wanting one more drop of their blood to be spilled in his (or any other soldier’s) name. And it’s people like her who diminish the sacrifices of our young people when she declares their “ultimate sacrifice” one “for basically nothing.”

“Our family was against it from the beginning. Casey was against it, but he felt it was his duty to go because he was in the Army. And he felt that he had to go to protect his buddies, to be there for his buddies, to be support, and they are brainwashed into thinking that even if they don’t agree with the mission, they’re brainwashed into just blindly following it. I begged Casey not to go. I told him I would take him to Canada. I told him I would run over him with a car, anything to get him not to go to that immoral war. And he said, 'Mom, I wish I didn’t have to, but I have to go.' ''

I’m truly sorry her son died, but what a wimp this woman is.

Her son, I’ll assume, was intelligent enough to know what could happen should he join the Army, yet he joined. There is no military draft, and Casey seems to have had the steel balls in her family. She actually comes on worldwide television (only because of satellite and web streaming) and says she begged him, told him she’d aid him in desertion (after all, the government wouldn’t be after her), and would run him over with her car because of “that immoral war” (liberal talking points).

Just to add insult to injury, she quotes him and impugns his bravery. I will risk putting my foot in my mouth by saying that probably no service member (except the criminally insane) wants to go to war. Before they sign on the dotted line, the possibility of personally becoming involved in a war becomes reality. There was time to change his mind and Casey opted not to do so. It had nothing to do with brainwashing when he had the ultimate choice to walk away.

I can’t believe she actually offered to run over her son with her car.

“We were told that he was going to rescue a group of soldiers that had been ambushed on April 4 in Sadr City, Baghdad. It was when L. Paul Bremer inflamed the Shiite militia into rebellion, first in Fallujah, then it spread to Sadr City, which is a Shiite slum in Baghdad. And so we were told he volunteered to go rescue a group of soldiers that had been ambushed, and on the way there, his convoy was ambushed, and seven soldiers were killed in that ambush.”

Based on that wisdom, I guess Bremer should have told the insurgency that removing Saddam was a mistake due to faulty intelligence, and a personal George W. Bush family vendetta. Bremer should have told the terrorists that we were going to get out of there as soon as possible because they were going to bog us down into a futile quagmire. Lastly, Bremer should have apologized to the Iraqi people for ousting Saddam, for our creating a climate for free elections, and for giving them the promise of self-determination.

But according to the thinking of Mrs. Sheehan, it was Bremer who turned the “Iraqi Freedom Fighters” (as liberals love to call them) into the irrational, rabid pests they’ve evolved into because of us evil Neocons. Okay, she hasn’t used that word… yet.

“Well, like I said, we didn’t agree with the war, we didn’t agree with the invasion of Iraq. It looked like we were rushing into something that was unnecessary. You know, it was not necessary to protect America. And I could see that the sanctions were working. We had years of devastating sanctions against Iraq. The U.N. weapon inspectors were saying there were no weapons of mass destruction. So I believed all along that this invasion was unnecessary and that there was some other agenda behind it keeping America safe.

“And when the Downing Street memos came out, and I read them, I just thought, 'Well, this confirms my suspicion that this invasion was premeditated and prefabricated for a different agenda.' And it looks like my son’s murder and the murder of almost 1,800 other Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis whose only crime is that they were born in Iraq at the wrong time, are dead--are dead for the agenda of the neo-con war machine.”

I wish some of the hundreds of women who were slowly tortured and killed in some of Saddam’s rape rooms at one time could have expressed to Mrs. Sheehan a sense of urgency to have Hussein’s regime expelled. I wish some of those trapped on the uppermost levels of the World Trade towers, knowing the fire was coming up and there was no way down, could tell Mrs. Sheehan that they thought it important to protect America.

She said, “And I could see the sanctions were working.” Who told her that…? Saddam?

The sanctions weren’t working, Mrs. Sheehan. Some of the very Democracy Now! liberals you hang out with argue that point ad nauseum, that is, when convenient. They weren’t working because Mr. Hussein, who never saw a building with his face on it he didn’t like, didn’t give a rat’s rear about his people. Whatever food aid came in was confiscated and either given to his trusted friends, or probably sold, but we all know his people were the ones who were starving. To say the sanctions were working makes Mrs. Sheehan either a liberal parrot or a naïve idiot.

You pick.

“I really think that somebody in our government needs to be held accountable, and just because George Bush gets up and tells us that things are getting better, they’re not getting better, and he needs to present some kind of facts to back up his position, and he needs to answer the congressmen. I think it’s 128 Congress people have signed John Conyers’s letter asking for explanation into this Downing Street memo, and it needs to be investigated. Congress needs to do it’s constitutional duty for once and investigate the memo because we families that have paid the ultimate price, who will be grieving and mourning and in pain for the rest of our lives, we deserve to know the truth.”

Again I ask, where is SHE getting her intelligence briefings? Amy Goodman? How does she know things aren’t getting better and what is her frame of reference?

It’s obvious that Sheehan is part of the “Impeach Bush” crowd but just doesn’t have the guts to say it out loud yet. I once jokingly wrote that President Bush would be impeached. If they do so, imagine the message that will send around the radical Islamic world. Oppress your own people, use chemical weapons on your neighbors and your own, and if an American president (not a Democrat) even hints about freeing them, our leftists will teach him a lesson.

And with all due respect (and that’s not much) to Mrs. Sheehan, it doesn’t seem like she’s doing all that much grieving. It seems to be another opportunity to be in the liberal spotlight, go on Larry King, and do what she feels is her duty: telling us all how she wanted to run her son over in her car just to fulfill her ideological mission.

Although it was implied, President Bush didn’t murder her son. Her hatred of the president (and conservatism in general) is what diminishes his sacrifice. Instead of honoring him and his desire to be with his fellow soldiers in harm’s way, what probably irritates her most is that he chose the possibility of death with his bunkmates and his sense of duty over running away with her.

Done.

About the Writer: Bob Parks is a versatile writer, activist, and political campaigner, who currently resides in Boston.

Ellie

eddief
07-02-05, 01:34 PM
The author of this piece hasn't walked in this woman's shoes. Maybe if he lost a child in war he would be feeling the same way as her and maybe not.

The fact is he doesn't know how he would react to that kind of loss.

eddief
07-02-05, 01:37 PM
I would also suggest that this chickenhawk find the nearest recruiting station, so then he could also walk the walk. Talk is ****ing cheap.