Watching Cindy Sheehan as she carries on outside of the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas I’ve been struck by her apparent heartfelt sincerity. She really does believe that the President of the United States is personally responsible for the death of her son, Casey. She really does believe that the War in Iraq is a gigantic conspiracy involving Israel, the oil companies, and big business. This is not a bid for publicity on her part, at least not consciously. I believe that she thinks that the best way to honor her son’s memory is to have the United States cut and run in Iraq. And I believe that she’s sincere when she says that she wants to talk to the President and get an “explanation” as to why her son had to die.
Cindy Sheehan is in the grip of some pretty powerful emotions. Grief and anger can play very strange tricks on the mind. I can remember my mother blaming the government for the death of my father in 1981 because of exposure to radiation while he was serving in the army in occupied Japan. She would rail constantly against the government for killing her husband, for knowingly sending him to his death. There was no reasoning with her or talking to her about alternative reasons for the cancer that killed him. So, I just let her go on and on about it, hoping that eventually the grief and hurt would subside and she could move on.
She never really did. In the midst of her grief, Alzheimers disease began its slow, insidious work and I don’t know if she ever really came to terms with her loss.
I think Cindy Sheehan is going through something similar now. Her pain has become such a constant companion that it seems natural, a part of her life. She can’t imagine living without it. In short, in order to feel good, she has to feel bad. Her grief is like a comfortable old blanket that she wraps around herself in order to insulate her from the very scary prospect of moving on in life without her son.
This is why any Gold Star mother deserves our pity and yes, our respect. Losing a child under the circumstances of war is especially hard. And her questions about the government’s plans for the war’s aftermath are legitimate, as pertinent as questions mothers in World War II who lost a son at Anzio or the Battle of Hurtgen Forest, or Kasserine Pass may have asked. Those battles were American blunders that resulted in thousands of needless deaths.
Mothers ask these questions in every war. What makes Mrs. Sheehan’s situation unique is that she has chosen to make her ordeal a public spectacle. She has taken the personal and made it political. And she has made common cause with those whose actions in support of the terrorists in Iraq may have, in fact, assisted in the death of her son.
I’m not talking about the rational anti-war left whose critiques of Administration policy are harsh but do not descend into the kind of exaggerated, conspiratorial hyperbole that Mrs. Sheehan and the crazy left have adopted. The gimlet-eyed anti-Americans who have captured her cause and made it their own know exactly what they’re doing and where they want to go. They want to piggyback their agenda on Mrs. Sheehan’s grief and ride her until the media tires of the spectacle and moves on to something else.
Michelle Malkin calls them “grief pimps.” Somewhat vulgar, but apt. They are without principals and without honor. To try and cash in politically on someone who so obviously is suffering the kind of denial Mrs. Sheehan is going through defies belief. The simple, common decencies normal people take for granted do not apply because to them, the personal is political. This is the foundation of modern leftist ideology. It has brought us multiculturalism, identity politics, and a host of irrational idiocies that threaten to destroy our civilization. What R. Emmett Tyrell has called liberalisms “riot of conceits” now allows for the exploitation of grief. One may ask, well why not? The left has managed to exploit everything else, why not human misery?
There’s an extraordinary picture of National Security Adviser Steve Hadley sitting at the feet of Mrs. Sheehan a few days ago talking to her and listening to what she has to say. Her subsequent recollection of the meeting reveals what happens to mind and memory when grief and anger take over:
Joe Hagin [WH Deputy Chief of Staff] told me that he goes with the president when he meets with families, and that George Bush really cares about the soldiers and the families, and I said, “Don’t even tell me that! Because I met with him before, and that man doesn’t even have an ounce of compassion in his body.” And he looked really surprised. Don’t you think that’s something they would have known about before they had this little tete-a-tete with me yesterday
Contrast what she said there with this snippett from her meeting with the President in June of last year:
THE REPORTER of Vacaville, CA published an account of Cindy Sheehan’s visit with the president at Fort Lewis near Seattle on June 24, 2004:“’I now know he’s sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,’ Cindy said after their meeting. ‘I know he’s sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he’s a man of faith.’
“The meeting didn’t last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son’s sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith.
“The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected.
“For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle.
For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again.
“’That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,’ Cindy said.”
I have no doubt that Cindy Sheehan remembers her meeting with the President the way she described it two days ago on Air America. She’s not lying. She has replayed that meeting over and over in her mind and where she first thought the President showed compassion, she now sees flippancy. She re-runs every word, every gesture of the President’s and each time she does, she becomes more convinced that the President is an unfeeling, uncaring monster. The two descriptions may not sound the same, but they relfect what she actually felt back then as well as the way she feels now.
The fact that this has now caused a split in her family is actually feeding the pain she needs to go on. Being encouraged by the left to carry a cross, her martyrdom would be complete if her family abandoned her. And this apparently is what she wants.
I doubt whether Mrs. Sheehan will ever retreat from the precipace that has opened beneath her feet. It remains to be seen whether her friends on the left will push her over the edge or simply abandon her and move on. Either way she’s a lost soul. For that reason, I can’t be too harsh on her. I can only pity her as she wallows in her pain and grief and is exploited by people who aren’t fit to clean her dead son’s army boots.
7:43 am
Very good post. But then you always do a great job. I envy people like you that can put stuff down that makes sense. I agree with you too. I feel sorry for Ms. Sheehan, and grieve with her too because I hurt whenever we loose someone over there. My husband has lost friends over there too. But I feel she’s being used by the left wing nut cases … very sad. May god give her some comfort.
7:44 am
I feel real sorrow for what has happened and what is happening to Mrs Sheehan.
8:10 am
Everyone should just leave her alone.
Of course the media won’t do that, its very important for them to make her cry for us while we’re having our morning coffee.
The rest of us should let her be though. Its tough that she lost her son, and however she behaves over it is her issue.
A lot of what I’ve read though is about the media treatment of the issue, and that’s fair game as far as I am concerned.
10:10 am
Disturbed People
Michelle Malkin does not have comments open on her blog. After reading some of the email she gets, I don’t blame her. The moonbats would flood her site with nasty, vile comments until the server crashed – then dance around with their tinfoil hats spinn…
11:42 am
As always, great job. I do have pity for this woman’s situation.
12:16 pm
I come in peace.
After reading the comments on many conservative sites for the past week, RWNH seems to have the most sensible and sensitive bloggers of them all. It is apparent that you have come to your honest beliefs by way of logic and political allegiance.
May I say that most of what I have read elsewhere conforms exactly with the email that Malkin posted than the sentiments I see here. The filth, the certainty of Ms. Sheehan’s motives, the absolute knowledge of what Casey Sheehan’s reaction to his mother’s vigil would be, the viscious attacks on the sincerity of those of us who question the purity of this war, has been staggering.
Do people on the Left not indulge in this same pornographic and so very stupid behavior? I’d be a liar if I said no.
I have written some passionate stuff about the action Ms. Sheehan has mounted. I feel differently than does everybody here. However, I have never been tempted to sully anybody with what amounts to scatalogical virtual graffiti.
All of that said…..One thing that does drive me mad is the insistance that there is a vocal, as you and others call it, MSM. To the contrary, those of us who feel differently than you, are scratching our heads that there isn’t more questioning from said MSM. The POV is soley relegated to the ediorial pages. Whenever I see an article on the front page of, say, The Post, The Times, et al, I see that same story on the front page of a Murdoch paper. When I hear the screams that it’s lies, all lies, that the networks are promulgating I have to wonder what one considers Fox, much more loudly, as doing? Anyway, that’s just the way I see it.
It’s going to be a long haul for all of us.
12:21 pm
Cindy Sheehan Is Lost
I have held back from this subject because it is clear the woman is distraught, in pain and grieving. But it is clear she has also been brain washed by the anti-war left. Brain washed to an extent that brings back memories of Jim Jones and his mindl…
1:21 pm
Sorcerer of The Wonkavator
Today’s dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny … Thank.God.Its.Friday, seriously!
4:36 pm
She is a tool for the fringe left and she has an agenda. I feel sorry for the soldiers family….but the media whore should turn it down a notch if she wants to be taken seriously
4:48 pm
Really, the only way to ultimately deal with these “grief pimps” will be for the truth to be made known considering how horrific conditions in Ba’athist Iraq were.
I would suggest that a hundred or so Iraqis, men, women, and children, some bearing on their bodies the scars of torture and imprisonment, all carrying the scars in their heart of loved ones lost, vanishing, conscripted to fight for a cause in which they did not believe, go to Crawford…...then surround her, show themselves to her, and let her fling her bile about how “unjustified” and “immoral” their liberation from Saddam was.
7:03 pm
[...] eople who aren’t fit to clean her dead son’s army boots. Originally posted at Rightwing Nuthouse with a growing comment thread. U [...]
2:06 pm
Rick, I kinda feel silly commenting on this issue since, given my week-long news blackout, the first I really heard about it was when I saw your cross-post on my blog. I’ve somehow gotten a running conversation going with my buddy Mike on Hilton Head Island at your cross post that you might be interested in seeing.
That said, I’m tending to agree with North Dallas Thirty here—He’s spot-on, but what a row that would start. Hard to believe after London 7-7, but re-education about why we’re in Iraq is definitely in order (and Bush is failing on that home front—dammit, learn from Blair, W!).
Also, Sheehan’s odd change of heart plus the family’s disagreement with her should get more airplay, to at least to add perspective and counter the current wall-to-wall protesting. This is something the leftwing lamestream media won’t bother doing of course. The cat’s out of the bag, so simply leaving her alone isn’t possible anymore, either.
8:08 am
I feel for her grief, I have a son in Iraq, but I would never dishonor his memory the way this woman is.
She has been proved not credible by the groups that are with her, even the one that says it o.k. to kill other Military. I’m waiting to see Ward Churchill join the camp-out, he’d fit in fine with these pests.
My son just wants the msm report the good things they are doing—he can’t understand why they just show the bad things. But he does know they will never be treated like the Viet-Nam Vets and he hopes there will not be another kerry to call them war criminals.
He does feel there will be some in this military that will use this to get ahead in politics—we’ve already seen that.
1:51 pm
North Dallas has a good idea… and I thought that Mohammed at Iraq the Model put it pretty well. Not that I advocate exploiting victims of Saddam’s evil, but if Mrs. Sheehan has free speech rights, then perhaps Saddam’s victims could choose to offer their perspective.
I’m sorry folks, but I have lost any sympathy I had for Mrs. Sheehan. She’s quickly becoming the Hanoi Jane of Crawford Texas. Meanwhile, her home in California is being remodeled with volunteer labor and materials. Does the community provide that service for all the families of the fallen? As her recent comments suggest, she won’t be paying taxes on that little windfall of property value improvement or any taxes for that matter. You try that and see what happens to you… Can anyone say “Leona Helmsley?”
Her statments regarding the war “for oil” the occupation of Palestine by Israel and Iraq by the U.S. have direct echoes to statements by Al Queda #2 Zawahiri.
Again, I’m sorry, it does pain me to say this: her efforts, like others on the left and Hanoi Jane before, will mean the deaths of more American troops and most likely more innocents as well.
Perhaps there are more sensitive ways to communicate that message than the sledge hammer I employ, but if we allow Iraq to become another Vietnam, we will lose the war on terror and the ultimate consequences are too ominous to contemplate.
4:15 pm
John:
You’re comment was deleted for obvious reasons.
8:23 am
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