Thursday
August 11 2005
POISON IN THE SYMPATHY WELL: I haven't been following
the Cindy Sheehan story as closely as some. I saw the Drudge
item earlier in the week claiming she had changed her tune
somewhat since her original meeting with President Bush and I've
seen the pictures of her sitting with Joe Hagin and Stephen
Hadley. And despite the support she's receiving from some of what
I would call the 'unsavory
elements' of the anti-war activist left, she still cut an
enormously sympathetic figure in my mind. Until today, that is.
Don't get
me wrong. This is a free country and Cindy Sheehan has every right
to say, think and do whatever she wants to do. She's suffered
a terrible loss, one which deserves a tremendous amount of deference,
respect, and sympathy. As far as I'm concerned, Sheehan is free
to demand to want to speak with the President and she's free to
disagree with and to question the merits of the President's policy
in Iraq as harshly and vocally as she wants.
But my sympathy
for Sheehan ran suddenly dry this morning when I read that she'd
taken to spouting the ultimate antiwar canard:
"I
don't believe his phony excuses for the war," she said
of Bush in an interview with a CBS reporter for the network's
Northern California affiliates. "I want him to tell me
why my son died.
"If
he gave the real answer, people in this country would be outraged
— if he told people it was to make his buddies rich, that
it was about oil."
There is
not, nor has there ever been, a single shred of evidence suggesting
that Cindy Sheehan's son died to make Bush's oil buddies rich.
Lest this come as some sort of shocking news, Bush's oil buddies
were plenty rich before the war, and the suggestion Bush would
send young American men and women to die in a fit of crony capitalism
is so odious and farfetched it calls into question the intelligence
and motives of anyone who accepts it as reality.
It would
be one thing if Sheehan were merely echoing her son's belief that
he had been fighting an immoral war in Iraq for the sake of enriching
Bush's oil pals. I may be wrong, but I don't believe that's the
case. So how much of a service is the mother doing the son's memory
(and the memory of all our soldiers) by making such a claim?
I understand
that grief and anger might make you do strange things. But I also
understand that being showered with praise and support from the
most rabid fringes of the antiwar base and being instantly transformed
into a media celebrity might lead you to do strange things too.
- T. Bevan 9:15 am Link
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