Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die. —Alfred Lord Tennyson
For the last several months, the anti-President Bush media has renewed their efforts to provoke public unrest regarding the war in Iraq in an effort to undermine the President and his agenda. This time the media has championed the cause of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier, who this summer camped outside of President Bush’s Crawford ranch in an effort to force a meeting. Ms. Sheehan demanded, repeatedly, a face-to-face meeting so that President Bush could explain to her why her son died in Iraq. The media loved her passion for her cause and made her the posterchild of the anti-war faction in the United States. The nearly ubiquitous coverage of her “Camp Cindy” this summer was quite sickening and repulsive for a number of reasons, and ultimately, she turned out to be nothing more than a hypocrite in search of her fifteen minutes of fame who was used by the media to promote its own agenda before dropping her for a bigger story.
Ms. Sheehan’s quest began after her son, Casey, was killed in action April 4, 2004. In June 2004, she and other military families met with President Bush at Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Washington. In an interview with the Vacaville Reporter shortly after the meeting with President Bush, Ms. Sheehan stated the following:
We haven’t been happy with the way the war has been handled. The president has changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven false or an objective reached.
She also stated the following with respect to President Bush:
…sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis…I know he’s sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he’s a man of faith.
In July 2005, a year later, Ms. Sheehan contradicted herself, apparently as her anti-war rhetoric enabled her to gain more publicity, claiming the original meeting with President Bush was:
One of the most disgusting experiences I have ever had and it took me almost a year to even talk about it.
Her anti-war movement included traveling to Washington, D.C. for President Bush’s inauguration in January 2005. During this trip she was a guest speaker at the opening of Eyes Wide Open: the Human Cost of War, an exhibit that displays pairs of combat boots to represent fallen military personnel. (She later spoke at the opening of the same exhibit in San Diego in March 2005.) It was during this visit that she and other families who had lost loved ones discussed the need for an organization, what would later become Gold Star Families for Peace, that seeks to end the occupation of Iraq and provide support for families of fallen soldiers.
Some of Ms. Sheehan’s other interviews and antics that illustrate her craving for attention include the following:
· In an e-mail in March 2005, Ms. Sheehan states that her son was “killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel.” She denied writing the e-mail even though several people received this.
· In April 2005, Ms. Sheehan spoke at San Francisco State University and stated: “We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We’re waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush.”
· In a column following an interview on Larry King Live in June 2005, Ms. Sheehan described President Bush as having “moronic and callous foreign policies.” She went on to state that Senator John Warner “fell in lockstep behind his Fuhrer.” In addition she stated: “How absolutely racist and immoral is it to take America’s battles to another land and make an entire country pay for the crimes of others? To me, this is blatant genocide.”
· In early August 2005, she spoke at the Veterans for Peace convention in Texas and stated that “You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine.”
The list of speeches, interviews, columns, etc. continues on and on. It should be clear by this that Ms. Sheehan, though distraught over the death of her son, was searching for an outlet to express her personal opinions regarding President Bush and the war against terror. Clearly, some of her bold, brazen and repulsive comments were meant as an attempt to gain fame and popularity through attention in the media. Of course, her fame soared to new heights when the media gave her substantial coverage at Camp Cindy outside the President’s Crawford ranch. Undoubtedly, the media noticed her gaining local attention throughout the country and capitalized on her rising position to forward their own anti-war and anti-Bush agenda.
To be fair, Thinking Outside the Boxe may have been inclined to believe that the media used her unwittingly to promote their own agenda. However, based on Ms. Sheehan’s activities and comments from the time of her son’s death until she gained national coverage, it is unlikely that she did not have a hidden agenda. More likely, Ms. Sheehan was seeking the spotlight with her vitriolic rhetoric and finally got just what she wanted in August 2005.
Sadly, Ms. Sheehan used the death of her son as a springboard for vociferous anti-war publicity that reflects the views of only a small minority of Americans. For those individuals like Ms. Sheehan who claim that the people of Iraq are not far better off and far safer now that Saddam Hussein has been deposed, perhaps she and her fellow doubters should read the accounts of summary executions, disappearances of husbands or fathers or sons in the middle of the night, and the torture chambers where atrocities occurred regularly. If she and her followers do not honestly believe that the world is a safer place without Saddam Hussein in power, perhaps they fail to fully grasp the totality of the geopolitical situation of the new world order following September 11, 2001. And perhaps they should be reminded that Saddam Hussein, with the help of the United Nations and countries like France and Russia, for over ten years blatantly misused the oil-for-food programme instituted after the first Gulf War, enabling him to amass a personal fortune in the billions of dollars. For over a decade, his regime violated sanctions imposed by the United Nations. We are still uncovering fighter planes that he buried in the deserts of Iraq to hide them. And prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, not only did the CIA believe that he was actively seeking to develop or acquire weapons of mass destruction, the intelligence services of countries such as Great Britain, Italy, Germany, France, and even Russia believed he still had an active chemical and nuclear weapons development programme.
But having said all of this, American citizens like Ms. Sheehan have a constitutionally protected right to disagree with the decisions our government makes and to peacefully protest and make their views heard. Thinking Outside the Boxe is in no way denying her ability to speak out for what she believes. Rather, Thinking Outside the Boxe believes that the manner in which she has attempted to further her cause has been one of the most distasteful and disgraceful acts of this entire affair. Her son, and many other military personnel, have died valiantly defending the freedom of the United States on many fronts (Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.). They died in pursuit of freedom and security for the ordinary Iraqi and Afghan people who for decades lived in fear under the oppressive and corrupt regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. They did this because our duly elected President of the United States, our Commander in Chief, made the decision and was backed by the Congress of the United States to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq to defeat the terrorists and to protect America’s long-term interests.
To answer Ms. Sheehan’s question as to why her son died: He died doing his job—doing the job that he chose to do for the love of his country. Any individual enlisting in the United States military must face the risk of making the ultimate sacrifice in times of war. Peace today does not mean that we will always be at peace with the world. As the most powerful nation in the world, America has many enemies that will do anything to try to topple our government, our world standing, and destroy all for which we stand—liberty, freedom, progress, democracy, etc. We must always be vigilant and prepared to use the means necessary to defend ourselves. Our men and women that proudly wear the uniform of the United States military know that and are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice so that we can have freedom, peace in our land, and those ideals and values that the terrorists neither understand nor appreciate. Ms. Sheehan’s son and the nearly two thousand men and women who have died in the Iraqi and Afghan campaigns gave their lives for our cause.
Ms. Sheehan’s hypocrisy became clear in late September as she and her followers were descending on Washington, D.C. to further protest the war in Iraq. At the same time, Hurricane Rita (a powerful category four hurricane) was approaching the Gulf Coast of Texas with potentially devastating consequences. This was only a couple of weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. In the web blog Daily Kos (www.dailykos.com) on September 24, 2005, Ms. Sheehan wrote the following:
i am watching cnn and it is 100 percent rita…even though it is a little wind and a little rain…it is bad, but there are other things going on in this country today…and in the world!!!! by Cindy Sheehan on Sat Sep 24th, 2005 at 06:29:15 PDT
So consumed by her righteous indignation and pursuit of her cause, Ms. Sheehan allowed the media coverage to go to her head and to corrupt her. This self-serving comment shows no concern for the hundreds of thousands of residents of the Gulf Coast whose lives and property were threatened by the hurricane. Her thirst for television coverage and her apparent disinterest in the situation unfolding in the Gulf states, particularly Texas, was distasteful, disgusting, and sheer hypocritical. Even when other bloggers posted negative reactions to her comments, she still showed no compassion for the hurricane victims, evacuees, etc. She still showed her overwhelming desire for more television coverage.
The next day she posted the following:
when i was watching the news coverage yesterday morning, that is what was going on…yes it was horrible, but by protest time, i think we could have gotten some coverage for the biggest protest march since the war started. oh well, when i was watching cnn yesterday it was one man standing in front of a broken tree for 3 hours. the media will use any excuse not to cover the war or people who disagree with his royal highness george bush. by Cindy Sheehan on Sun Sep 25th, 2005 at 07:42:27 PDT
And to top it all off, Ms. Sheehan was arrested on September 26, 2005 as she sat down outside the White House gates in protest. Her smiling face that seemed overjoyed as she looked into the television cameras as the police carried her away was absolutely repulsive. Her behaviour disgraced her cause, dishonoured her son’s memory and the work he and others did, and seemed to suggest that her campaign was totally disingenuous. Perhaps that is why a discredited Ms. Sheehan, abandoned by the media that sought to promote their anti-Bush agenda by capitalizing on the frenzy following the hurricanes, quickly faded from the limelight. Lucky for us, a broken Ms. Sheehan probably won’t be returning to our television sets anytime soon. Ultimately, people like Ms. Sheehan who are in search of fame and who use adverse events in their quest for that fame just fade away into obscurity.
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