Sheehan
I hope this will be my first and last post on the topic of Cindy Sheehan, the woman who lost her son in the Iraq War and who is now loudly insisting on a second meeting with President Bush.
I first posted the remarks below in the comments to an entry at Battle Panda decrying the "smear campaign" against Mrs. Sheehan.
The mainstream media, until just the past couple days, clearly steered well clear of Mrs. Sheehan's radical views. After weeks of fawning coverage you are now starting to see cracks in the narrative as it becomes apparent that she has been gradually radicalized and estranged from family and friends for her views.
She is not simply a liberal-leaning everymom. She is fighting for an extremist agenda. In her own words she has said America is "not worth dying for" and is "morally repugnant". I do not believe that these are views held by a majority of the American public, or even by mothers whose children have been killed in Iraq.
There seems to be a lot of hysteria on the left about the "Republican propaganda machine" or the "right-wing smear machine". Yet all of the criticism of Mrs. Sheehan is being done by columnists, editors and bloggers, not by anyone actually part of the official Republican or government establishment. In fact, the establishment has treated her pretty fairly. Bush met her. Hadley met her. Bush recently made sympathetic and kind remarks about her, despite her calling him a "maniac" and a "lying bastard". So what the left is complaining about is really just the fact that people who hold different political views have the audacity to scrutinize and criticize Mrs. Sheehan's very public and willfully inflammatory remarks.
As for claims, such as that made by Maureen Dowd, that mothers of dead soldiers have "absolute moral authority", well, what about all those parents of soldiers KIA who support the war, who believe their children died for a just cause? Are their feelings any less valid because they are not camping out on a Crawford roadside?
Before I'm dismissed as a heartless bastard, let me make clear that Mrs. Sheehan deserves our sympathy, honor and thanks for the horrible sacrifice she has paid as a mother. I know that the death of my own son would drive me insane. It is hard to stand in judgment of Mrs. Sheehan, and she is entitled to grieve and fight her battles as she sees fit. But she cannot expect her family tragedy to shield her outrageous assertions from the application of reasoned argument.
I first posted the remarks below in the comments to an entry at Battle Panda decrying the "smear campaign" against Mrs. Sheehan.
The mainstream media, until just the past couple days, clearly steered well clear of Mrs. Sheehan's radical views. After weeks of fawning coverage you are now starting to see cracks in the narrative as it becomes apparent that she has been gradually radicalized and estranged from family and friends for her views.
She is not simply a liberal-leaning everymom. She is fighting for an extremist agenda. In her own words she has said America is "not worth dying for" and is "morally repugnant". I do not believe that these are views held by a majority of the American public, or even by mothers whose children have been killed in Iraq.
There seems to be a lot of hysteria on the left about the "Republican propaganda machine" or the "right-wing smear machine". Yet all of the criticism of Mrs. Sheehan is being done by columnists, editors and bloggers, not by anyone actually part of the official Republican or government establishment. In fact, the establishment has treated her pretty fairly. Bush met her. Hadley met her. Bush recently made sympathetic and kind remarks about her, despite her calling him a "maniac" and a "lying bastard". So what the left is complaining about is really just the fact that people who hold different political views have the audacity to scrutinize and criticize Mrs. Sheehan's very public and willfully inflammatory remarks.
As for claims, such as that made by Maureen Dowd, that mothers of dead soldiers have "absolute moral authority", well, what about all those parents of soldiers KIA who support the war, who believe their children died for a just cause? Are their feelings any less valid because they are not camping out on a Crawford roadside?
Before I'm dismissed as a heartless bastard, let me make clear that Mrs. Sheehan deserves our sympathy, honor and thanks for the horrible sacrifice she has paid as a mother. I know that the death of my own son would drive me insane. It is hard to stand in judgment of Mrs. Sheehan, and she is entitled to grieve and fight her battles as she sees fit. But she cannot expect her family tragedy to shield her outrageous assertions from the application of reasoned argument.
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