- Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Army Specialist Casey Sheehan,
a soldier killed in action in Iraq, had met with President George Bush
soon after the loss of her son. She reported months afterwards that she
had eventually come to realize Bush's detachment and basic rudeness in
addressing her and her loss. He swaggered into the room exclaiming in a
jocular manner, "So, who are we honoring here today?" He addressed
Ms. Sheehan as "Mom."
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- Understanding that the Sheehans were themselves in "shock
and awe," shocked by the horrific loss of their eldest son, and in
awe of the stature, pomp, and circumstance of their privileged visit to
the office of the most powerful man on Earth, it was something Ms. Sheehan
wrote in her last piece on the Internet that confirmed my suspicions as
to why she didn,t recoil immediately at the time of her visit with Bush:
"I don,t watch television." I found yet another thinker, an individual
that resists completely the pabulum of TV-manufactured public opinion,
better defined as propaganda.
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- News and opinion from the Internet and a select few non-mainstream
newspapers greatly assists one's reflection upon current events, as well
as motivates introspection defining where "one is at." Events
subsequent to the Sheehan-Bush meeting, the Downing Street Memo, the Bush
administration's savaging of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson for his exposure
of the lie concerning Saddam's nuclear weapons that Bush offered in his
January 2003 State of the Union address, and the resultant criminal revenge
in the outing of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, have all served to establish
the world of reality Ms. Sheehan is now "coming from."
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- Was the loss of her son, Casey, worth it? Was it "a
noble cause?" It will always be a noble cause when any stranger offers
and lays down his/her life for another, no matter what the circumstances.
It is the greatest gift one human can give another. This will always
be clearly definable as "a noble cause."
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- In Ms. Sheehan's case, the loss of her son is even more
noble: first, because he volunteered to stand in harm's way for God, country,
his fellow Americans, his town and our way of life; and second, by her
actions to stop the war, and her desire to bring home the sons and daughters
of other mothers before they too suffer as she did. This gives meaning
not only to her son's sacrifice, but the hardships she is now encountering
in educating the American people.
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- The noble cause of which we speak applies only to the
individuals who have sacrificed themselves in its execution, and certainly
not to the politicians who deliberately and needlessly substituted a last
resort political solution by putting it first. Justified as "they
hate US for our wealth and freedom," it regressed to "weapons
of mass destruction," followed by a needed "regime change."
Then there was the drive to "stamp out the insurgency" and to
"bring democracy" to the people of Iraq. How can the carpet-bombing
of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, in retaliation for the "murder"
of four $1,000-a-day mercenaries, be justified and offered as "bringing
democracy to the people?" We have indiscriminately bombed and slaughtered
over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children.
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- This was done for no legitimate reason, neither a noble,
nor justifiable, nor even a constitutional one. Saddam and Iraq have never
been proven to be involved in 9-11 nor in any other attempted hostility
or threat to the United States. Bush has institutionalized morality across
the board because of what he, and he alone, deems as being moral. What
has he personally sacrificed?
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- Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.
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