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The Calling; why we join

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a_majoor

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By now, many of you will have read about (yet) another attempt to embarrass President Bush and discredit the GWOT by Cindy Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier who was killed in Iraq and the various hangers on who feed off the pain of this distressed woman. While I sympathize with her loss (who could not feel for the loss of a child, even an adult child?), it turns out the soldier was a willing and even eager volunteer.

The motivations of this young man should serve as an example to those who seek to join the Armed Forces, and a motivator for those of us who serve now:

Son of Liberty
A son's calling and a mother's heartache.

By Anne Morse

Twenty-four-year-old Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, a Humvee mechanic, was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004, when his unit was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire in a firefight outside Baghdad. By now, the whole world knows that Casey's mother, Cindy Sheehan, did not want him in Iraq and did not support his decision to serve in the military.

But for Casey, a devout Roman Catholic, he believed that he could do no other: He believed that God had called him to military service.

"It's all he wanted to do was serve God and his country his whole life," his sister, Carly Sheehan, told the Associated Press shortly after his death. "He was a Boy Scout from age six or seven and [an] Eagle Scout. It was kind of a natural progression to go into the military from that. He said he was enjoying the military because it was just like the Boy Scouts, but they got guns."

Allison Corrigan, a family friend, said that Casey, who had reenlisted after the start of hostilities in Iraq, "definitely is one of those people who lived his life through a higher calling. He knew there was something big he was supposed to be part of."

On a memorial website devoted to Casey's memory, friends Judy and Jim Brennan recall Casey as "a person of dignity and purpose. Being in the military was important to him."

And in a piece titled "Missing Casey," the San Francisco Chronicle reported the Sheehan family told friends, "Casey was convinced that while in uniform he could help people, that Casey wanted to be a chaplain's assistant and perhaps make a career out of the Army."

This, of course, is precisely what his mother did not want him to do. I don't blame her. I've been married to the military since 1987, the year my husband became a commissioned officer in the United States Army. It's not a warm, fuzzy career choice, and military wives spend a lot of time worrying about where their husbands might be sent. Today we have two healthy sons who have reached draft age at a time when their country is at war, and likely to remain so for many years. Do I want them following their dad into military service? I admit it wouldn't be my first choice.

If it were up to mothers, no son or daughter would ever volunteer for military service. We don't like seeing our children do dangerous things, whether it's leaping from the top of jungle gyms or volunteering for rescue missions in Iraq, as Casey Sheehan did.

But if mothers really could pick their children's careers, what kind of a world would we have? We would wake up one morning to discover that we had no more soldiers, policemen or firemen, no freedom fighters, no prison guards or life guards. We would find ourselves in a world in which the strong preyed upon the weak, a world in which millions would be abandoned to the tender mercies of death squads and serial killers, to those who rape and torture, exploit and enslave. What a terrible world it would be.

In his book, The Call, theologian Os Guinness writes: "At some point every one of us confronts the question: How do I find and fulfill the central purpose of my life? ... Answering the call of our Creator is 'the ultimate why' for living, the highest source of purpose in human existence."

Some people are called to medicine; others are called to the priesthood. Still others, like Casey Sheehan, are called to put on a uniform, pick up a gun, and defend their country in times of war. "There is joy," Guinness writes, "in fulfilling a calling that fits who we are and, like the pillar of cloud and fire, goes ahead of our lives to lead us... Our gifts and destiny do not lie expressly in our parents' wishes, our boss's plans, our peer group's pressures, our generation's prospects, or our society's demands. Rather, we each need to know our own unique design, which is God's design for us."

This is not easy for parents to accept, but accept it we must. Whatever our children are called to do, our job is to honor their decisions and to pray for them as they carry out necessary human tasks in a fallen world.

Casey Sheehan was not the first to die performing these tasks, nor will he be the last. Next month we will recall once again the terrible events that launched the war against Islamofascist extremism. On recently released audio records of that day we hear the desperate cries for help, and of the valiant efforts to save the victims. A commitment to their callings led hundreds of police officers and firefighters, and at least one priest, to their deaths that day â ” brave and noble men killed in service to their neighbors.

A sense of calling means that each of us does our best to help free the world from the darkness and devastation that threaten to overwhelm it. Through work well done, we witness to the One who calls us â ” just as Casey Sheehan did.

â ” Anne Morse is a freelance writer in Virginia.   
 
  http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/morse200508180821.asp 
     

 
There is this notion that "you have to be crazy" to want to make a difference ... I seem to recall the discussion in a previous thread ... this single line kind of sums-up the whole thing: "Mrs Sheehan says she wishes she'd driven him to Canada, though that's not what he would have wished and it was his decision."

Hold your tears
Mark Steyn

New Hampshire

Is it only five years since the White House press corps was spending its summers traipsing round Martha's Vineyard and the Hamptons watching Bill Clinton hang with Carly Simon and Steven Spielberg? Since the Bush terror, alas, they've been condemned under a little-known provision of the Patriot Act to confinement in Crawford, Texas for one whole month a year. Crawford is where George W. Bush has his ranch and, other than that distinction, it is (as I wrote here in August 2000) 'a dusty crossroads in the middle of a drought-stricken, sun-broiled plain, population 690 - with five churches but not a single hotel'. Since the annual influx of journalists, they may have added a hotel but also no doubt half a dozen more churches just to wind up the godless hordes of the Fourth Estate.

Sadly, the media don't seem to enjoy the annual joke. So, with no showbiz types to hand in the Greater Waco area, someone had the bright idea of importing a little entertainment. These days, come August and the cry goes up, 'Hey, let's do the show in George W. Bush's barn.' When it comes to political theatre, Crawford now finds itself playing host to the nation's most critically acclaimed summer stock.

Last year it was former Georgia Senator Max Cleland, who took up residence outside the Bush ranch and demanded the President come out and denounce the Swift Boat veterans. Cleland, also a Vietnam vet and a triple amputee, was outraged that anyone would impugn Senator Kerry's war record and was impugning Bush for not impugning the Swift vets for impugning Kerry. Anyway, the President never did come out to meet Cleland. He may still be there for all I know.

This year's performer in residence is Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq last year. Mrs Sheehan is now very anti-war and has pledged to stay camped out in Crawford all August until the President has the guts to come out and see her for a face-to-face meeting. So far he's sent his national security adviser and deputy chief of staff out to see her, but that's like Clinton sending Janet Reno and Sidney Blumenthal to Carly Simon's party. These no-name stand-ins were trying to 'bullshit us into submission,' complained Mrs Sheehan.

Her son's loss - like Max Cleland's wounds - is supposed to put her beyond reproach. For as the New York Times's Maureen Dowd informed us, 'The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.'

Really? Well, what about those other parents who've buried children killed in Iraq? Linda Ryan lost her son, Marine Corporal Marc Ryan, to 'insurgents' in Ramadi: 'George Bush didn't kill her son,' says Mrs Ryan. 'Her son made a decision to join the Armed Forces and defend our country.... George Bush was my son's commander-in-chief. My son, Marc, totally believed in what he was doing.'

There are, sadly, hundreds of Linda Ryans across American: parents who buried children killed in Iraq and who honour their service to the nation. They don't make the news. There's one Cindy Sheehan and she's on TV round the clock. She may not be emblematic of bereaved military families, but she's certainly symbolic of media-Left desperation.

Still, she's a mother. And, if you're as heavily invested as Ms Dowd in the notion that those 'killed in Iraq' are 'children', then Mrs Sheehan's status as grieving matriarch is a bonanza. I agree with Mrs Ryan: they're not children in Iraq; they're thinking adults who 'made a decision to join the Armed Forces and defend our country'. Whenever I'm on a radio show these days, someone calls in and demands to know whether my children are in Iraq. Well, not right now. They range in age from five to nine, and though that's plenty old enough to sign up for the jihad and toddle into an Israeli pizza parlour wearing a suicide-bomb, in most advanced societies' armed forces they prefer to use grown-ups.

That seems to be difficult for the Left to grasp. Ever since America's all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as 'children'. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that's her decision and her parents shouldn't get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she's a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he's a wee 'child' who isn't really old enough to know what he's doing.

I get many emails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes as if she's auditioning for a minor supporting role in Sex and the City. The infantilisation of the military promoted by the Left is deeply insulting to America's warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd's purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that 'of course' they 'support our troops', because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.[/i]

So, when Cindy Sheehan came into view, Bush-disparagers from Washington to Hollywood cried 'Bingo!' 'Cindy Sheehan is my hero,' says Christine Lahti, former star of TV's Chicago Hope. 'You can run, Bush, but you can't hide. Her courage is waking up America.' Evidently it woke up motion-picture personality Viggo Mortensen, who flew to Crawford on a pilgrimage to Mrs Sheehan. For the press corps, it's not exactly the Spielberg/Clinton summer summit in the Hamptons, but it's as close as they're going to get.

I resisted writing about 'Mother Sheehan' (as one leftie has proposed designating her), as it seemed obvious that she was at best a little unhinged by grief and at worst mentally ill.  Start with her insistence on a face-to-face meeting with Bush. Even if you don't think the President should see her, you can sympathise with the demand, born out of her anger and pain. But it turns out she's already had a face-to-face meeting with Bush. Her son Casey was killed in April last year and in June the President met the Sheehans to offer his condolences. The story appeared in the 24 June 2004 edition of the Reporter, their hometown paper in Vacaville, California:

'"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...."

'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.'

Mrs Sheehan wants a second meeting with Bush because she no longer feels the way she did at the first one. Instead of gratitude for 'the gift the President gave us', she now says her son was 'murdered by the Bush crime family'.

Also: 'We have to impeach George Bush down to the person who picks up the dog shit in Washington! Let George Bush send his two little party animals to die in Iraq.'

Also: 'You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana.... You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine.'

Well, OK, cut the lady some slack: a lot of folks get a bit overheated about Bush, and neocons, and Jews and so forth. But how about this? 'America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for.' That was part of her warm-up act for a speech by Lynne Stewart, the 'activist' lawyer convicted of conspiracy for aiding the terrorists convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

You can see why Lynne's grateful to Mrs Sheehan. But why is Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Kerry's running mate, sending out imploring letters headlined 'Support Cindy Sheehan's Right To Be Heard'? The politics of this isn't difficult: the more Cindy Sheehan is heard, the more obvious it is she's a kook to whom most Americans would give a wide berth.

Don't take my word for it, ask her family. Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins put out the following statement:

'The Sheehan family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq war and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect.'

Ah, well, they're not immediate family, so they lack Cindy's 'moral authority'. But how about Casey's father, Pat Sheehan? Last Friday, in Solano County Court, Pat Sheehan filed for divorce. As the New York Times explained Cindy's 'separation': 'Although she and her estranged husband are both Democrats, she said she is more liberal than he is, and now, more radicalised.'

Toppling Saddam and the Taleban (Mrs Sheehan opposes US intervention in Afghanistan, too), destroying al-Qa'eda's training camps and helping 50 million Muslims on the first steps to free societies aren't worth the death of a single soldier. But Cindy Sheehan's hatred of Bush is worth the death of her marriage. Watching her and her advanced case of Bush Derangement Syndrome on TV, I feel the way I felt about that mentally impaired Aussie concert pianist they got to play at the Oscars a few years ago.

It was suggested by the columnist Cal Thomas that Bush should agree to a (second) meeting - in public. Cindy Sheehan could let rip, but there would also be other bereaved moms of soldiers who don't feel as she does, and maybe some bereaved Iraqi moms to tell of their gratitude for the liberation of their country from a psycho regime. It's a fine idea, and I'm sure the reason Bush won't do it is because he understands that Mrs Sheehan is having a mental breakdown in public and it would be cruel to take advantage of that. If only the Michael Moore Left had that much decency.

But in the wreckage of Pat and Cindy Sheehan's marriage there is surely a lesson for the Democratic party. As Cindy says, they're both Democrats, but she's 'more liberal' and 'more radicalised'. There are a lot of less liberal and less radicalised Dems out there: they're soft-left-ish on healthcare and the environment and education and so forth; many have doubts about the war, but they love their country, they have family in the military, and they don't believe in dishonouring American soldiers to make a political point. The problem for the Democratic party is that the Cindys are now the loudest voice: Michael Moore, Howard Dean, moveon.org, and Air America, the flailing liberal radio network distracting attention from its own financial scandals by flying down its afternoon host Randi Rhodes to do her show live from Camp Casey. The last time I heard Miss Rhodes she was urging soldiers called up for Iraq to refuse to go - i.e., to desert - and entertaining theories that 9/11 was Bush's Reichstag fire.

On unwatched Sunday talk shows you can still stumble across the occasional sane responsible Dem. But, in the absence of any serious intellectual attempt to confront their long-term decline, all the energy on the Left is with the fringe. The Democratic party is a coalition of Pat Sheehans and Cindy Sheehans, and the noisier the Cindys get the more estranged the Pats are likely to feel. Sorry about that, but, if Mrs Sheehan can insist her son's corpse be the determining factor in American policy on Iraq, I don't see why her marriage can't be a metaphor for the state of the Democratic party.

Casey Sheehan was a 21-year-old man when he enlisted in 2000. He re-enlisted for a second tour, and he died after volunteering for a rescue mission in Sadr City. Mrs Sheehan says she wishes she'd driven him to Canada, though that's not what he would have wished and it was his decision. As to whether he died in vain, the Associated Press reported this week:

'The capital's Sadr City section was once a hotbed of Shiite Muslim unrest, but it has become one of the brightest successes for the US security effort. So far this year, there has been only one car bombing in the neighborhood, and only one American soldier has been killed.'


Cindy Sheehan is a woman whose grief has curdled into a narcissistic rage, and the Democrats cheering her on are cheering their own marginalisation. Most Americans will not follow where she's gone - to the wilder shores of anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Iraq, anti-Afghanistan, anti-Israel, anti-American paranoia. Casey Sheehan's service was not the act of a child. A shame you can't say the same about his mom's new friends.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article_pfv.php?id=6501
 
Two very excellent posts! Should be required reading for the anti-military left wing types out there. It just shows exactly how the left views those of us who serve, as infantile no-minds who can't possibly know what we are doing or why we are doing it. Her son is probably spinning in his grave at the antics of his mother. :threat:
 
One has to wonder if this woman is even aware that her conduct dishonors her son's memory and sacrifice. I feel more anger towards the people who would exploit an individual who is clearly a few french fries short of a happy meal.
 
2 Cdo said:
Her son is probably spinning in his grave at the antics of his mother. :threat:

I know I would be if that was my mother...geez!!

I am sorry for her loss, but maybe she hasn't clicked in that her son was an adult and that serving his country was what HE wanted to do.
 
Jumper said:
One has to wonder if this woman is even aware that her conduct dishonors her son's memory and sacrifice.

How is the son's action dishonoured?  I'm not following.  You really think less of the son because his mother may be, to you, a loon?  That;s how I'm reading you, in any event.
 
So how, exactly does any of this diminish Ms.Sheehan's right to oppose the Iraq war?  Does she not have a right to an explanation as to why her son was sent to his death in an unjust, useless war?

If this is how the bigoted right wing American media treats the parents of dead soldiers, well, Ms.Sheehan may just be the spark that sets off the fire, just like what happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan.
 
Quote,
How is the son's action dishonoured?  I'm not following.  You really think less of the son because his mother may be, to you, a loon?  That;s how I'm reading you, in any event.
I think what he means is that instead of remembering the man and his actions , history will remember the mans mother and her actions.....
 
Here's Christopher Hitchens' take on Sheehan - he may be bigoted, but he's not right wing (except in supporting the Iraq war as a just cause - unless that makes you a bigot by definition  ;)).

mdh


Cindy Sheehan's Sinister Piffle
What's wrong with her Crawford protest.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Aug. 15, 2005, at 11:50 AM PT


Here is an unambivalent statement: "The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

And, now, here's another:

Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full well that my son, my family, this nation and this world were betrayed by George Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agendas after 9/11. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy ... not for the real reason, because the Arab Muslims who attacked us hate our middle-eastern foreign policy.


Her knack for PR doesn't make her argument persuasive

The first statement comes from Maureen Dowd, in her New York Times column of Aug. 10. The second statement comes from Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq last year. It was sent to the editors of ABC's Nightline on March 15. In her article, Dowd was arguing that Sheehan's moral authority was absolute.

I am at a complete loss to see how these two positions can be made compatible. Sheehan has obviously taken a short course in the Michael Moore/Ramsey Clark school of Iraq analysis and has not succeeded in making it one atom more elegant or persuasive. I dare say that her "moral authority" to do this is indeed absolute, if we agree for a moment on the weird idea that moral authority is required to adopt overtly political positions, but then so is my "moral" right to say that she is spouting sinister piffle. Suppose I had lost a child in this war. Would any of my critics say that this gave me any extra authority? I certainly would not ask or expect them to do so. Why, then, should anyone grant them such a privilege?

Sheehan has met the president before and has favored us with two accounts of the meeting, one fairly warm and the other distinctly cold. I have no means of knowing which mood reflected her real state of mind, but she now thinks she is owed another session with him, presumably in order to tell him what she asserted to the Nightline team. In pursuit of this, she has set up camp near Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, and announced that she will not leave until she gets some more face-time with our chief executive. This qualifies her to be described by Dowd as "a 48-year-old Californian with a knack for P.R." Well, I think I have to concede that if Dowd says you have a knack for PR, you have acquired one even if you didn't have one before. (I am not entirely certain, for example, that the above letter to ABC News would count as a delicate illustration of the said "knack.")

The president has compromised by sending his national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley, down that Crawford road to meet the PR-knackish Cindy. Not good enough, exclaims Dowd. Hadley was pro-war and has even been described as a neocon! Clearly, then, the Sheehan demand is liable to expand the more it is met. President Bush must either find a senior staff member who opposes the war and then send him or her down the track to see if that will do. Or else he must, like the Emperor Henry of old, stage his own Canossa and attend on her himself, abject apologies at the ready. After all, we mustn't forget that we are dealingâ ”as was that emperor in his dispute with Pope Gregoryâ ”with "an absolute moral authority."

What dreary sentimental nonsense this all is, and how much space has been wasted on it. Most irritating is the snide idea that the president is "on vacation" and thus idly ignoring his suffering subjects, when the truth is that the members of the mediaâ ”not known for their immunity to the charm of Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod in the month of Augustâ ”are themselves lazing away the season with a soft-centered nonstory that practically, as we like to say in the trade, "writes itself." Anyway, Sheehan now says that if need be she will "follow" the president "to Washington," so I don't think the holiday sneer has much life left in it.

There are, in fact, some principles involved here. Any citizen has the right to petition the president for redress of grievance, or for that matter to insult him to his face. But the potential number of such people is very large, and you don't have the right to cut in line by having so much free time that you can set up camp near his drive. Then there is the question of civilian control over the military, which is an authority that one could indeed say should be absolute. The military and its relatives have no extra claim on the chief executive's ear. Indeed, it might be said that they have less claim than the rest of us, since they have voluntarily sworn an oath to obey and carry out orders. Most presidents in time of war have made an exception in the case of the bereavedâ ”Lincoln's letter to the mother of two dead Union soldiers (at the time, it was thought that she had lost five sons) is a famous instanceâ ”but the job there is one of comfort and reassurance, and this has already been discharged in the Sheehan case. If that stricken mother had been given an audience and had risen up to say that Lincoln had broken his past election pledges and sought a wider and more violent war with the Confederacy, his aides would have been quite right to show her the door and to tell her that she was out of order.

Finally, I think one must deny to anyone the right to ventriloquize the dead. Casey Sheehan joined up as a responsible adult volunteer. Are we so sure that he would have wanted to see his mother acquiring "a knack for P.R." and announcing that he was killed in a war for a Jewish cabal? (a claim that has brought David Duke flying to Ms. Sheehan's side.) This is just as objectionable, on logical as well as moral grounds, as the old pro-war argument that the dead "must not have died in vain." I distrust anyone who claims to speak for the fallen, and I distrust even more the hysterical noncombatants who exploit the grief of those who have to bury them.
 
Bruce Monkhouse said:
Quote,
How is the son's action dishonoured?   I'm not following.   You really think less of the son because his mother may be, to you, a loon?   That;s how I'm reading you, in any event.
I think what he means is that instead of remembering the man and his actions , history will remember the mans mother and her actions.....

Ah, that makes sense. 
 
I find it interesting that the entire rest of the Sheehan family have gone on record as saying that they disagree with Cindy, that her son disagreed with Cindy, and that they consider her to be an attention-seeking loon. They're terribly embarassed by her antics and consider it a shameful way to treat the memory of her son.

I'll poke around and try to fnid the articles they wrote.
 
<a href=http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8972147>Well why don't we get it straight from the horse's mouth?</a>

MATTHEWS:  The reason I ask that because a lot of Americans believe going to Afghanistan made since because we were doing what the president said he would do that very day.  A couple days after 9/11.  He said I'm going to get the people that attacked these buildings.  And he went over and got them.  And that was where America was so united.  Whereas Iraq has caused a deep division.  Let me give you a statement that seems to show some division in your family.  One of your relatives has given this statement to a conservative radio commentary for distribution.

    "The Sheehan Family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have been silently, respectfully grieving.  We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan.  She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation.  The rest of the Sheehan Family supports our troops, our country, and our president, silently, with prayer and respect.  Sincerely, Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins."

So it seems like you have a division in your family.

SHEEHAN:  Those are on my husband's side of the family.  And we've always been politically on different sides of the fence.  I have always been a Democrat and they have always been Republicans, so we've always had a good-natured kind of debate within that family.  But you know what, we support the troops.  How can they say by what I'm doing I don't support the troops?

The troops are over there for a mistake and not one of them, not one drop of blood should have been spilled in Iraq.  Why are they still over there?  Why are they still dying and why are the Iraqi people still dying?  Because it is a mistake.  And it was based on deceptions.

And another thing about that side of the family, they barely knew Casey.  They barely had a relationship with him.  They call him their beloved Casey.  He was my hero, Chris, before he was killed.  I knew him so well.

MATTHEWS:  Were your husband's parents and grandparents on your side close to Casey?

SHEEHAN:  Out of all those people who signed the letters, they know him the most but they didn't really keep up a relationship with him either. ...

MATTHEWS:  Why are they going to war with you in public?  Why are they issuing a statement for national release through a conservative radio talk show host?  ... Why would they put out a statement that goes in the face of what you're doing in your camp?

SHEEHAN:  You know, like I've said, we've always been on different sides of the fence politically.  And my sister was Casey's second mom.  And she is standing here next to me in solidarity and agreement with me.

MATTHEWS:  ... Let me ask you about your situation.  Cindy, this is a tricky situation.  Every time a family has a tragedy and the loss of a son, your oldest, must be unimaginable.

Sometimes husbands and wives grieve in very different ways and it often leads to separation and divorce.  Is that what has happened between and you your husband?  Or is this a partisan fight that we're seeing in the open that's behind us?  The separation and divorce of you and your husband?

SHEEHAN:  My husband has always agreed with me philosophically.  And he only disagreed with the intensity that I put into the fight.  But I am compelled to do this.  And other than that, that's as far as I'm going to talk about my family's -- another personal tragedy due to this war.

I guess all those mothers who participate in MADD are just attention seeking loons, right?
 
Britney Spears said:
I guess all those mothers who participate in MADD are just attention seeking loons, right?
y'know, I had a big thing all typed out, but it would just turn into a "fascist!" - "commie!" bit of silliness. We are never going to find common ground on any subject dealing with Iraq, President Bush, the Liberal Party, or pretty much anything to with politics in general. So I'm gonna drop it. I ain't gonna convince you, you ain't gonna convince me.

You're a commie, pinko, fellow-traveller, but I luv ya anyway. ;)
 
Bruce Monkhouse said:
Quote,
How is the son's action dishonoured?   I'm not following.   You really think less of the son because his mother may be, to you, a loon?   That;s how I'm reading you, in any event.
I think what he means is that instead of remembering the man and his actions , history will remember the mans mother and her actions.....

Thank-you Mr Monkhouse. J
 
Britney Spears said:
<a href=http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8972147>Well why don't we get it straight from the horse's mouth?</a>

I guess all those mothers who participate in MADD are just attention seeking loons, right?

Or else bored housewives...

Actually I think that is a valid comparison.   And I think MADD, at least, has laudable goals and an effective way of making their point and achieving their goals. (No, I don't think they are loons or simply bored.  One of my friends belongs to MADD).   Mothers against the war are probably less able to organize constructively, or achieve their goals.   The Russian example in Afghanistan is an interesting one to bring up - was prosecution of their war there really terminated due to public opinion back home?   One might make a case that US involvement in Vietnam was remarkably lessened as a result of public opinion - despite the fact that militarily, things were going not terribly after the VC destroyed themselves in 1968.
 
y'know, I had a big thing all typed out, but it would just turn into a "fascist!" - "commie!" bit of silliness. We are never going to find common ground on any subject dealing with Iraq, President Bush, the Liberal Party, or pretty much anything to with politics in general. So I'm gonna drop it. I ain't gonna convince you, you ain't gonna convince me.

You're a commie, pinko, fellow-traveller, but I luv ya anyway. Wink

Well, I did make an honest attempt, you know, with facts, and all that, and I never called any of you guys a fascist or a commie.

Isn't it silly how us liberals are always trying to do some good in the world.....

Ah well, IOKIYAC. (It's OK if you are a conservative)
 
Bored Housewives...

hmmm wonder where I have seen that recently,

Sometimes ones grief is expressed in very awkward ways, a hard loss for a mother for sure.  But, to to use an event to promote ones self interest, as stated by her family, now that would be wrong.

dileas

tess

 
At the risk of adding fuel to what seems to be a dying fire  >:D, a little more from "the horse's mouth" (the letter she wrote to Nightline, after appearing on the show):
Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full-well that my son, my family, this nation, and this world were betrayed by a George Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agenda after 9/11. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy...not for the real reason, becuase the Arab-Muslims who attacked us hate our middle-eastern foreign policy.
http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=104788

It is a disgrace that she is using her son's death, which occurred by all accounts in the course of his volunteering for dangerous cause that he believed in, to create a media circus to advance her own conflicting agenda: specifically, what she paranoically knows are "lies and ... a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel" (Bush must have told her a lot the first time he met with her).  In her opinion, it would seem that we are not to mourn his death, but to sympathize with her agenda because of her loss.

More succinctly:
05.08.14.ShowofGrief-X.gif
 
So what are you trying to say? That her son's death wasn't a loss to her? That because her son went to his death voluntarily*, she has no right to protest the war? Obviously, Cindy Sheehan planeed her son's death all along, just to promote her own "agenda" of opposing the war in Iraq, right? Sheehan... sounds French to me.. ::) "Disgrace", indeed.

I don't share her view that the US must withdraw from Iraq (her "agenda"), and I'll agree that she's somewhat a by-product of a slow news cycle, what's another dead American soldier and grieving mother in the big scheme of things anyway? But the impunity with which the right wing hate-machine can insult and belittle a grieving mother is sickening, and so are the lot of you for toeing this line lockstep.


* Spc. Sheehan enlisted in 2000, but renewed his enlistment in the wake of the war. Let's see, what would John Galt do? If he didn't personally support the war, then the only reasonable, in-line-with-self-interest thing to do is to get out and leave his buddies to go to war themselves right? What an idiot he was eh?
 
I did not follow the Cindy Sheehan affair very closely but it seems to me that when the followers ask "What are we dying for again ?", the leaders should be able to come up with an answer. From my Canadian perspective the war on Iraq went from war on terror, to war against weapons of mass destruction, to war for the liberation of Iraq. Now that some Iraqis don't seem too happy with the liberation, some followers are asking questions. One can easily get the impression that some lies were told here and there.
 
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