The reality break necessary to justify and/or rationalize using a dead person to promote a cause the dead person didn’t believe in is staggering.
It’s like the KKK using Dr. King to promote racism.
The first rule of the GOP. Look it up sometime.
Also, for what it’s worth, we don’t have any direct statements of Casey Sheehan (at least not that I’m aware of) indicating whether or not he supported Bush’s Folly. His mother has stated that he believed the war was wrong, but I don’t suppose anyone’s going to take that at face value. What we do know is that he joined up in 2000, long before the war in Iraq began, and that he re-enlisted in early 2004 in large part because he did not believe it was right for him to get out of the army when his buddies were all about to be shipped to Iraq. Hardly the first time a soldier has put support of his fellow soldiers ahead of his own safety.
Casey is not being used. Cindy Sheehan’s loss of her son belongs to her, not to a dead person.
It’s okay if you are Republican.
ExTank… if I was told by Someone In Authority that rampaging purple elephants were killing grocery shoppers, and I believed them, and then went to the store with a shotgun to kill the rampaging purple elephants, and was killed by the police, and my Mom got mad at the SIA, would you tell her to be mad at the police, but not the SIA? Since, after all, the police were the ones who shot me, and I was “doing what I believed in”?
Now you’re just insulting the men and women in uniform with stupid comparisons to insanity.
Well, that wasn’t my intent, certainly.
I was just trying to show that Mrs. Sheehan acknowledges that Casey was doing something he believed in, but the information he had was wrong, and the source of the information, she believes, knew that the information being disseminated was wrong.
Whereas you’re just insulting and belittling a grieving mother.
Okay, to reword Snowboarder Bo’s hypothetical in less offensive terms:
“If I was told by Someone In Authority that a team of tunneling Communists are digging under the surface of the USA in preparation for an impending invasion, and I believed them, and then joined a counterattack force to kill the tunnelling commies, and got killed by a cave-in, and it was later determined that there weren’t any tunneling communists to begin with, and my Mom got mad at the SIA, would you tell her to be mad at the cave-in, but not the SIA?”
Or a real example- Pickett’s charge. Certainly the men believed in the cause, but their widows would have been right to wonder “what the heck were they thinking?”
The next time someone feels like slamming Mr. Moto as a brainless right-wing parrot, kindly remember this exchange. Okay?
On the subject, Rosa Parks was a NAACP member, and carefully vetted (Two women before her were rejected) to be the figurehead of the cause she espoused. I see little difference in this and in Cindy Sheehan.
I also don’t see how this lessens either case.
So what? Is it really important for the average citizen to speculate – really, wring hands in worry – that she’s being fed and sheltered during her protest? Worry about the WAR, Mr. Moto. Not Cindy Sheehan. The war is the problem.
I see that difference and I understand how you might think that using the memory of a deceased soilder who you believe supported the war is inappropriate, or even disrespectful. Since Mrs. Sheehan is the mother of that soilder and suffered the lost I would have to defer to her opinion and her right to express it.
Perhaps Casey totally supported this war and this president. Perhaps he was against the war but went out of a sense of duty to his country and fellow soilders.
Either way I think Mrs. Sheehan has the right to voice her own opinion and feelings about the death of* her son*. Her loss and her citizenship give her that right. Casey might not agree if he was alive, we’ll never know, but all of that still doesn’t change the questions about this war and if these lives being lost are making the world a better safer place or just serving the White House political aganda.
Casey surely went to serve, protect and hopefully save lives and make the world a better place. Isn’t that what motivates his Mom. Aren’t the rights that she is excercising now exactly what Casey believed in? If she felt the way she does and didn’t stand up for what she believed and speak out, would that in some way honor Casey?
She might choose to honor him by believeing as you say he believed and supporting the war regardless of the mounting evidence against it. That would be an understandable choice as well. That is a choice for her to make, and for us to respect her right to make that choice.
I remember the families of those lost during the Vietnam era being very emotional about the cause their sons, brothers, and fathers, died for. Their sacrifice was true and honorable. Our leaders weren’t then, and aren’t now.
well no big surprise to hear today on TX Am radio station, right wingers trashing Cindy and her cause, to the point of associating her pain and reasoning behind her protest to the most absurd… here’s a few, verbatim character assassinations:
She’s a:
"Communist!!!
Pro Terrorist!!!
Red Socialist!!!
I switched stations after hearing, “your son volunteered!!! so why should we feel sorry for his death?!!”
whoa! you gotta love those diehards in denial.
What POS dirtbag radio show was that. Who are the hosts?
Well, Cindy Sheehan lost her son. What that means and what that is worth in my book really depends on what her son thought of his sacrifice. That’s not something we can know anymore.
Sheehan has the right to think what she wants to think, protest, and say what she wants to say. I don’t have anything bad to say about her or her sacrifice.
On the other side of the coin I strongly disagree with what she says, and I think a rational person on either side of the aisle must, as well.
She expressed good sentiments towards Bush after their first meeting. I think it is unreasonable that she expects a second meeting so she can recant and lambaste them. Her son’s sacrifice does not earn her a moral highground or a right to access to the executive branch, nor does it add any weight to her words.
Further, her intent seems to be to smear Bush. She apparently does not buy into the stated reasons for the war and wants to know what the real reason is.
What is the real reason? Well, in her letter to Nightline she claims:
Decent collection of articles posted here:
/www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=39958
To me, this seems more than a little vaguely anti-semitic. Indeed, she has earned the admiration of David Duke for this:
Now, I think the President does have a duty to the parent of a fallen soldier, and that is to succor and comfort. The President has tried to do that, and Mrs. Sheehan seemed to accept that. We have her earlier comments and there is a phot online of her kissing the President.
I understand her loss, and I truly sympathize. However, I think it is a mistake to get behind this women and assert that she has some kind of authority when she claims some neocon Pnac jewish cabal is behind the war.
[QUOTE=minty green]
The first rule of the GOP. Look it up sometime.
QUOTE]
Wrong!
The first rule of GOP is… you do not talk about GOP.
Although I believe there is much more depth to the motives for this war than we know, I don’t see the plus side of spouting conspiracy theories until you have the hard evidence to prove something. It is enough for me to believe that Bush and those close to him lied about the reasons for going to war and seemed wrong at every turn in predicting what would happen and how this would benifit the Iraqi’s and the security of the US.
I agree with this, however if she through her determination brings the question of "why are we there, and “are the lives lost worth it” into the public arena with more force and attention than before then it’s worth it.
I wasn’t aware of the claims you have quoted here. I think those type of conspiracy theories only hurt the antiwar movement and assist the opposition when you spout them without coroboration. Present what you have clear evidence for. It doesn’t have to be completely conclusive, just enough to sway the public into the “more likely than not” catagory.
Perhaps Mrs Sheehan will be the begining of more people speaking out against the war. My hope is that the publicity she’s getting will add some momentum to the antiwar movement.
Do you have offspring of your own? I do. To me, they will always be my children, persons close to me that I will love greatly and will never want see harmed. Should I lose one in what seems to me to be a senseless way, I would be beside myself with rage and grief. I believe this is the mindset where Cindy Sheehan is operating from. She’s not a slick politician trying to sway public opinion in a quest for power (though others are shamelessly trying to use her for this), she’s just a mom that’s having a really hard time coming to grips with the loss of someone very dear to her, and perhaps just a bit mentally off-kilter because of the ordeal. It’s all very sad, really. I wish everyone: left, right, center, purple, just packed up their cameras and left the poor woman alone with her grief, sitting outside W’s ranch.
Sorry, these comments weren’t direct at you specifically, they were more of a general reaction to things said throughout the thread; though I do appreciate your taking the time to offer your opinion.
The problem is, I think our invading Iraq under dubious circumstances showed those crack-pot mullahs that we only have the balls to attack already-weakened secular states and that we don’t have the will to go after them where they get their real support (Iran, Saudia Arabia). THIS is what will embolden them continue to fight against us and make more difficult our efforts to spread democracy to their lands, and not the protected-right of the Michael Moores or Cindy Sheehans to voice their opinions.
I agree with much of what you’re saying here. We are where we are, regardless of how or why we’re here. Now, what do we do about the situation in which we sit? I think that it’s pretty universally agreed (despite the administration’s spin) that the situation in Iraq is not what it should be. Increasingly, people are getting impatient and are realizing that something needs to change in order to improve the situation. But, the administration doesn’t seem to think that we need to change anything about how we’re operating there because that would be an admission that they’ve fouled things up. But, the fear of many is the longer we let the status quo continue, the less likely any changes we make down the road will be effective. Hmmm…kinda sounds like Vietnam-era foreign policy to me…
So, I can understand how some folks might come to believe that if history continues to repeat itself, that we might as well cut our losses and run now instead of later when the cost will be much higher. What we need is a change in current policy/tactics to steer us away from this option. What changes in Iraq, short of our retreat, are needed so that we avoid diminishing the significance of all those soldier’s deaths? How likely will these changes occur in a timely manner before Americans are completely fed up with the situation? I’ve got the feeling that, based on the support that Cindy Sheehan is garnering, the time left for such a change in course is quickly winding down.
cosmodan, stochastic: thank you both for your thoughtful, well-reasoned input, and for your respectful disagreement with my take on Cindy Sheehan’s actions. I do understand your positions, and find them reasonable and well-articualted.
I’m not (nor have I) ascribed nefarious motives to her actions, just misguided ones. My Mom went slightly batty when I went to Gulf War I, and I had several long letters and a few telephone conversations to convince her that I was where I wanted to be, doing what I wanted to do, and that neither the Army nor Pres. Bush bore any blame or responsibility for anything that happened to me, and that if she respected me at all as a person, she would have to respect that position.
I just come from the position that, if you respect your offspring’s grown, adult, life decisions and life choices, you should accept with the same equanimity as your offsping the consequences of those decisions and choices.