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Jewish World Review August 22, 2005 / 17 Av, 5765 The personal argument By Debra J. Saunders
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Vacaville's Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey Sheehan — who
died in combat in Iraq — became a public figure when she demanded a second
visit with President Bush so he could answer her questions: "Why did you
kill my son? What did my son die for?" She had set up camp near the
president's home, until a second tragedy — her mother's stroke — caused
her to leave on Thursday.
By the time that happened, Sheehan, who has made her personal
situation the issue and has hurled so many personal insults at others, was
complaining that the protests are "not about me," they're about the war.
Not true. Cindy Sheehan never asked Bush to meet with other
mothers of those who have died in Iraq. She has never tried to represent
those mothers of slain soldiers who support the war. What's more, while many
thoughtful critics of the war exist, Sheehan personifies the me-me-me focus
of the antiwar movement. And that corner doesn't think.
Note how Sheehan refuses to look at the war as anything but the
spawn of President Bush. She won't acknowledge that the newly elected Iraqi
government doesn't want U.S. troops to leave yet. She simply repeats the
same old antiwar movement slogans: Bush lied. Bush killed her son.
Last week, CNN's Anderson Cooper asked Sheehan how she reacted
to an Internet plea by two Iraqi dentists to stop calling for immediate
withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
Cooper read the words: "You are free to go and leave us alone,
but what am I going to tell your million sisters in Iraq? Should I ask them
to leave Iraq, too? Should I leave, too? And what about the 8 million who
walked through bombs to practice their freedom and vote? Should they leave
this land, too? Your son sacrificed his life for a very noble cause? No, he
sacrificed himself for the most precious value in this existence; that is
freedom," they wrote.
Asked for her thoughts, Sheehan could only protest that she
wasn't programmed to answer that question: "Well, Anderson, we're still —
we're getting away from what, what the president said when he went to
Congress and asked for the authority to invade Iraq. He said (the United
States needs to invade) because they had weapons of mass destruction, and he
said because there was a link between Saddam (Hussein) and Al-Qaida, and
those have been proven to be wrong."
In short: Bush lied, and that's the reason America and its many
allies went to war. She also opposes U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and told
MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Afghanistan "is almost the same thing." Sure, except
that Al-Qaida was linked to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, who was hiding
behind the Taliban in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001. It's not even
remotely the same thing.
It feels as if the far left has come down with a case of mass
amnesia. To believe this, one would have to forget that, other than Howard
Dean, every major Democratic candidate running for president in 2004 —
Dennis Kucinich doesn't count as major — voted for the resolution
authorizing force in Iraq.
Sen. John Kerry, who began his career denouncing politicians who
vote for a mistake of a war, also voted for the war resolution. Like other
senators who had served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, he had access
to reams of information. His running mate, John Edwards, also on the
Intelligence Committee, also voted for the resolution.
Her own husband, when he was president, explained that he was
bombing Iraq in 1998 because "Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten
his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological
weapons." Bush didn't just utter the word "yellowcake" and magically the
Senate was in a trance that made John Kerry and Hillary Clinton dutifully
vote yes.
They looked at the evidence, and they endured years of watching
Hussein in action. They knew that he had advanced his nuclear program beyond
intelligence estimates before the Persian Gulf War. They then voted for a
resolution that said, in part, "in 1998, Congress concluded that Iraq's
continuing weapons of mass destruction programs threatened vital United
States interests and international peace and security, declared Iraq to be
in 'material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations' and
urged the president 'to take appropriate action, in accordance with the
Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into
compliance with its international obligations'."
That context is missing in action at Camp Casey.
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Comment JWR contributor Debra J. Saunders's column by clicking here. © 2005, Creators Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
