Ventriloquizing the dead - Would Casey have wanted his mother to say all this nonsenseon his behalf?

National Post, Canada ^ | August 17, 2005 | Christopher Hitchens

[Cincinatus' Wife]

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 [Project for the New American Century] 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."

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. The first statement comes from Maureen Dowd's Aug. 10 New York Times column, in which she argues that Sheehan's moral authority is 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 school of Iraq analysis and has not succeeded in making it one atom more 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, Tex., and announced that she will not leave until she gets some more face-time with the chief executive. This qualifies her to be described by Dowd as "a 48-year-old Californian with a knack for PR" (though I am not entirely certain that the above letter to ABC News would count as a delicate illustration of said "knack.")

What 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 media -- not known for their immunity to the charm of Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod in the month of August -- are themselves lazing away the season with a soft-centred non-story that practically, as we like to say in the trade, "writes itself."

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 bereaved -- Lincoln's letter to the mother of two dead Union soldiers (at the time, it was thought she had lost five sons) is a famous instance -- 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 PR" 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 non-combatants who exploit the grief of those who have to bury them.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

On his Monday talk show, radio personality Rush Limbaugh noted that Sheehan's son volunteered for the Army. He disparaged the "squatters" in Sheehan's entourage.

"There's no meaning to what she's doing. She's a pawn, she's a tool of a bunch of fellow crackpots upon whom we couldn't depend if our lives were at stake, and that's why they are so few and far between. Thankfully, they are not anywhere near the majority of people in the country," Limbaugh said.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3313878

[BulletBobCo]

This qualifies her to be described by Dowd as "a 48-year-old Californian with a knack for PR"

She's definitely qualified.

[airborne]

Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a [Project for the New American Century] neo-con agenda to benefit Israel.

Cindy has denied ever saying this (about her son dying for Israel) and ABC (imagine my surprise) now says they can't seem to find the document that would verify that she did.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Rush read a post from a left-wing-wacko site yesterday saying they need to call Cindy a mother. That it would play better than calling her Cindy. Well, it looks like the msm has fallen in line:

'Peace mom' Cindy Sheehan, left, president of Gold Star Families for Peace, hugs supporters on the morning after a pickup truck tore through the rows of white crosses at her anti-war protest camp near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2005. Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq, is camping near the Bush ranch this month in an effort to speak with the president about her opposition to the war. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

ABC News: Husband of 'Peace Mom' Files for Divorce

AP:'Peace Mom' Demonstration Gets New Home

Daily News Transcript:Locals to join 'Peace Mom' in vigil tonight

USA Today: Media escalation unnerves protest mom

AP:Ex-FBI Whistleblower to Join 'Peace Mom'

MSNBC (Reuters) Crosses vandalized at antiwar mom’s campsite

[airborne]

"The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

Does Casey's father cancel out Cindy's "moral authority"?

He disagrees with her stance.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

PR:

***.....TrueMajority, an antiwar group founded by Ben Cohen -- one of the creators of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream -- hired Fenton Communications, a Washington public relations firm that has worked intermittently with Sheehan over the past year to coordinate media coverage.

With this help, Sheehan has courted coverage from the traveling White House press corps with a news conference. A schedule of when relatives of other military casualties in Iraq are expected to join Sheehan in Crawford was distributed to reporters. Her team coordinated an antiwar rally attended by hundreds in Crawford yesterday.

Sheehan also launched a television ad campaign yesterday, hoping to achieve what her roadside vigil so far has not: a second chance to directly tell Bush about the devastation she has experienced since her son's death. Source

[johnmecainrino]

Cindy said this again at a peace convention right before she went to crawford.

Cindy is a compulsive liar she at first said her meeting with bush was sincere and brought her happiness and then later he went nose to nose with her.

She came in on an impeachment bus but says she didn't bring up impeachment when she has called for it many times.

She says the rally was spontaneous and yet she has been following bush around for the last 9 months crashing a fundraiser in florida, complaining about the inauguration in washington to good morning america.


You can go to google and type in cindy sheehan israel and look for the va monthly article of her speech at the convention.

She also goes after bush's daughters calling them party animals, says america is not worth dying for, how america should stop the killing, not paying taxes, she calls bush several expletives.

[johnmecainrino]

I have personally seen on her website her going after Israel and seen her posts on DU and dailykos going after Israel what a tool she is. She has said that all of israel is palestine and the pnac agenda, neo cons, called paul wolfowitz one of the most evil people ever.

On and on she goes.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Would the "peace mom" prefer her son died for an anti-American cause? So many of these left-wing activists do.

Parents mourn children killed during protests

Non-violent peace protestor Rachel Corrie shows her love of the American flag to a group of Palestinian children

[kb2614]

...but then so is my "moral" right to say that she is spouting sinister piffle

Ouch!!

I do pity Mrs. Sheehan, :-(

BUT,,,,

I REFUSE to be manipulated and this is what she is doing. She uses the "I'm a war widow, don't question me" tactics. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. I am sorry her son died, but her views are reprehensible. Folks can say she is being used by the various factions of moonbats, but she has CHOSEN to be used.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

She also goes after bush's daughters calling them party animals, says america is not worth dying for, how america should stop the killing, not paying taxes, she calls bush several expletives.

Bush daughter is said to volunteer in S. Africa***CAPE TOWN -- At the Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital, children sit on their mothers' laps in waiting rooms, waddle down hallways, and wail inside the burn unit, where nurses carefully wrap gauze around their arms, legs, and heads.

It is here, say some doctors and nurses, that Barbara Bush, one of President Bush's twin daughters, has been working in near anonymity as a volunteer. ...***

[airborne]

Would the "peace mom" prefer her son died for an anti-American cause?

AS long as it provided her with media attention and money, I don't think she would mind how he died.

[smoothsailing]

Maureen Dowd,David Duke,Joe Trippi,Tom Hayden,Al Franken,and on and on go the familiar names of people who embrace Cindy Sheehan.

As my mother told me many years ago;"you are known by the company you keep."

[backhoe]

Code Pinko-- the Cindy Sheehan affair ( click the picture )

[johnmecainrino]

Media keeps portraying this as about being for the war in iraq or against it.

Sheehan is against the war in afganistan she wants to transform america from killing people to being peaceful.

In her dullusional world al queda are normal people that are freedom fighters and will stop killing if we go home.

Earth to cindy on 9/11 we weren't in afganistan or iraq.


The media would never point out that cindy wants us to withdraw immediately from afganistan because that would put her in a bad light.

[johnmecainrino]

Cindy also said that she doesn't even believe bin laden attacked us that is was a pnac scheme for future wars.

The MSM has taken the cake with this one portraying a radical moonbat wacko as the face of a greiving nation.


I am so sick of soldiers believing in the mission and having this nut piss on their beliefs and the fallen ones.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

.....As my mother told me many years ago;"you are known by the company you keep."

***.........As a student of the left, Jamie Glazov, has observed in an article about the middle-class defenders of recently captured Seventies terrorist Kathy Soliah: "if you can successfully camouflage your own pathology and hatred with a concern for the 'poor' and the 'downtrodden,' then there will always be a 'progressive' milieu to support and defend you."* Huey Newton, George Jackson, Bernadine Dohrn, Sylvia Baraldini, Rubin Carter, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Rigoberta Menchu and innumerable others have all discovered this principle in the course of their criminal careers. ....***Source

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

AS long as it provided her with media attention and money, I don't think she would mind how he died.

It's beginning to take on that air, isn't it?

Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, California, a mother who lost her son U.S. Army Specialist Casey Austin Sheehan who was serving in Iraq, holds a cross with his name on it as she poses for photographers during her vigil near the ranch owned by U.S. President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas August 11, 2005. About 50 anti-war protesters have set up camp near the president's ranch, calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. REUTERS/Jason Reed

[Earthdweller]

"Earth to cindy on 9/11 we weren't in afganistan or iraq."

Oh can I use this idea in my tagline? Pretty ,pretty, pleeazee?