Posted on 08/17/2005 5:55:48 AM PDT by KevinNuPac
Did The Anti-War Movement Martyr a Grieving Mother? By Kevin Fobbs
When Cindy Sheehan first camped down on August 6th in the president's hometown of Crawford, Texas, she was a barely noticed footnote on the daily news. Here was a grieving mother who had lost her son in the Iraqi War. Most of the nation who heard about her came to feel a sense of lost themselves, because the media was showing this tortured mother's soft voice, cracking at times as she presented her seemingly innocent case to America, with her target squarely set on the President of the United States, George W. Bush.
She told us that she simply wanted to share her feelings with the president. She had lost her son, and she just wanted a simple meeting with the president. The media managers in the background did not want her to be combative, did not want her to engage in open heckling...because that would drive her negatives way, way down and after all this was the president's summer home and some decorum would have to be followed.
What this innocent request of a mom tortured by the memory of her son did not show was the incredible media and political operation which was just waiting stage left, formulating, generating, manufacturing and tailoring an incredible anti-war hype machine, so well tailored and scripted that many Americans probably just wanted to stand up from their backyard barbeques and simply salute it.
But, just what were they saluting?
After all, this American mother simply wanted to share her honest feelings with the president. She had traveled from her hometown to plead her case to her son's former Commander In Chief. She wanted to sit down with the president and have him explain to her, why he had died and why he had fought in an unjust war, but it seems that she was not really prepared to listen to the president, because her conclusions had already been reached.
Cindy Sheehan, whom some in the anti-war movement have equated to the legendary civil rights warrior, Rosa Parks, has framed a new message for America. Does she represent all the grieving parents of America's Iraqi and Afghanistan war dead? What is she truly attempting to accomplish?
We don't know and she is not saying. We do know that this innocently crafted mystique that surrounded her initial request is not so innocent and also not so mysterious. Her media generated demand to have a sit down with the president was not to be her first but her second meeting with the president. You see, she actually had her first meeting with the president and parents of other soldiers who had also lost loved ones in battle.
This same martyred mother of the new anti-war movement actually had a different story to tell to the American public after her first meeting on June 24th of 2004 with the president. She told reporters that "I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith."
Her words were not tortured, or labored. They were not forced, they were not, insincere. They were the words of a grieving parent who recognized that the President of the United States had taken time out of his day to share a moment of life and grief and demonstrate that the man who had sent their loved one to war, who had been anguished to see and feel their loss, was with them in their grief that day.
What changed from that moment? Which grieving mother did the president see then and what grieving mother is the nation seeing now? The mother of Army Spc. Casey Sheehan who had been killed in Iraq journeyed with her husband Patrick and children to join the 17 other families who would meet with the president at Fort. Lewis, outside of Seattle, Washington.
The face-to-face with President Bush was commented on later by the "Rosa Parks" of the new and soon to dissipate anti-war movement, in very warm endearing ways. She said to a reporter, ""I now know [the president is] sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis. I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith."
Where was this same mother who said on the weekend of August 6th this year, something quite different? She said "He acted like it was a party. He came in very jovial-- like we should be happy that ... our son died for [the president's] misguided policies." Was she acting in good faith the first or second time? Was she acting in good faith when she told the press that she asked the president to make her son's sacrifice count for something?
What about the shared family gift the meeting with the president had given them? Her accounting of the time with the family was a special gift. For that precious moment in time, she and her family put aside their grief and felt complete and whole again. She commented at the time that "For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died." She added, "That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together."
So was it the anti-war movement, was it politics that caused this mother to change, to morph into this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because she forgot to share something that was on her mind then with the president? Did the anti-war and anti-Bush groups that she participated with last year decide to re-cast her into an "innocent" who just happened to show up on President Bush's doorstep this month?
Well what about the national ad campaign that she took part in last year funded by Move On.org? What about the anti-war machine's use of her story to move on against President Bush's re-election efforts?
Was her real pain exploited for a presidential contender? Was it more political than painful for MoveOn.org's political exploitation machine? Was she being politically used when the New York Times wrote that her national ad along with the other political ads were "scary"?
So again, what version of honest anguish is America seeing? MoveOn.org participated in an ad campaign featuring Cindy Sheehan and developed by an organization called "Real Voices. According to their website the organization was engaged in a "Battleground Campaign." They crafted an ad called "A Mother's Tears," with Cindy Sheehan talking about her son, Spc. Casey Sheehan. I could not help but feel anguish for her and outrage for the insincerity of the Real Voices' less than genuine use of her pain.
You see after you watched her mournful pain, you click back to the home page and there at the bottom of the page is the truth to this entire fabrication. You see, while the nation was seeing Cindy Sheehan's painful loss, the anti-war movement media manufacturing machine was mobilizing voters against the president during the presidential election year.
At the bottom of the seemingly impartial organization's webpage is this phrase: "Real Voices is a non-profit organization that spends 100% of its donations on effective political action. We advocate the election of John Kerry."
So there you have it. A real mother's loss and pain hijacked for sinister political purposes is perhaps the cruelest loss of decency for our nation and the hardest most difficult burden for the loved ones of our nation's honored war dead to bear.
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Kevin Fobbs is President of National Urban Policy Action Council (NuPac), a non-partisan civic and citizen-action organization that focuses on taking the politics out of policy to secure urban America's future one neighborhood, one city, and one person at a time. View NuPac on the web at www.nupac.info. Kevin Fobbs is a regular contributing columnist to the Detroit News. He is also Outreach Communications Vice Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and daily host of The Kevin Fobbs Show on News Talk WDTK - 1400 AM in Detroit as well as co-founder of the Jackson, MI-based American Conservative Values Television Network. Listen to The Kevin Fobbs Show online at www.wdtkam.com daily 2-3 p.m., and call in toll-free nationwide to make your opinion count at 800-923-WDTK(9385).
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I also found it interesting that she had participated in forums and presentations in college campuses demanding freedom for Palestinians. This wirter seems to have missed that.
Frankly, I'm concerned with how much she wants Bush to meet her. I'm not sure this woman wouldn't try to take him out. She had made comments that display some violent tendencies. I trust the Secret Service considers her a threat. The Left HATES this president and I wouldn't put it past them to egg someone on to get rid of him.
Very effective post - one comment (sorry the editor in me): judgment is not spelled with an "e" ; )
I think she wants to lose the rest of her family.
Doh! I knew that!
I've always been bad at proofing my own stuff! I think my brain sees what I meant to write rather than what I actually did!
Luck for me there are lots of good proof readers on FR!! Thx!
Great post!!
She want's these murdering Jihadists, the very same Arabs who murdered her son, the very same ones who in 1975 mass murdered 50,000 Christians in Lebanon, and have been murdering Jews in Israel to have "freedom"? I think they've had enough freedom, they should go back to where they came from and die. The "Palestinian" lie have gone on for too long.
This dingbat's true colors are showing through, she's a Jew hating, Islamic Jihad supporting leftist loon. I can't imagine any mother supporting the murderers of her own son, mass murderers of the mid east.
She should step in front of a bus.
I positively despise these hippies and hippie sympathizers and have since I first smelled them.
Happy to help.
"Judgement" is actually the spelling in England too - I assume we are all posting from the United States though?
A volunteer all the way; Casey enlisted, re-enlisted, volunteered for the mission that took his life and earned the Bronze Star trying to rescue fellow soldiers.
Casey Sheehan's actions in life are the antithesis of and a direct repudiation of Cindy Sheehan's views and actions!
Is Cindy Sheehan's grief deeper than the grief of the families of the other 1800+ KIA servicemen and women? Is she more important than they are? Is there even ONE family member of those 1800+ heroes standing with Windy Cindy? I don't think so.
The real story is about the 1800+ hero-patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom at home and in Iraq, (and many more in many other places around the world), and their loved ones who support them and honor them even when they disagree with their choices.
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/mwwodarch.pl?Jul.26
Did you know? "Judgment" can also be spelled "judgement," and usage experts have long disagreed over which spelling is the preferred one.Henry Fowler asserted, "The OED [Oxford English Dictionary] prefers the older and more reasonable spelling. 'Judgement' is therefore here recommended."
William Safire held an opposite opinion, writing, "My judgment is that Fowler is not to be followed." "Judgement" is in fact the older spelling, but it dropped from favor and for centuries "judgment" was the only spelling to appear in dictionaries.
That changed when the OED (Fowler's source) was published showing "judgement" as an equal variant.
Today, both spellings of the word are common. "Judgment" appears to be more popular in the U.S., whereas "judgement" is slightly more frequent in Britain.
I am aware of the "controversy" - I do not consider them equal variants however - as an attorney (at least here in California), I have never seen the "judgement" spelling used in legal work. I think it would be safer for Zac's Mom to use "judgment" for an American audience : )
I agree about the safety of using "judgment" for an American audience. Safety is an important consideration.
It is also good to remember that the WWW and other media have had an international audience for a good number of years and, even apart from that international influence, our language is in flux.
It will be interesting to watch the ways in which American English will become more like British English and vv.
Sure it is. It goes between the 'm' and the 'n'. Otherwise, it would be judgmnt. :=)
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