Summer Of Cindy

The din from the ranks of the Bush apologists is thunderous--Fox News is in full attack mode; the noxious pundits, from the hateful Ann Coulter to the loathsome Michelle Malkin, from the Bush bootlicker Sean Hannity, to the "fat-assed drug addict" Rush Limbaugh, have descended, like a fetid mushroom cloud, upon the airwaves in a full court press to silence a grieving mother from Vacaville, California, (a location which Fox's John Gibson, another Bush ass-kisser, was quick to remind us, with a fair and balanced wink, is in close proximity to the UC campuses of Berkeley and Davis, whatever that means).

Bill O'Reilly was even distracted from his summer-long obsession with a missing teenager to focus his self-serving, bullying gaze upon the events in Crawford, opining that Mrs. Sheehan was "in bed with the Left", (which to O'Reilly and the neocon machine includes anyone a single degree to the left of Sen. John McCain). When Sheehan refused to appear on his show O'Reilly brought on Dolores Kesterson, whose son Eric was killed in Iraq. In an admirable display of humble truth to arrogant power, Kesterson refuted O'Reilly's accusations against Sheehan and withstood his barrage of regurgitated Bush/RNC tripe. Most telling was Kesterson's account of standing face to face with Bush and the utter lack of conscience that she felt from him.

Cindy Sheehan has struck a subliminal nerve in the country's collective conscience and the National Security State ghouls have descended upon her like antibodies attacking a virulent pathogen, hellbent on wiping out the offending organism before it inflicts lethal damage upon their most favored host. It should come as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention, that this women, the latest in a long line of administration critics, (specifically in regard to its Iraq policy), would be trashed and smeared, just like former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neil; former National Security aide Richard Clarke; former ambassador Joe Wilson; and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, to name a few. In the shameful absence of the neutered and hapless Democrats, Cindy has emerged as the de facto "leader" of a growing anti-war movement, and will have to suffer the slings and arrows of the murderous right.

I don't expect that the President will meet with Sheehan. I wouldn't either. I wouldn't want to look in the eyes of a mother who lost a child in a war that I started under false pretenses. I certainly wouldn't want to risk the scrutiny of a private audience to the turgid platitudes that have been worn to bare threads from the once whole cloth of unity that enveloped the nation (and most of the civilized world) in the aftermath of 9/11.

Pat Buchanan, one of the few "conservatives" worthy of the the name, has written of Sheehan as an "anti-war catalyst" and of giving "a voice, a face, and a moral authority" to the growing anti-war movement. He makes comparisons to the summer of 1969, the nascent Nixon presidency, and the Vietnam War. Like many of us he's seen this kind of thing before.

Christopher Hitchens, condemning Sheehan in an essay at Slate.com writes, "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." I do not claim to speak for the fallen, and I too distrust anyone who claims to speak for them, but I distrust most of all the hysterical noncombatants who exploit the trauma of a national tragedy, and show absolutely no conscience at the carnage that they encourage, all in the name of "a noble cause".