CINDY CONFOUNDS CRITICS
Cindy continues to confound the conservative pundits.
The rapidly dwindling minority of Americans who continue to search for some rationale for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq has been driven to the brink of breakdown by the success of Sheehan's protest.
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What the pro-war crowd does not understand is that Cindy Sheehan is not inspiring opposition to the occupation. She is merely putting a face on the mainstream sentiments of a country that has stopped believing the president's promises with regard to Iraq. According to the latest Newsweek poll, 61 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's handing of the war, while just 26 percent support the president's argument that large numbers of U.S. military personnel should remain in Iraq for as long as it takes to achieve the administration's goals there.
The supporters of this war have run out of convincing lies and effective emotional appeals. Now, they are reduced to attacking the grieving mothers of dead soldiers. Samuel Johnson suggested that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. But, with their attacks on Cindy Sheehan, the apologists for George Bush's infamy have found a new and darker refuge.
I have also listened to quite a few of the other grieving mothers the media has trotted out to counter Cindy's sentiments and have been struck by the fact that not a single one of them has been able to counter one of Cindy's points. To a woman, they've all persisted in the same meme, namely that they support Bush and the troops. Cindy clearly does not have a corner on the grief market, and has never claimed to, but I believe she has demonstrated convincingly to the media and to the largest segment of the public that she and her supporters have done a lot more independent thinking than the other side.
posted by Motherlode at 10:31 AM
1 Comments:
I appreciate so much your comments. Please accept my most heartfelt sympathies for your losses -- I won't pretend to even a smidgen of an idea of what that means to you, though as any mother I often wonder just how I would handle such a tragedy.
As the mother of five young adults, two sons and three daughters, I often contemplate just what losing one of them would mean, never more so than when my middle daughter joined the Air Force last year. You know, the Bible calls us "procreators," that is, creators together with God, of our children. I interpret that to mean that my children belong to God as well as to myself. They are life's most precious gift, and I regard my responsibility to them as one of stewardship. Like Cindy, if one of my children died for a cause I did not understand, I would wrack my heart and mind for a way to make that loss more meaningful to both myself and to my God. I think she's the very image of what many of us would like to believe about ourselves -- a woman of conviction, strength and an enduring and eternal love that reaches far beyond the boundaries of the grave. She honors her son's brave sacrifice by her actions and her words, and to denigrate either is unworthy.
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