I don’t get it. William Anderson,
posting on the Lew Rockwell.com blog, seems to have decided that it’s necessary
to state that “While I agree with Cindy Sheehan's antiwar stance, I also say
that she does not speak for me.”
Doesn’t speak for you about what, Bill? Isn’t opposition to the war Cindy Sheehan’s
one and only message?
Even after my repeated
attempts
to keep the focus of my protest on the war, the Drudge Report and others
continue to try to make the issue about me. But I am not the issue. The issue
is a disastrous war that's killing our sons and daughters and making our
country less secure. They attack me because they can no longer defend this war.
I've come to Crawford to bring to
the president's doorstep the harsh realities of a war he's been trying so hard
to avoid. But no matter what they say or how many shotguns they fire or how
many crosses
they destroy, they're not going to stop me from speaking out about a war
that needlessly killed my son….Cindy
Sheehan, 8/18/05
Now, there’s been much discussion in antiwar circles about protesting alongside those who drag extraneous and often offensive ideological issues
into demonstrations that should be focused exclusively on ending the war. Justin Raimondo, in today’s column, sensibly advises:
What's more, we need to build the antiwar demonstrations being held Sept.
24-26: what's needed is a massive mobilization that includes not only the
usual suspects but also antiwar
conservatives, military folks and their families, libertarians, and just plain
ordinary people who don't necessarily want to sign on to a whole laundry list
of leftist causes. Tell the ideologues to leave their hobby horses at home:
it's time to get serious about ending this war before it escalates beyond the power
of anyone to rein it in.:
Isn’t that exactly
what Cindy is trying to do -- keep her protest focused on confronting Bush in
an effort to end the killing? So what if
you don’t agree with her about everything she’s ever said.
But this is too much. Anderson continues, “However, I do not see Sheehan as a heroine. I have read too many of
her comments and seen quotes from her speeches and the like, and have come to
conclude that she is using her son's death for purposes that ultimately will
help expand the Leviathan State even more. She may
be anti-war, but she is no libertarian.”
By those standards, I think it's a legitimate question to ask Anderson why, when he
wrote an article titled “Some of My Heroes”
this
woman was one of five:
Marianne Jennings on war:
Reticence in
acknowledging a Republican victory for world order, peace and human rights in
[sic] understandable. Dove Nancy Pelosi grouses about cost, a new defense to
being absolutely wrong. Sen. Evan Bayh (D. Ind) did admit the error of
Democrats' ways on the war, but that such was a "one-time mistake." A
one-time mistake is a vice president misspelling "potato" as "potatoe."
Sheltering tyrants through misguided diplomacy, ignoring
intelligence warnings about WMD, and missing plutonium directly beneath the
feet of the U.N. inspectors are not one-time mistakes.
These folks grapple with mounds of truth via a dogged
pattern of its disregard along political lines. Those of us who stood firm on
the war because of terrorist threats and a pressing need for liberation now
stare in disbelief as everyone from Hollywood starlets to the New York Times hands us the old Cochran. There is a collective
liberal, "What? So?" as we point to their gargantuan errors.
Their dismissive stance allows them to advance new bogus
theories. Christine Onomatopoeia (whatever her name is --CNN's chief
correspondent in the Middle East) suggested that the "orgy" of
looting in Iraq
was the result of deposed Hussein order. Tyrants do have a way with cattle
prods, dismemberment, and people.
Implicit in the notion of mistake is
misunderstanding of fact. Liberals did not make a mistake; they acted in
deliberate defiance of truth. Apologies cannot compensate for obstructionist
behaviors that aided and abetted a despot. Liberals' continued Cochranesque
residence in denial land means they go on to give aid and comfort to Castro and
other favored troglodytes, taking along their national security experts: Sean
Penn, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, and the Dixie Chicks.
Marianne Jennings on the Abu Ghraib torture atrocities:
This past week we
learned that renegade U.S.
soldiers taunted some of the Iraqi radicals taken prisoner and, like all
morons, snapped Kodak moments of themselves engaged in cruel acts. The
liberals, the U.N., and terrorists with CNN all demanded an apology. Can the
trial lawyers be far from the Iraqi prison? When the Rev. Jesse Jackson rolls
in, reparations will flow.
Consumed with guilt, Mr. Bush, the leader of the free
world, groveled before Jordan
and even tried to woo Al-Jazeerah TV. He promised investigations and discipline
and took Rummy to the woodshed. If he'd released photos of that . . .
Beautiful!
The hyperbole surrounding these isolated acts is comical.
I hope that despite being one of Bill Anderson's heroes, Marianne Jennings doesn't speak for him. Anderson writes, “I'm just stating my own opinion, and many of
you know that to me, being against the Iraq war does not a libertarian
make. It is only one part of the equation.”
Puzzlingly, being a vocal cheerleader for the War Party, an
apologist for torture and practically a parody of statist Republican Bush worship
doesn’t disqualify Marianne Jennings from being William Anderson’s heroine. And, since when did Anderson's candidates for hero
status have to be libertarian?
Marianne
Jennings, “I have grown accustomed to minority
status as a conservative in a world bursting at the seams with liberals,
socialists, Marxists, and an occasional libertarian. Academic libertarians are
not principled. They miss the 60s, Woodstock,and being high. Libertarians are their carpool to legalized drugs.”
Apparently they don't even have to know what a libertarian is, much less have any respect for one.
Whatever, Bill. I
think you’re being just a bit inconsistent.
I think Michael sums up what Cindy Sheehan is doing for the antiwar movement well: As
Cindy Sheehan is reminding us, we don't especially need policy debate
right now. What we need, very badly need, are stories: and story is
just what the theater of Camp Casey is giving us. The right-wing
talking point—that Cindy Sheehan doesn't really want to engage in
dialogue with George Bush, that her demand for the dialogue he won't
give her (and wouldn't, even if he were improbably to meet with her) is
a sort of playacting—is accurate, but beside the point. The relations
of power are difficult to conceptualize, and can be even for people
trained to do that sort of thing. There is nothing difficult, on the
other hand, about the mother of a dead soldier standing ignored at the
end of the man's driveway who sent her son to be killed, waiting
stoically in the Texas sun for an answer she knows will never come. Nor
is there anything about it that doesn't speak volumes of truth to the
ugly situation in which we find our country, five years on in the
Rove/Cheney regime.
