Dead Marine's Mom Protests at Bush Ranch - Page 6

leib10 · 08-18-2005, 10:03 AM

What do these people think that they're accomplishing? Obviously not much, as we're still in Iraq and we're still fighting, killing, and being killed.

Bluesman · 08-18-2005, 10:50 AM

Best. Steyn. Column. EVER:

Quote:

Hold your tears
Mark Steyn

New Hampshire

Is it only five years since the White House press corps was spending its summers traipsing round Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons watching Bill Clinton hang with Carly Simon and Steven Spielberg? Since the Bush terror, alas, they’ve been condemned under a little-known provision of the Patriot Act to confinement in Crawford, Texas for one whole month a year. Crawford is where George W. Bush has his ranch and, other than that distinction, it is (as I wrote here in August 2000) ‘a dusty crossroads in the middle of a drought-stricken, sun-broiled plain, population 690 — with five churches but not a single hotel’. Since the annual influx of journalists, they may have added a hotel but also no doubt half a dozen more churches just to wind up the godless hordes of the Fourth Estate.

Sadly, the media don’t seem to enjoy the annual joke. So, with no showbiz types to hand in the Greater Waco area, someone had the bright idea of importing a little entertainment. These days, come August and the cry goes up, ‘Hey, let’s do the show in George W. Bush’s barn.’ When it comes to political theatre, Crawford now finds itself playing host to the nation’s most critically acclaimed summer stock.

Last year it was former Georgia Senator Max Cleland, who took up residence outside the Bush ranch and demanded the President come out and denounce the Swift Boat veterans. Cleland, also a Vietnam vet and a triple amputee, was outraged that anyone would impugn Senator Kerry’s war record and was impugning Bush for not impugning the Swift vets for impugning Kerry. Anyway, the President never did come out to meet Cleland. He may still be there for all I know.

This year’s performer in residence is Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq last year. Mrs Sheehan is now very anti-war and has pledged to stay camped out in Crawford all August until the President has the guts to come out and see her for a face-to-face meeting. So far he’s sent his national security adviser and deputy chief of staff out to see her, but that’s like Clinton sending Janet Reno and Sidney Blumenthal to Carly Simon’s party. These no-name stand-ins were trying to ‘******** us into submission,’ complained Mrs Sheehan.

Her son’s loss — like Max Cleland’s wounds — is supposed to put her beyond reproach. For as the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd informed us, ‘The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.’

Really? Well, what about those other parents who’ve buried children killed in Iraq? Linda Ryan lost her son, Marine Corporal Marc Ryan, to ‘insurgents’ in Ramadi: ‘George Bush didn’t kill her son,’ says Mrs Ryan. ‘Her son made a decision to join the Armed Forces and defend our country.... George Bush was my son’s commander-in-chief. My son, Marc, totally believed in what he was doing.’

There are, sadly, hundreds of Linda Ryans across American: parents who buried children killed in Iraq and who honour their service to the nation. They don’t make the news. There’s one Cindy Sheehan and she’s on TV round the clock. She may not be emblematic of bereaved military families, but she’s certainly symbolic of media-Left desperation.

Still, she’s a mother. And, if you’re as heavily invested as Ms Dowd in the notion that those ‘killed in Iraq’ are ‘children’, then Mrs Sheehan’s status as grieving matriarch is a bonanza. I agree with Mrs Ryan: they’re not children in Iraq; they’re thinking adults who ‘made a decision to join the Armed Forces and defend our country’. Whenever I’m on a radio show these days, someone calls in and demands to know whether my children are in Iraq. Well, not right now. They range in age from five to nine, and though that’s plenty old enough to sign up for the jihad and toddle into an Israeli pizza parlour wearing a suicide-bomb, in most advanced societies’ armed forces they prefer to use grown-ups.

That seems to be difficult for the Left to grasp. Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ‘children’. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing.

I get many emails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes as if she’s auditioning for a minor supporting role in Sex and the City. The infantilisation of the military promoted by the Left is deeply insulting to America’s warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd’s purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that ‘of course’ they ‘support our troops’, because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.

So, when Cindy Sheehan came into view, Bush-disparagers from Washington to Hollywood cried ‘Bingo!’ ‘Cindy Sheehan is my hero,’ says Christine Lahti, former star of TV’s Chicago Hope. ‘You can run, Bush, but you can’t hide. Her courage is waking up America.’ Evidently it woke up motion-picture personality Viggo Mortensen, who flew to Crawford on a pilgrimage to Mrs Sheehan. For the press corps, it’s not exactly the Spielberg/Clinton summer summit in the Hamptons, but it’s as close as they’re going to get.

I resisted writing about ‘Mother Sheehan’ (as one leftie has proposed designating her), as it seemed obvious that she was at best a little unhinged by grief and at worst mentally ill. Start with her insistence on a face-to-face meeting with Bush. Even if you don’t think the President should see her, you can sympathise with the demand, born out of her anger and pain. But it turns out she’s already had a face-to-face meeting with Bush. Her son Casey was killed in April last year and in June the President met the Sheehans to offer his condolences. The story appeared in the 24 June 2004 edition of the Reporter, their hometown paper in Vacaville, California:

‘“I now know he’s sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,” Cindy said after their meeting. “I know he’s sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he’s a man of faith....”

‘For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again. “That was the gift the President gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,” Cindy said.’

Mrs Sheehan wants a second meeting with Bush because she no longer feels the way she did at the first one. Instead of gratitude for ‘the gift the President gave us’, she now says her son was ‘murdered by the Bush crime family’.

Also: ‘We have to impeach George Bush down to the person who picks up the dog **** in Washington! Let George Bush send his two little party animals to die in Iraq.’

Also: ‘You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana.... You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine.’

Well, OK, cut the lady some slack: a lot of folks get a bit overheated about Bush, and neocons, and Jews and so forth. But how about this? ‘America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for.’ That was part of her warm-up act for a speech by Lynne Stewart, the ‘activist’ lawyer convicted of conspiracy for aiding the terrorists convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

You can see why Lynne’s grateful to Mrs Sheehan. But why is Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Kerry’s running mate, sending out imploring letters headlined ‘Support Cindy Sheehan’s Right To Be Heard’? The politics of this isn’t difficult: the more Cindy Sheehan is heard, the more obvious it is she’s a kook to whom most Americans would give a wide berth.

Don’t take my word for it, ask her family. Casey Sheehan’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins put out the following statement:

‘The Sheehan family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq war and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son’s good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect.’

Ah, well, they’re not immediate family, so they lack Cindy’s ‘moral authority’. But how about Casey’s father, Pat Sheehan? Last Friday, in Solano County Court, Pat Sheehan filed for divorce. As the New York Times explained Cindy’s ‘separation’: ‘Although she and her estranged husband are both Democrats, she said she is more liberal than he is, and now, more radicalised.’

Toppling Saddam and the Taleban (Mrs Sheehan opposes US intervention in Afghanistan, too), destroying al-Qa’eda’s training camps and helping 50 million Muslims on the first steps to free societies aren’t worth the death of a single soldier. But Cindy Sheehan’s hatred of Bush is worth the death of her marriage. Watching her and her advanced case of Bush Derangement Syndrome on TV, I feel the way I felt about that mentally impaired Aussie concert pianist they got to play at the Oscars a few years ago.

It was suggested by the columnist Cal Thomas that Bush should agree to a (second) meeting — in public. Cindy Sheehan could let rip, but there would also be other bereaved moms of soldiers who don’t feel as she does, and maybe some bereaved Iraqi moms to tell of their gratitude for the liberation of their country from a psycho regime. It’s a fine idea, and I’m sure the reason Bush won’t do it is because he understands that Mrs Sheehan is having a mental breakdown in public and it would be cruel to take advantage of that. If only the Michael Moore Left had that much decency.

But in the wreckage of Pat and Cindy Sheehan’s marriage there is surely a lesson for the Democratic party. As Cindy says, they’re both Democrats, but she’s ‘more liberal’ and ‘more radicalised’. There are a lot of less liberal and less radicalised Dems out there: they’re soft-left-ish on healthcare and the environment and education and so forth; many have doubts about the war, but they love their country, they have family in the military, and they don’t believe in dishonouring American soldiers to make a political point. The problem for the Democratic party is that the Cindys are now the loudest voice: Michael Moore, Howard Dean, moveon.org, and Air America, the flailing liberal radio network distracting attention from its own financial scandals by flying down its afternoon host Randi Rhodes to do her show live from Camp Casey. The last time I heard Miss Rhodes she was urging soldiers called up for Iraq to refuse to go — i.e., to desert — and entertaining theories that 9/11 was Bush’s Reichstag fire.

On unwatched Sunday talk shows you can still stumble across the occasional sane responsible Dem. But, in the absence of any serious intellectual attempt to confront their long-term decline, all the energy on the Left is with the fringe. The Democratic party is a coalition of Pat Sheehans and Cindy Sheehans, and the noisier the Cindys get the more estranged the Pats are likely to feel. Sorry about that, but, if Mrs Sheehan can insist her son’s corpse be the determining factor in American policy on Iraq, I don’t see why her marriage can’t be a metaphor for the state of the Democratic party.

Casey Sheehan was a 21-year-old man when he enlisted in 2000. He re-enlisted for a second tour, and he died after volunteering for a rescue mission in Sadr City. Mrs Sheehan says she wishes she’d driven him to Canada, though that’s not what he would have wished and it was his decision. As to whether he died in vain, the Associated Press reported this week:

‘The capital’s Sadr City section was once a hotbed of Shiite Muslim unrest, but it has become one of the brightest successes for the US security effort. So far this year, there has been only one car bombing in the neighborhood, and only one American soldier has been killed.’

Cindy Sheehan is a woman whose grief has curdled into a narcissistic rage, and the Democrats cheering her on are cheering their own marginalisation. Most Americans will not follow where she’s gone — to the wilder shores of anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-Iraq, anti-Afghanistan, anti-Israel, anti-American paranoia. Casey Sheehan’s service was not the act of a child. A shame you can’t say the same about his mom’s new friends.

THL · 08-18-2005, 11:15 AM

Quote:

But why is Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Kerry’s running mate, sending out imploring letters headlined ‘Support Cindy Sheehan’s Right To Be Heard’?

No big secret I was a die-hard campaigning Kerry/Edwards supporter. I have not yet received one of Elizabeth's letters ( since I am on the campaign list, I expect to get one anyday

), but if this is true, I have got to be thankful Edwards is not in there. I was not voting for or campaigning for his wife, but I am not naive enough to think that she would not have had the slightest bit of influence on her husband. I feel extreme dissappointment over Mrs. Edwards right now.

Quote:

There are a lot of less liberal and less radicalised Dems out there: they’re soft-left-ish on healthcare and the environment and education and so forth; many have doubts about the war, but they love their country, they have family in the military, and they don’t believe in dishonouring American soldiers to make a political point. The problem for the Democratic party is that the Cindys are now the loudest voice: Michael Moore, Howard Dean, moveon.org, and Air America, the flailing liberal radio network distracting attention from its own financial scandals by flying down its afternoon host Randi Rhodes to do her show live from Camp Casey. The last time I heard Miss Rhodes she was urging soldiers called up for Iraq to refuse to go — i.e., to desert — and entertaining theories that 9/11 was Bush’s Reichstag fire.

I have said it before and I say it again - The Cindy Sheehans need their own party so they will stop being lumped in with the Democrats listed above. They are killing us.

Bluesman · 08-18-2005, 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TopHatsLiberal

I have said it before and I say it again - The Cindy Sheehans need their own party so they will stop being lumped in with the Democrats listed above. They are killing us.

I disagree with you. The Democrats are what they are. They saw fit to make Dean the head of their party, so NO, Cindy Sheehan isn't 'fringe', while you represent the mainstream. It's the other way 'round.

YOU need to find a new party. If they're too far left for you, they show no inclination to move to the right. Hell, even Hillary is said to be positioning herself to the right-center - HILLARY, for God's sake!

If that is what counts as 'centrist' in the Democratic Party these days, dearie, you're homeless, ideaologically-speaking.

Find a party that can support your belief system, because the Dems have absolutely gone over the Liberal Cliff, and are in free-fall. TO expect them to reverse course at this stage is simply not realistic.

Anon · 08-18-2005, 11:37 AM

Gotta agree, in the Dem party it's people like THL that are the 'fringe' element, not the far left.

dalem · 08-18-2005, 12:28 PM

Exactly. The true Democrats need to take Lieberman and split off from the insane lefties and form a new party. One that I could consider voting for again.

-dale

Bluesman · 08-18-2005, 14:23 PM

Another column:

Quote:

CINDY SHEEHAN: COMMANDER IN GRIEF
by Ann Coulter
August 17, 2005

To expiate the pain of losing her firstborn son in the Iraq war, Cindy Sheehan decided to cheer herself up by engaging in Stalinist agitprop outside President Bush's Crawford ranch. It's the strangest method of grieving I've seen since Paul Wellstone's funeral. Someone needs to teach these liberals how to mourn.

Call me old-fashioned, but a grief-stricken war mother shouldn't have her own full-time PR flack. After your third profile on "Entertainment Tonight," you're no longer a grieving mom; you're a C-list celebrity trolling for a book deal or a reality show.

We're sorry about Ms. Sheehan's son, but the entire nation was attacked on 9/11. This isn't about her personal loss. America has been under relentless attack from Islamic terrorists for 20 years, culminating in a devastating attack on U.S. soil on 9/11. It's not going to stop unless we fight back, annihilate Muslim fanatics, destroy their bases, eliminate their sponsors and end all their hope. A lot more mothers will be grieving if our military policy is: No one gets hurt!

Fortunately, the Constitution vests authority to make foreign policy with the president of the United States, not with this week's sad story. But liberals think that since they have been able to produce a grieving mother, the commander in chief should step aside and let Cindy Sheehan make foreign policy for the nation. As Maureen Dowd said, it's "inhumane" for Bush not "to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

I'm not sure what "moral authority" is supposed to mean in that sentence, but if it has anything to do with Cindy Sheehan dictating America's foreign policy, then no, it is not "absolute." It's not even conditional, provisional, fleeting, theoretical or ephemeral.

The logical, intellectual and ethical shortcomings of such a statement are staggering. If one dead son means no one can win an argument with you, how about two dead sons? What if the person arguing with you is a mother who also lost a son in Iraq and she's pro-war? Do we decide the winner with a coin toss? Or do we see if there's a woman out there who lost two children in Iraq and see what she thinks about the war?

Dowd's "absolute" moral authority column demonstrates, once again, what can happen when liberals start tossing around terms they don't understand like "absolute" and "moral." It seems that the inspiration for Dowd's column was also absolute. On the rocks.

Liberals demand that we listen with rapt attention to Sheehan, but she has nothing new to say about the war. At least nothing we haven't heard from Michael Moore since approximately 11 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001. It's a neocon war; we're fighting for Israel; it's a war for oil; Bush lied, kids died; there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Turn on MSNBC's "Hardball" and you can hear it right now. At this point, Cindy Sheehan is like a touring company of Air America radio: Same old script and it's not even the original cast.

These arguments didn't persuade Hillary Clinton or John McCain to vote against the war. They didn't persuade Democratic primary voters, who unceremoniously dumped anti-war candidate Howard Dean in favor of John Kerry, who voted for the war before he voted against it. They certainly didn't persuade a majority of American voters who re-upped George Bush's tenure as the nation's commander in chief last November.

But now liberals demand that we listen to the same old arguments all over again, not because Sheehan has any new insights, but because she has the ability to repel dissent by citing her grief.

On the bright side, Sheehan shows us what Democrats would say if they thought they were immunized from disagreement. Sheehan has called President Bush "that filth-spewer and warmonger." She says "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started" and "the killing has gone on unabated for over 200 years." She calls the U.S. government a "morally repugnant system" and says, "This country is not worth dying for." I have a feeling every time this gal opens her trap, Michael Moore gets a residuals check.

Evidently, however, there are some things worth killing for. Sheehan recently said she only seemed calm "because if I started hitting something, I wouldn't stop 'til it was dead." It's a wonder Bush won't meet with her.

COPYRIGHT 2005 ANN COULTER

DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE

leib10 · 08-18-2005, 18:28 PM

I think the ***** finally took off:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9001021/

Bluesman · 08-18-2005, 23:41 PM

Okay, we're technically in the 'U.S. Politics' area now, but since this thread drifted that way, I wanted to post one more article about 'What's wrong with the Democrats' before moving on (this one's for you, TopHatsLiberal:

Quote:

8.17.2005

How to waste $80 million

[Posted 10:06 PM by James Piereson]

"At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades."

This is the opening sentence of a most interesting article written by reporter Thomas Edsall and published last week (August 7) in The Washington Post. The $80 or more million so raised in this effort will be channelled through something called the Democracy Alliance, the brainchild of Rob Stein, a Democratic party strategist and self described "venture capitalist" who has made a careful study of the conservative network of research institutes and advocacy groups. This network, in his opinion, has been greatly responsible for the success of Republican candidates and conservative initiatives in recent decades. He concludes that Democrats and liberals can be just as successful if they can only build a parallel network. The logic is sound, but the premise may be faulty: because the conservatives did it, it does not follow that the liberals can do it, too. But this objection is perhaps irrelevant right now.

The results of last year's election, and the continuing erosion of Democratic strength in the Congress and in many state governments around the country, has convinced Stein and these wealthy donors that the time has come to try something a little different -- and perhaps a little desperate. George Soros and friends spent as much as $100 million or more last year trying to defeat George Bush, but once the votes were counted, there was not much left to show for the expenditure of all that money. It now appears (according to the article) that two of the key Soros-funded groups -- the Media Fund and America Coming Together -- are in financial distress, and may not even survive much longer. Soros, however, has assumed only a "modest role" in the new Democracy Alliance.

Stein and his associates are fairly hard-headed in their assessment of the reasons behind the failure of Democrats and liberals to develop attractive ideas and proposals. Liberal groups, they say correctly, are organized mainly to protect an agenda that was enacted by Democratic majorities stretching back to the 1930s. They might have added that they are organized also around a few important Supreme Court decisions, primarily dealing with abortion and affirmative action. In any case, such a posture has made them reactive and reactionary rather than forward looking. As a consequence, they have not adjusted to new political and economic circumstances.

This is, as noted, correct as far as it goes, except that it does not go very far in diagnosing what ails the liberals. They should remember, as many Americans do, that liberals had an opportunity to enact their agenda in the 1960s and 1970s, and almost wrecked the nation in the process. It was conservatives and Republicans who rescued the economy, won the Cold War, and saved the cities from crime, stagnation, and welfarism. The liberals, because they controlled the television networks and the news media in general, along with the universities, concluded that they were in a position to dictate terms to their fellow citizens, and did not need to persuade anyone with facts, evidence, and argument. Thus the typical liberal approach to any situation was to issue demands or to file a lawsuit -- approaches that dispensed with the need to persuade anyone that their ideas were best for the nation. The rise of alternative television networks and newspapers has now rendered these tactics hopelessly ineffective. Now no one (except unfortunate college students) is required to pay any attention at all to the liberals. And most do not.

New thinking may be required, but there is precious little evidence in this article that such thinking is in fact underway. Mr. Stein and his colleagues have outlined a thoughtful strategy, but have not said what they seek to accomplish. They have presented a road map but have not identified any destination. Nor have they identified any dead ends that they will now abandon. They will find out soon enough that their main difficulty is not so much the absence of new ideas but the real presence of powerful constituent groups that refuse to adjust their goals or allow new groups to take their place.

Mr. Stein must be a very persuasive fellow to have convinced all these donors to ante up $1 million apiece for this initiative. It would be a most difficult task to emulate this achievement on the conservative side. Still, one has a sense that he has pulled a fast one on these wealthy liberals. He claims that conservative groups outspend progressive groups by some $295 million per year to just $75 million, a disparity that is not even remotely close to the real facts of the situation. For example, in a recent year the following liberal and progressive groups spent the following sums:

· The American Civil Liberties Union, $60 million;
· The Urban Institute, $80 million;
· the Natural Resources Defense Council, $55 million;
· World Wildlife Fund, $118 million;
· the NAACP, $40 million.
And this listing only scratches the surface, as it does not include such groups as the Urban League, the Sierra Club, National Organization for Women, National Abortion Rights Action League, Alliance for Justice, the Environmental Defense Fund, La Raza, and others too numerous to mention or even to count. Nor does it include the various university programs designed to propagandize in favor of the progressive agenda. By any reasonable measure, progressive groups outspend conservative groups on an annual basis by a factor of at least 10 to 1.
Such facts will naturally cause liberals to wonder why so little has been achieved over the years by the expenditure of so much money. Conservatives might also feel a sense of alarm over such a disparity and also over the fact that so much new money is available to fund liberal initiatives. While conservatives may have more potent ideas and may spend their money more efficiently, they ought not to feel any sense of complacency. They, too, will have to continue their investment in ideas if they are to stay ahead in this intensely competitive game.

It would not, in fact, be all that difficult to tell the liberals what they need to do to regain the initiative in political debates and to regain a measure of popular support sufficient to win national elections. Such advice could be summarized in a few short paragraphs at a cost far less than $80 million. One might, indeed, be tempted to offer it for the good of the country. But on the other hand, maybe not.

Leader · 08-19-2005, 00:10 AM

"At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades."

The classic liberal fallacy that more money is the solution to every "problem."

THL · 08-19-2005, 08:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bluesman

I disagree with you. The Democrats are what they are. They saw fit to make Dean the head of their party, so NO, Cindy Sheehan isn't 'fringe', while you represent the mainstream. It's the other way 'round.

YOU need to find a new party. If they're too far left for you, they show no inclination to move to the right. Hell, even Hillary is said to be positioning herself to the right-center - HILLARY, for God's sake! If that is what counts as 'centrist' in the Democratic Party these days, dearie, you're homeless, ideaologically-speaking.

Find a party that can support your belief system, because the Dems have absolutely gone over the Liberal Cliff, and are in free-fall. TO expect them to reverse course at this stage is simply not realistic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by M21Sniper

Gotta agree, in the Dem party it's people like THL that are the 'fringe' element, not the far left.

The conservatives are not yet ready to accept the views of the "Central Dems" where I fall and the "Cindy Sheehans" of the world are a complete embarrassment to us...so, Wow, Bluesman - I am almost ideaologically homeless.

Central walking Democrats have not given our name up to the far lefts just yet, though. We still have an election or two left in us.

**Shek** · 08-19-2005, 10:00 AM

http://www.citizen-journal.net/gmhom...s/00000204.htm

An Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan - From the Proud Father of a U.S. Marine
By Brantley Smith
Posted On August 17, 2005 [12 Comments]
Ms. Sheehan,

By your actions over the past two weeks it is clear that you missed an important aspect of Civics 101: With rights come responsibilities. You certainly have the right to voice your opinion against the war in Iraq and the President’s policies. You even have the right to camp outside the President’s home in Crawford and demand he meet with you. Your status as a mother who has lost a child in the war also gives your words and actions a credibility and a larger audience than otherwise would be the case. Now that your supporters have given you a broad forum from which to be heard, making you a national figure, its time you considered your responsibilities to all of us. I have a daughter set to deploy to Fallujah in two weeks and I have a serious concern with how your irresponsible and short sighted actions might impact on her. She is, after all, a volunteer, like your son, and she is going in harm’s way because she believes it is her responsibility to protect your rights and freedoms.

Well meaning people like you always seem to forget the law of unintended consequences and in your vanity and arrogant self-righteousness never bother to think through what it is you are trying to do versus what you may actually accomplish. I am here to inform you, Ma’am, that you will not change the policy of our government by sitting outside Crawford making a spectacle of yourself in the name of your rights to free speech; what you will do is provide more propaganda for our enemies and cost the lives of even more brave and selfless American warriors. How long do you think it will be before you become a star on Al Jazeera? For all I know, it may have already happened. One thing is certain, though, and that is that your actions and words will further embolden a ruthless and evil enemy and more American blood will be shed and some of it will be on your hands. I pray that my daughter will not be one of them. If she is, then I will hold you and those like you partly responsible. Yes, my daughter's fate will depend mostly on her own courageous decision to serve, but only the most naive among us can deny the impact our own words and actions here in America have in a world grown smaller by the revolution in communications technology.

I am sure you believe that you are serving some great cause by putting our servicemen and women in more danger and that you can, by your irresponsible exercise of free speech, help end a policy you disagree with. Your emotion may be compelling but the reality is that you will not set in motion any process that will change or undo what has been done. The war will go on because to end it now would dishonor the sacrifice of all of our fellow countrymen who have died in the cause of fighting terrorism. Rational Americans will not allow that. Too much is at stake. Unfortunately, shallow and irrational ones, such as yourself, will continue to put the lives of our sons and daughters in danger by aiding and abetting an enemy who sees propagandizing in the mass media as its main weapon in a war it could otherwise not win standing on its own wretched and evil justification of radical Islam, or by force of arms. You, Ma’am, have joined forces with an evil you neither understand nor apparently have tried to comprehend. You direct your anger toward our country while the enemy plots to kill and maim the innocent. You make a mockery of responsible free speech while thousands of young men and women fight desperately to preserve your safety. Instead of honoring your son’s sacrifice you are inspired to comfort an evil enemy.

You clearly do not understand the challenge we face as a nation and have not tried to put it in historical perspective. It is a sad fact that it is those of your thinking that have led us to where we are today. Decades of appeasement to these haters of everything we hold dear has cost thousands of American lives from Beirut to New York and in dozens of other forgotten places. Remember Lockerbie? The Achille Lauro? The USS Cole? We as a people were dragged into this war, much like December 7th, 1941, and we must fight and win it wherever the enemy hides and against whomever would support him. Make no mistake about Iraq. It is both a legitimate and crucial campaign in this much larger, global war of radical Islam’s making. These people hate us for who we are, not what we have done. We did not bring this on ourselves, as many would have us believe, by our policies and actions abroad. We brought this on ourselves in 1775 when the Founding Fathers embarked on a course of freedom, tolerance, and liberal democratic and social ideals. These haters of all we hold dear strive to destroy forever a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” that Abraham Lincoln hoped would never “Perish from the earth”. They would replace it with an oppressive world theocracy unlike anything modern history has ever seen for its ruthless disregard for personal freedom and liberty. If more appeasement is your answer for an alternative policy, spare us. We have suffered enough from cowardice and inaction.

An historical analogy screams to be let out here. It is one of two men, both named Chamberlain. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a school teacher turned soldier in the American Civil War, found himself in the crosshairs of history on a warm July day in 1863 on a small hill in Pennsylvania. Commanding the 20th Maine Regiment on the extreme Union left at Gettysburg he was in a most perilous position. Should he fail to hold against a strong Confederate attack, the Union could be lost. You see, he was serving in an increasingly unpopular war at home against a resurgent enemy, and for a President fighting for his political life. Colonel Chamberlain, stoic but determined, refused to yield. His small regiment held against an onslaught of Confederate attacks, an action many historians believe turned the tide of the war. He was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The other half of this analogy focuses on Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain in the years preceding World War II. His story is widely known. Through his policy of appeasement and a lack of moral courage, he handed Adolf Hitler much of Europe. Which side of history have you chosen, Ma’am?

Your son died in the service of freedom and my daughter will go in harm’s way to protect and preserve it. Honor their sacrifice, Ma’am, by exercising it responsibly.

I will pray with you and I will grieve with you but I will not stand by silent while you needlessly and arrogantly endanger the life of my daughter and her comrades in arms. Please bless us with your silence and go home.

Brantley Smith
Proud father of a United States Marine
Tullahoma, TN
email: usmcengr@aol.com

Anon · 08-19-2005, 11:45 AM

It seems to me that the major difference between center-left and center-right is the name.

THL · 08-19-2005, 12:46 PM

"Which side of history have you chosen, Ma’am?

Your son died in the service of freedom and my daughter will go in harm’s way to protect and preserve it. Honor their sacrifice, Ma’am, by exercising it responsibly.

I will pray with you and I will grieve with you but I will not stand by silent while you needlessly and arrogantly endanger the life of my daughter and her comrades in arms. Please bless us with your silence and go home."

I hope, by some miracle, this gets broadcast to her - may she finally get the message.

08-18-2005, 10:03 AM	#76 (permalink)
leib10 HKHolic *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 02-17-05 Location: Lubbock, TX Posts: 3,256 Country:	What do these people think that they're accomplishing? Obviously not much, as we're still in Iraq and we're still fighting, killing, and being killed. __________________ "The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes." G-Man

08-19-2005, 00:10 AM	#85 (permalink)
Leader Ubi dubium ibi libertas *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 09-04-03 Location: Boston, MA, USPRA Posts: 5,124	"At least 80 wealthy liberals have pledged to contribute $1 million or more apiece to fund a network of think tanks and advocacy groups to compete with the potent conservative infrastructure built up over the past three decades." The classic liberal fallacy that more money is the solution to every "problem." __________________ "Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have." "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" NEVER FORGET

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes	Rate This Thread
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode	Rate This Thread:

08-18-2005, 11:37 AM	#80 (permalink)
Anon New Member Join Date: 08-03-03 Posts: 0	Gotta agree, in the Dem party it's people like THL that are the 'fringe' element, not the far left.

08-18-2005, 12:28 PM	#81 (permalink)
dalem Lord High Hullabalooster *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 11-23-04 Location: Columbia Heights, MN Posts: 8,737 Country:	Exactly. The true Democrats need to take Lieberman and split off from the insane lefties and form a new party. One that I could consider voting for again. -dale

08-18-2005, 18:28 PM	#83 (permalink)
leib10 HKHolic *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 02-17-05 Location: Lubbock, TX Posts: 3,256 Country:	I think the ***** finally took off: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9001021/

08-19-2005, 10:00 AM	#87 (permalink)
Shek *Military Professional* Moderator Join Date: 02-23-05 Location: Krblachistan Posts: 7,958 Country:	http://www.citizen-journal.net/gmhom...s/00000204.htm An Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan - From the Proud Father of a U.S. Marine By Brantley Smith Posted On August 17, 2005 [12 Comments] Ms. Sheehan, By your actions over the past two weeks it is clear that you missed an important aspect of Civics 101: With rights come responsibilities. You certainly have the right to voice your opinion against the war in Iraq and the President’s policies. You even have the right to camp outside the President’s home in Crawford and demand he meet with you. Your status as a mother who has lost a child in the war also gives your words and actions a credibility and a larger audience than otherwise would be the case. Now that your supporters have given you a broad forum from which to be heard, making you a national figure, its time you considered your responsibilities to all of us. I have a daughter set to deploy to Fallujah in two weeks and I have a serious concern with how your irresponsible and short sighted actions might impact on her. She is, after all, a volunteer, like your son, and she is going in harm’s way because she believes it is her responsibility to protect your rights and freedoms. Well meaning people like you always seem to forget the law of unintended consequences and in your vanity and arrogant self-righteousness never bother to think through what it is you are trying to do versus what you may actually accomplish. I am here to inform you, Ma’am, that you will not change the policy of our government by sitting outside Crawford making a spectacle of yourself in the name of your rights to free speech; what you will do is provide more propaganda for our enemies and cost the lives of even more brave and selfless American warriors. How long do you think it will be before you become a star on Al Jazeera? For all I know, it may have already happened. One thing is certain, though, and that is that your actions and words will further embolden a ruthless and evil enemy and more American blood will be shed and some of it will be on your hands. I pray that my daughter will not be one of them. If she is, then I will hold you and those like you partly responsible. Yes, my daughter's fate will depend mostly on her own courageous decision to serve, but only the most naive among us can deny the impact our own words and actions here in America have in a world grown smaller by the revolution in communications technology. I am sure you believe that you are serving some great cause by putting our servicemen and women in more danger and that you can, by your irresponsible exercise of free speech, help end a policy you disagree with. Your emotion may be compelling but the reality is that you will not set in motion any process that will change or undo what has been done. The war will go on because to end it now would dishonor the sacrifice of all of our fellow countrymen who have died in the cause of fighting terrorism. Rational Americans will not allow that. Too much is at stake. Unfortunately, shallow and irrational ones, such as yourself, will continue to put the lives of our sons and daughters in danger by aiding and abetting an enemy who sees propagandizing in the mass media as its main weapon in a war it could otherwise not win standing on its own wretched and evil justification of radical Islam, or by force of arms. You, Ma’am, have joined forces with an evil you neither understand nor apparently have tried to comprehend. You direct your anger toward our country while the enemy plots to kill and maim the innocent. You make a mockery of responsible free speech while thousands of young men and women fight desperately to preserve your safety. Instead of honoring your son’s sacrifice you are inspired to comfort an evil enemy. You clearly do not understand the challenge we face as a nation and have not tried to put it in historical perspective. It is a sad fact that it is those of your thinking that have led us to where we are today. Decades of appeasement to these haters of everything we hold dear has cost thousands of American lives from Beirut to New York and in dozens of other forgotten places. Remember Lockerbie? The Achille Lauro? The USS Cole? We as a people were dragged into this war, much like December 7th, 1941, and we must fight and win it wherever the enemy hides and against whomever would support him. Make no mistake about Iraq. It is both a legitimate and crucial campaign in this much larger, global war of radical Islam’s making. These people hate us for who we are, not what we have done. We did not bring this on ourselves, as many would have us believe, by our policies and actions abroad. We brought this on ourselves in 1775 when the Founding Fathers embarked on a course of freedom, tolerance, and liberal democratic and social ideals. These haters of all we hold dear strive to destroy forever a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” that Abraham Lincoln hoped would never “Perish from the earth”. They would replace it with an oppressive world theocracy unlike anything modern history has ever seen for its ruthless disregard for personal freedom and liberty. If more appeasement is your answer for an alternative policy, spare us. We have suffered enough from cowardice and inaction. An historical analogy screams to be let out here. It is one of two men, both named Chamberlain. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a school teacher turned soldier in the American Civil War, found himself in the crosshairs of history on a warm July day in 1863 on a small hill in Pennsylvania. Commanding the 20th Maine Regiment on the extreme Union left at Gettysburg he was in a most perilous position. Should he fail to hold against a strong Confederate attack, the Union could be lost. You see, he was serving in an increasingly unpopular war at home against a resurgent enemy, and for a President fighting for his political life. Colonel Chamberlain, stoic but determined, refused to yield. His small regiment held against an onslaught of Confederate attacks, an action many historians believe turned the tide of the war. He was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The other half of this analogy focuses on Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain in the years preceding World War II. His story is widely known. Through his policy of appeasement and a lack of moral courage, he handed Adolf Hitler much of Europe. Which side of history have you chosen, Ma’am? Your son died in the service of freedom and my daughter will go in harm’s way to protect and preserve it. Honor their sacrifice, Ma’am, by exercising it responsibly. I will pray with you and I will grieve with you but I will not stand by silent while you needlessly and arrogantly endanger the life of my daughter and her comrades in arms. Please bless us with your silence and go home. Brantley Smith Proud father of a United States Marine Tullahoma, TN email: usmcengr@aol.com

08-19-2005, 11:45 AM	#88 (permalink)
Anon New Member Join Date: 08-03-03 Posts: 0	It seems to me that the major difference between center-left and center-right is the name.

08-19-2005, 12:46 PM	#89 (permalink)
THL *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 06-23-05 Location: 35 minutes outside Chicago (please don't refer to it as "Chi-Town"...that's annoying) Posts: 5,711 Country:	"Which side of history have you chosen, Ma’am? Your son died in the service of freedom and my daughter will go in harm’s way to protect and preserve it. Honor their sacrifice, Ma’am, by exercising it responsibly. I will pray with you and I will grieve with you but I will not stand by silent while you needlessly and arrogantly endanger the life of my daughter and her comrades in arms. Please bless us with your silence and go home." I hope, by some miracle, this gets broadcast to her - may she finally get the message.

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)