CINDY SHEEHAN: "WHAT NOBLE CAUSE?"

[Zlatko Waterman]

( At AntiWar.com on Tues., Sept.20, 2005)




What Noble Cause?



by Cindy Sheehan



It has been one month, one week, and 4 days since I sat in a ditch in Crawford, Texas. My request was simple: I wanted to speak to the man who has sent over a million of our young people to fight, kill, and die in a country that was absolutely no threat to the United States of America. I wanted to ask him: "What is the Noble Cause that you keep talking about?"

Well, we all know now that George Bush never came down the road to talk to me. Thank God! Many people have been saying that I am the "spark," "catalyst," "face" of the anti-war movement, etc. I beg to differ. George Bush and his arrogant advisers are the spark that lit the prairie fire of peace activism that has swept over America and the entire world. If he had met with me that fateful day in August, it would not have been good for him (because I knew he was going to lie and I would have advertised that fact), but it would have had less of an impact on the peace movement if he had.

Upon reflection on the events of this past August, I have come up with two reasons why George could not meet with me: He is a coward and there is no Noble Cause. If George had as much courage and integrity in his entire body as Casey had in his pinky, he would have met with me. But, ironically, if George had that much courage and integrity, he never would have preemptively invaded a practically defenseless country. His sycophantic cabinet and hangers-on are also incontrovertible evidence that he is a coward. No one had better disagree with him. How dare a mom from Vacaville, California, have the nerve to contradict the emperor of Prairie Chapel Road?

All of the "Noble Cause" reasons that George has variously given for the invasion and continued illegal occupation of a sovereign nation are also patently false and ridiculous. He has been claiming recently (since he admitted a long time ago that Iraq had no WMDs or links to 9/11) that this occupation of Iraq is spreading "freedom and democracy" in the Middle East. Really? Does he have any idea that the constitution that the Iraqi governing body is working on is based on Sharia and that it undermines the freedoms of women? Does he realize that for over 50 years women had equal rights with men in Iraq? Does George realize (of course he does) that the puppet government the US put in place in Iraq is comprised of the very same people who encouraged the invasion to line their own pockets? What kind of freedom and democracy is this?

If George is so hellbent on freedom and democracy for Iraq, then why doesn't he practice them here in America? Up to 62 percent of Americans believe that what George has done in Iraq is a mistake and we should begin to bring our troops home. Well, George, 62 percent is a clear majority and you should begin to listen to the people who pay your salary.

He has also claimed that what we are doing in Iraq is "making America safer." This statement is even easier to disprove than the "freedom and democracy" baloney. To refute this little bit of deception, all we have to do is look at the Gulf states. Ask the people of New Orleans, especially, if they feel safer. By misappropriating all of our personnel and equipment, and pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the sands of Iraq, George has made our country more vulnerable to attack by outside forces. Also, from the cold and callous statements of people like Michael Chertoff and George's own mama, the people of New Orleans seem to be "acceptable" collateral damage to the ruling elite of this country.

It is my opinion that the only thing that will make America safer is to get George and his unfeeling and dangerously incompetent supporters out of our White House.

We all now know the reason that we are in Iraq. George told us so from a break he was taking from Crawford in San Diego on the same day that Katrina was hitting the Gulf States: it is for oil. It is so George, Dick, and their evil buddies can extract more money and power from our children's flesh and blood.

This is not a Noble Cause. It is a highly ignoble one. We as Americans knew either in the front of our brains, or in the back of our consciousness, that this war was to feed the corporate state. Fifteen brave young Americans have been killed so far this month while our attention has been focused, and rightfully so, on the Gulf states. More than 200 innocent and unfortunate Iraqis have been killed this week alone. How much more blood are we going to allow George, Congress, and the state-connected corporations to spill before we demand an end to this war and an accounting for the lives that have been needlessly ruined?

It is also time to stop hemorrhaging money in Iraq. I witnessed the abject poverty and sense of abandonment the less fortunate people of New Orleans were living in even before the levees broke. It is time to start taking care of Americans. How many millions of our tax dollars are we going to allow George, Congress, and the special-interest corporations to misuse and waste in Iraq?

Not one more drop of blood. Not one more life. Not one more penny for killing.

If you love our country and want to see a change for the better, come to DC on the 24th of this month and stand up and be counted for peace. The whole world is counting on you.


September 19, 2005

Cindy Sheehan [send her mail] is the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, KIA 04/04/04 She is co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace.

Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com

[mnaz]

( At AntiWar.com on Tues., Sept.20, 2005)




.....If George had as much courage and integrity in his entire body as Casey had in his pinky, he would have met with me. But, ironically, if George had that much courage and integrity, he never would have preemptively invaded a practically defenseless country.....


.....(Bush claims that) this occupation of Iraq is spreading "freedom and democracy" in the Middle East. Really? Does he have any idea that the constitution that the Iraqi governing body is working on is based on Sharia and that it undermines the freedoms of women?....

We all now know the reason that we are in Iraq. George told us so from a break he was taking from Crawford in San Diego on the same day that Katrina was hitting the Gulf States: it is for oil.....

This is not a Noble Cause. It is a highly ignoble one. We as Americans knew either in the front of our brains, or in the back of our consciousness, that this war was to feed the corporate state.....

She tells it like it is.

[jimboloco]

Oh, man, I'll use capitalls jesus,
damn mcCain, son of a bitch,
sounds curiously reasonable when he's
talking about the funding for Katrina recovery,
actually he is a dodger if ever there were one,
he buzzes like a blue arsed fly,
well, we have to account for the needs of the defense buidget
he's says he gotta stay the course in Iraq,
sounds sincere,
his connections with capital not so infamous as bush-cheney,
not necessarily in that order, yet cheney was always in training to be a yes man,
oh yeah, his peter principle,
unable to dissuade his younger boss from
giving his old company no-bid contracts,
no,
cheney-mccain,
the dream ticket for 2008,
man,

.....If George had as much courage and integrity in his entire body as Casey had in his pinky, he would have met with me. But, ironically, if George had that much courage and integrity, he never would have preemptively invaded a practically defenseless country.....

she said
and my uncle, my grandma's Aggie son-in-law, uncle creighton, said, "what you think about the vietnam war?"
he flew reconnaisannce in korea, oh no, an Aggie, a plantation oowner, cotton, pecans, shreveport, oh,
i said, "don wanna talk about it,"
he repeated his request, again i refused, an escalation building, again he asked, the same, so i suddenly said, in so sweet a refrain, man, i am telling you, i did, at my grandma's funeral reception, a family gathering at my aunt's daughter's hubbie's counttry mansion, man, oh yeah,
and so finally i said, shit,
"they'd have been better off if we'd have left them alone...."
and my grandma's trucker son-in-law- uncle gene, suddenly shouted from behind my back,
"I have more sense in one cell on my ass than you have in your whole body "

Mercy, now I would look at him and laugh........but then, 1984, yes, 1984, I was aghast. I looked at him, he yelled it out loud, not a muttering, so I yelled back, "War wimp!" and it got real quiet, Gene had broke his ankle in minor league baseball, a catcher,
never " served " JA,

shit,
his last words to me two days latyer, "it's history", he gave me a check for $2500
and when mty Aunt Cynthia informed me I was to get 1/2 my dead dad's share, $7,000, she said not to hear from me again./ She died two years later, Old Golds and diet pillz.

left town 1987, was back once,
but i got my exmarine radical friend there, bob mclane.make your synchronicitiez

[nannabug]

..

[mnaz]

I'll attempt an explanation. Casey Sheehan loved this country, so much so that he volunteered to serve it, to defend it. If you go down the ranks of everyone currently serving in the military, Iraq or otherwise, I'm sure you'll get the same response, or something near to it.

But one should not confuse the pure conviction of a young recruit with self-interested programs of high politicians, who may be willing to sacrifice these same young recruits to meet their own desired ends. Casey's mom, as I understand it, was fine with Casey's sacrifice, until she studied the matter further, and she began to suspect foul play. She studied how the Bush team manipulated intelligence to justify an unnecessary war.

Was she too late? I asked the same question myself. But it depends on your definition. What is "too late", if you have been deceived? Is there a time limit?

[nannabug]

..

[mnaz]

nanna..

I mentioned the 'time' factor because you did.... "why did Cindy Sheehan wait over a year", etc..... I wondered the same thing. But the flip-side of that question is, "why aren't there more Cindy Sheehans, by now?" Don't you suppose it's possible that she studied the matter on her own, and then finally decided to take a stand and speak out? Why do you assume that she was unduly influenced by the "anti-war-anti-Bush-anti-government" crowd? Perhaps she came to speak out against the deception of this war on her own accord, and not merely because of a grief-stricken, brainwashed, "convoluted path of reasoning."

And if greed is the likely ultimate downfall of the human race, then the more we piss and moan about it, the better. Would you prefer (enabling) silence?

[nannabug]

..

[knip]

i'm not sure 'falling in' is the right way to look at it...think of these types of things as with the ebb and flow of the tides...sometimes a swell comes along gives you higher springs than expected

i don't really understand either side of the cindy sheehan business...i don't know why one side chose her to latch onto and i don't know why the other side is so scared of her

actually, i have a good idea, but i don't 'know', ya know?

[jimboloco]

nobody's latching onto sheehan, man.

it is all about community, as it takes one to persevere in this mess.

and i have to say that sheehan is more than a passing phase. she is now a part of the history of the opposition movement.

and like mnaz says, it is a process, her evolution and really blossoming, or as some would say, an erupton. use your imagination. what would encompass a true military force for peace.
peacekeeping.

[Zlatko Waterman]

I think it's said rather well in this article:

http://www.zmag.org/content/print_artic ... ctionID=91


It's caring, not killing.

The point is peace, not Cindy.

More information here:


http://www.globalwomenstrike.net/

--Z

[jimboloco]

"If you ain't black, lesbian, pregnant, and in prison, you an opressor, babe!"

A network with national co-ordinations in 11 countries and participating organisations in over 60 countries. We demand the return of military budgets to the community, beginning with women the main carers of people and the planet. Women, and men who support our goals, take action together on 8 March, International Women’s Day, and throughout the year. In this way each grassroots struggle is backed by our collective power.

All kidding aside, the commander in chief as a republican woman with a spouse in serious maladjustment proplems, is no pre-lude to a new post-patriarchial society. Thank goodness the underground opposition has such creative and endearing enterprise as this one. Viva mujeres!

[Zlatko Waterman]

Yeah, Jim:

The stridency of a lot of that rhetoric comes from not owning nukes, like DUB does . . .


--Z

[knip]

perhaps 'latch' was the wrong word...i didn't mean to imply it was a phase....sometimes it takes a person to build that groundswell...not putting her in MLK's echelon, but the comparison is fitting...when i said i didn't understand why one side chose her to latch onto, i was saying i didn't understand why it took someone like her, AT THAT POINT IN TIME, to induce a swell...i don't understand why the swell wasn't generated sooner

[jimboloco]

Well she represents the human face of the other side of the war issue.
This is somewhat like potential energy. It needs to be enhanced, or released. There are other Gold Star Moms for Peace as well, yes it was a phenom, what happened as she was invited to the national convention of the Vets for Peace last summer in Dallas. It was there that she decided to mosey on down to Crawford. So a fortuitous blend of chemistry and the natinal media also paid attention.

As far as "latching" onto Sheehan, what I can agree with you about is the aspect of the March on Washington's organizers, A.N.S.W.E.R., an anti-global anti-IMF band of rather militant leftists whose agenda is far more strident than Sheehan's. I see her as more in concert with the growing, as a process, movement against the Iraq War, with the republican congressman from North Carolina, ?Jones, teaming up with Kucinich as a bipartisan initiative to promote a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.
This is the only way that we will see any of this impacting upon national policy. So the left is compartmentalised, yes, but A.N.S.W.E.R., who has organised all of the major anti-war political rallies in the past few years, is not really where the anti-war vets and the moms for peace are at. But we are all part of an opposition coalition that survives and lives as grassroots Americana looks for options. A groundswell of political power is not happening, but the movement is tenacious and will carry on. Meanwhile, up in Nelson, B.C., Canabis,.....I don't understand why the American people were so gullable in following our presidunce
in his folly that not only has made his buddies rich, but also has provided AlQaida with a fertile training groundswell in good old Baghdad on the bayou, a fertile crescent for the Intefada.

It is all about process, and the churnng out of dead soldiers takes a slow heavy toll, even as football season and the post-season of baseball, love it, it upon us. The calculation of the BushCo is inded that the Americans are shallow and easily persuaded, like before, and will continue to passively consume without major dissent, or political repercussion.

Remember, some of us were protesting the Iraq War before it started, and we have now in our ranks some vets who did the invasion as well as survivors of loved ones who died.