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( Cindy Sheehan is the eye of the shitstorm against BushCo, as Tom Engelhardt sees it . . .)


( paste)


On Being in a Ditch at the Side of the Road
by Tom Engelhardt


Tom Dispatch


Retired four-star Army General Barry McCaffrey to Time magazine: "The Army's wheels are going to come off in the next 24 months. We are now in a period of considerable strategic peril. It's because Rumsfeld has dug in his heels and said, I cannot retreat from my position."

Cindy Sheehan testifying at Rep. John Conyers public hearings on the Downing Street Memo: "My son, Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, was KIA in Sadr City Baghdad on 04/04/04. He was in Iraq for only two weeks before [Coalition Provisional Authority head] L. Paul Bremer inflamed the Shi'ite militia into a rebellion which resulted in the deaths of Casey and six other brave soldiers who were tragically killed in an ambush. Bill Mitchell, the father of Sgt. Mike Mitchell who was one of the other soldiers killed that awful day is with us here. This is a picture of Casey when he was seven months old. It's an enlargement of a picture he carried in his wallet until the day he was killed. He loved this picture of himself. It was returned to us with his personal effects from Iraq. He always sucked on those two fingers. When he was born, he had a flat face from passing through the birth canal, and we called him 'Edward G.,' short for Edward G. Robinson. How many of you have seen your child in his/her premature coffin? It is a shocking and very painful sight. The most heartbreaking aspect of seeing Casey lying in his casket, for me, was that his face was flat again because he had no muscle tone. He looked like he did when he was a baby laying in his bassinette. The most tragic irony is that if the Downing Street Memo proves to be true, Casey and thousands of people should still be alive."

Donald Rumsfeld testifying before the House Armed Services Committee in March 2005: "The world has seen, in the last three and a half years, the capability of the United States of America to go into Afghanistan … and with 20,000, 15,000 troops working with the Afghans do what 200,000 Soviets couldn't do in a decade. They've seen the United States and the coalition forces go into Iraq. … That has to have a deterrent effect on people." (Ann Scott Tyson, "U.S. Gaining World's Respect From Wars, Rumsfeld Asserts," the Washington Post, March 11, 2005 [scroll down])

George Bush on arriving for a meeting with families of the bereaved, including Cindy Sheehan and her husband on June 17, 2004: "So who are we honoring here?"

A teaser at the "Careers and Jobs" screen of GoArmy.com: "Want an extra $400 a month?" Click on it and part of what comes up is: "Qualified active Army recruits may be eligible for AIP [Assignment Incentive Pay] of $400 per month, up to 36 months for a total of up to $14,400, if they agree to be assigned to an Army-designated priority unit with a critical role in current global commitments."

Who Is in That Ditch?

Casey Sheehan had one of those small "critical roles" in the "current global commitment" in Iraq that, in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's words, "has to have a deterrent effect on people." As it happens, Sheehan was one of the unexpectedly deterred and now, along with 1,846 other American soldiers, is interred, leaving his take-no-prisoners mother Cindy – a one-person antiwar movement – with a critical role to play in awakening Americans to the horrors, and dangers, of the Bush administration's "current global commitments."

Over the last two years, administration officials, civilian and military, have never ceased to talk about "turning corners" or reaching "tipping points" and achieving "milestones" in the Iraq-War-that-won't-end. Now it seems possible that Cindy Sheehan in a spontaneous act of opposition – her decision to head for Crawford, Texas, to face down a vacationing president and demand an explanation for her son's death – may produce the first real American tipping point of the Iraq War.

As a million news articles and TV reports have informed us, she was stopped about five miles short of her target, the presidential "ranch" in Crawford, and found herself unceremoniously consigned to a ditch at the side of a Texas road, camping out. And yet somehow, powerless except for her story, she has managed to take the president of the United States hostage and turned his Crawford refuge into the American equivalent of Baghdad's Green Zone. She has mysteriously transformed August's news into a question of whether, on his way to meet Republican donors, the president will helicopter over her encampment or drive past (as he, in fact, did) in a tinted-windowed black Chevrolet SUV.

Faced with the power of the Bush political and media machine, Cindy Sheehan has engaged in an extreme version of asymmetrical warfare and, in her person, in her story, in her version of "the costs of war," she has also managed to catch many of the tensions of our present moment. What she has exposed in the process is the growing weakness and confusion of the Bush administration. At this moment, it remains an open question who, in the end, will be found in that ditch at the side of a Texas road, her – or the president of the United States.

Confusion in the Ranks

Ellen Knickmeyer of the Washington Post reported last week that "a U.S. general said … the violence would likely escalate as the deadline approached for drafting a constitution for Iraq." For two years now, this has been a dime-a-dozen prediction from American officials trying to cover their future butts. For the phrase "drafting a constitution" in that general's quote, you need only substitute "after the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons" (July 2003), "for handing over sovereignty" (June 2004), "for voting for a new Iraqi government" (January 2005) – or, looking ahead, "for voting on the constitution" (October 2005) and, yet again, "for voting for a new Iraqi government" (December 2005), just as you will be able to substitute as yet unknown similar "milestones" that won't turn out to be milestones as long as our president insists that we must "stay the course" in Iraq as he did only recently as his Crawford vacation began.

After each "spike of violence," at each "tipping point," each time a "corner is turned," Bush officials or top commanders predict that they have the insurgency under control only to be ambushed by yet another "spike" in violence. This May, for example, more than three months after violence was supposed to have spiked and receded in the wake of the Iraqi election, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Richard Myers offered a new explanation – the "recent spike in violence … represents an attempt to discredit the new Iraqi government and cabinet." When brief lulls in insurgent attacks (which often represent changes in tactics) aren't being declared proof that the Iraqi insurgency is faltering/failing/coming under control, then the spikes are being claimed as "the last gasp" of the insurgency, proof of the impending success of Bush administration policies – those "last throes" that Vice President Cheney so notoriously described to CNN's Wolf Blitzer as June ended.

Recently in a throw-(not throe-)up-your-hands mode, Army Brig. Gen. Karl Horst, deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, which oversees Baghdad, offered the following, taking credit for having predicted the very throe his troops were then engulfed in: "If you look at the past few months, insurgents have not been able to sustain attacks, but they tend to surge every four weeks or so. We are right in the middle of one of those periods and predicted this would come. … If they are going to influence the constitution process, they have only a few days left to do it, and we fully expect the attacks to continue."

You would think that someone in an official capacity would conclude, sooner or later, that Iraq was a spike in violence.

It's an accepted truth of our times that the Bush administration has been the most secretive, disciplined, and on-message administration in our history. So what an out-of-control couple of weeks for the president and his pals! His polls were at, or near, historic lows; his Iraq War approval numbers headed for, or dipping below, 40 percent – and polls are, after all, the message boards for much of what's left of American democracy. As he was preparing for his record-setting presidential vacation in Crawford, George and his advisers couldn't even agree on whether we were in a "global struggle with violent extremism" or in a Global War on Terror. (The president finally opted for war.) He was, of course, leaving behind in Washington a special counsel, called into being by his administration but now beyond its control, who held a sword of judicial Damocles over key presidential aides (and who can probably parse sinking presidential polls as well as anyone).

Iraq – you can't leave home without it – has, of course, been at the heart of everything Bushworld hasn't been able to shake off at least since May 2, 2003. On that day (when, ominously enough, seven American soldiers were wounded by a grenade attack in Fallujah), our president co-piloted a jet onto the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier halted off the San Diego coast (lest it dock and he only be able to walk onboard). All togged out in a military uniform, he declared "major combat operations" at an end, while standing under a White House-produced banner reading "mission accomplished." Ever since then, George has been on that mission (un)accomplished and Iraq has proved nothing if not a black hole, sucking in his administration and the American military along with neocon dreams and plans of every ambitious sort.

The Iraqi insurgency that should never have happened, or should at least have died down after unknown thousands of its foot soldiers were killed or imprisoned by the American military, inconveniently managed to turn the early days of August into a killing zone for American soldiers. Sixteen Marine Reservists from a single unit in Ohio were killed in a couple of days; seven soldiers from the Pennsylvania National Guard were killed, again in a few days. Thirty-seven Americans were reported to have died in Iraq in the first 11 days of the presidential vacation, putting American casualties at the top of the TV news night after night. And yet the administration has seemed capable only of standing by helplessly, refusing to give an inch on the "compassion" president's decision – he and his advisers are still navigating by the anti-Vietnam playbook – not to visit grief-stricken communities in either Ohio or Pennsylvania, or ever to be caught attending the funeral of one of the boys or girls he sent abroad to die. He did manage, however, to fly to the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico to sign the energy bill and also left his ranch to hobnob with millionaire Republican donors.

In this same period, cracks in relations between an increasingly angry military command in Iraq and administration officials back in Washington began to appear for all to see. The issue, for desperate military officers, was – as for Cindy Sheehan – how in the world to get our troops out of Iraq before the all-volunteer military went over an Iraqi cliff, wheels and all.

As July ended, our top general in Iraq, George W. Casey, announced (with many conditional "ifs") that we should be able to start drawing down American troops significantly by the following spring – that tens of thousands of them were likely to leave then and tens of thousands more by the end of 2006, and Don Rumsfeld initially backed him up somewhat edgily. Then, as Rumsfeld hedged, more military people jumped into the media fray with leaks and comments of all sorts about possible Iraqi drawdowns and there was a sudden squall of front-page articles on withdrawal strategies for a hard-pressed administration in an increasingly unpopular war. At the same time, confusingly, reports began to surface indicating that, because of another of those prospective "spikes" in violence, the administration would actually be increasing American troop strength in Iraq before the December elections by 10,000-20,000 soldiers.

Finally, after a war council of the Rumsfeld and Rice (Pentagon and State Department) "teams" in Crawford last week, the president held a press conference (devoted in part to responding to Cindy Sheehan) and promptly launched a new, ad-style near-jingle to explain the withdrawal moment to the American people: "As Iraqis stand up," he intoned, "we will stand down."

But in a week in which the American general in command of transportation in Iraq announced that roadside bomb attacks against his convoys had doubled over the past year, such words sounded empty – especially as news flowed in suggesting that, while the insurgents continued to fight fiercely, the new Iraqi military seemed in no rush whatsoever to "stand up" and that our own commanders believed it might never do so in significant numbers. At his news conference, our never-never-land president nonetheless spoke several times of being pleased to announce "progress" in Iraq. ("And we're making progress training the Iraqis. Oh, I know it's hard for some Americans to see that progress, but we are making progress.")

He spoke as well of attempts to ease the burden on the no-longer-weekend warriors of the National Guard and the Reserves (who are taking unprecedented casualties in August). He said: "We've also taken steps to improve the call-up process for our Guard and for our Reserves. We've provided them with earlier notifications. We've given them greater certainty about the length of their tours. We minimized the number of extensions and repeat mobilizations." Unfortunately, at just this moment, Joint Chiefs head Myers was speaking of the possibility of calling soldiers back for their third tours of duty in Iraq: "There's the possibility of people going back for a third term, sure. That's always out there. We are at war."

"Pulling the troops out would send a terrible signal to the enemy," the president insisted as he turned to the matter of withdrawal in his news conference. He then dismissed drawdown maneuvers as "speculation and rumors"; and, on being confronted by a reporter with the statements of his own military men, added, "I suspect what you were hearing was speculation based upon progress that some are seeing in Iraq as to whether or not the Iraqis will be able to take the fight to the enemy."

While that may sound vague, it was, nonetheless, the sound of a president (who, along with his secretary of defense, has always promised to abide by whatever his generals in the field wanted) disputing those commanders in public. Gen. Casey was also reportedly "rebuked" in private for his withdrawal comments. Our commanders in Iraq are, of course, the official realists in this war, having long ago given up on the idea that the insurgency could ever be defeated by force of U.S. arms and worrying as they do about those "wheels coming off" the American military machine.

In fact, the Bush administration's occupation of Iraq – as Howard Zinn put the matter recently, "[W]e liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein, but not from us" – is threatening to prove one of the great asymmetric catastrophes in recent military history. A ragtag bunch of insurgents, now estimated in the tens of thousands, using garage-door openers and cell phones to set off roadside bombs and egg-timers to fire mortars at U.S. bases (lest they be around when the return fire comes in), have fought the U.S. military to at least a draw. We're talking about a military that, not so long ago, was being touted as the most powerful force not just on this planet at this moment but on any planet in all of galactic history.

Previously, such rumors of withdrawal followed by a quiet hike in troop strength in Iraq might have been simply another clever administration attempt to manipulate the public and have it both ways. At the moment, however, they seem to be a sign not of manipulation but of confusion, discord, and uncertainty about what to do next. If the public was left confused by such "conflicting signals" about an Iraqi withdrawal, wrote Peter Baker of the Washington Post, "it may be no more unsure than the administration itself, as some government officials involved in Iraq policy privately acknowledge." An unnamed "military officer in Washington" typically commented to Anne E. Kornblut of the New York Times, "We need to stick to one message. This vacillation creates confusion for the American public."

Even administration officials are now evidently "significantly lowering expectations" and thinking about how exactly to jump off the sinking Iraqi ship. The president, beseeching "the public to stick with his strategy despite continuing mayhem on the ground," is, Baker commented, "trying to buy time." But buy time for what? This is the question that has essentially paralyzed George Bush's top officials as they face a world suddenly not in their control.

Cindy and the Media

And then, if matters weren't bad enough, there was Cindy Sheehan. She drove to Crawford with a few supporters in a caravan of perhaps a dozen vehicles and an old red, white, and blue bus with the blunt phrase, "Impeachment Tour," written on it. She carried with her a tent, a sleeping bag, some clothes, and evidently not much else. She parked at the side of the road and camped out – and the next thing anyone knew, she had forced the president to send out not the Secret Service or some minor bureaucrat, but two of his top men, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin. For 45 minutes, they met and negotiated with her, the way you might with a recalcitrant foreign head of state. Rather than being flattered and giving ground, she just sent them back, insisting that she would wait where she was to get the president's explanation for her son's death. ("They said they'd pass on my concerns to George Bush. I said, 'Fine, but I'm not talking to anybody else but him.'")

So there she was, as people inspired by her began to gather – the hardy women of Code Pink; other parents whose children had died in Iraq; a former State Department official who had resigned her post to protest the onrushing Iraq War; "a political consultant and a team of public relations professionals"; antiwar protesters of all sorts; and, of course, the media. Quite capable of reading administration weakness in the polls, trapped in no-news Crawford with a president always determined to offer them less than nothing, hardened by an administration whose objective for any media not its own was only "rollback," and sympathetic to a grieving mother from Bush's war, reporters found themselves with an irresistible story at a moment when they could actually run with it.

Literally hundreds of news articles – almost every one a sympathetic profile of the distraught mother and her altar-boy, Eagle-Scout dead son – poured out; while Sheehan was suddenly on the morning TV shows and the nightly news, where a stop-off at "Camp Casey" or the "Crawford Peace House" was suddenly de rigueur. And the next thing you knew, there was the president at his news conference forced to flinch a second time and, though Sheehan was clobbering him, offer "sympathy" to a grieving mother at the side of the road five miles away whom he wasn't about to invite in, even for a simple meeting, but who just wouldn't leave. ("And so, you know, listen, I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan. She feels strongly about her – about her position. And I am – she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America. She has a right to her position…")

Talk about asymmetric warfare. One woman against the massed and proven might of the Bush political machine and its major media allies (plus assorted bloggers) and though some of them started whacking away immediately, Cindy Sheehan remained unfazed. After all, she had been toiling in the wilderness and this was her moment. Whatever the right-wing press did, she could take it – and, of course, the mainstream media had for the time being decided to fall in love with her. After all, she was perfect. American reporters love a one-on-one, "showdown" situation without much context, a face-to-face shootout at the OK Corral. (Remember those endless weeks on TV labeled "Showdown with Saddam"?) In addition, they were – let's be honest – undoubtedly angry after the five-year-long pacification campaign the administration had waged against them.

But they had their own ideas about who exactly Cindy Sheehan should be to win over America. They would paint a strikingly consistent, quite moving, but not completely accurate picture of her. They would attempt to tame her by shearing away her language, not just the profanity for which she was known, but the very fierceness of her words. She had no hesitation about calling the president "an evil maniac," "a lying bastard," or the administration "those lying bastards," "chickenhawks," "warmongers," "shameful cowards," and "war criminals." She called for the president's "impeachment," for the jailing of the whole top layer of the administration (no pardons). She called for American troops to be pulled out of Iraq now. And most of this largely disappeared from a much-softened media portrait of a grieving antiwar mother.

And yet Sheehan herself seems unfazed by the media circus and image-shaping going on around her. In a world where horrors are referred to euphemistically, or limned in politely, or artfully ignored, she does something quite rare – she calls things by their names as she sees them. She is as blunt and impolite in her mission as the media is circumspect and polite in its job, as most of the opposition to George Bush is in its "opposition." And it was her very bluntness, her ability to shock by calling things by their actual names, by acting as she saw fit, that let her break through and that may help turn a set of unhappy public opinion polls into a full-scale antiwar movement.

What will happen next? Will the president actually attend a funeral? Will Cindy Sheehan force him from his Green-Zone world? Suddenly, almost anything seems possible.

However the media deals with her, she embodies every bind the administration is in. As with Iraq (as well as Iran), the administration can't either make its will felt or sweep her off the landscape. Bush and his officials blinked at a moment when they would certainly have liked to whack her, fearing the power of the mother of a dead son from their war. And then, completely uncharacteristically, they vacillated and flip-flopped. They ignored her, then negotiated. They sent out their attack dogs to flail at her, then expressed sympathy. Officials, who have always known what to do before, had no idea what to do with Cindy Sheehan. The most powerful people in the world, they surely feel trapped and helpless. Somehow, she's taken that magical presidential something out of George and cut him down to size. It's been a remarkable performance so far.

The Tipping Point?

Casey Sheehan died on April 4, 2004, soon after he arrived for his tour of duty in Iraq. His mother had never wanted him to go to a war that was "wrong," a place where he might have to "kill innocent people" and where he might die. ("I begged him not to go. I said, 'I'll take you to Canada' … but he said, 'Mom, I have to go. It's my duty. My buddies are going.'") In her grief – always beyond imagining for those of us who have not lost a child – this woman found her calling, one that she would never have wanted and that no one would have ever wished on her.

For more than a year, having set up a small organization, Gold Star Families for Peace, she traveled the country insisting that the president explain, but in relative obscurity – except on the Internet, that place where so much gestates that later bursts into our mainstream world and where today, at Technorati.com, which monitors usage on blogs, her name is the most frequently searched for of all. As she has said, "If we didn't have the Internet, none of us would really know what was truly going on. This is something that can't be ignored."

In March, she appeared – thanks to prescient editors – on the cover of the Nation magazine for an article, "The New Face of Protest?," on the developing military, and military-family inspired, antiwar movement. She was giving a speech at the Veterans for Peace national convention in Dallas when she evidently decided that she had to head for Crawford, and the rest you know.

As our president likes to speak about "our mission" in Iraq and "our mission of defeating terrorists" in the world, so Cindy Sheehan has found herself on a mission. Our president speaks resolutely of "staying the course" in Iraq. That's exactly what Cindy Sheehan is planning to do in Crawford (and undoubtedly beyond). George prides himself on not flinching, giving ground, or ever saying he's sorry. But he also had remarkably good luck until he ran into Cindy. Whether in his presidential runs, in Congress, or elsewhere, he really hasn't come up against an opponent who was ready to dig in and duke it out blow for blow, an opponent ready never to flinch, never to apologize, never to mince words, never to take prisoners. Now he's got one – and like so many personal demons, she's been called up from the id of his own war: A mother of one of the dead who demands an explanation, an answer, when no answer he gives will ever conceivably do; a woman who, like his neocon companions, has no hesitation about going for the jugular. And, amazingly, she's already made the man flinch twice.

No matter how the media surrounds her or tries to tame her, the fact is she's torn up the oppositional rule book. She's a woman made in the mold of Iraq War vet Paul Hackett, who ran in a hopelessly Republican congressional district recently. He didn't hesitate to call the president a "chickenhawk" or a "son of a bitch," and to the surprise of all won 48 percent of the vote doing so, leading Newt Gingrich to say that the race "should serve as a wake-up call to Republicans" for the 2006 elections.

There's a lesson in this. Americans are not, generally speaking, your basic turn-the-other-cheek sorts of folks. They like to know that the people they vote for or support will, at the very least, stand there and whack back, if whacked at. Whatever she may have been before, Cindy Sheehan was beaten into just that shape on the anvil of her son's death. ("I was stunned and dismayed when the United States invaded Iraq. I didn't agree with it. I didn't think it was right, but I never protested until after Casey was killed.") Some of her testimony at the Conyers hearings on the Downing Street Memo catches this spirit, and it's well worth quoting:

"There are a few people around the U.S. and a couple of my fellow witnesses who were a little justifiably worried that in my anger and anguish over Casey's premeditated death, I would use some swear words, as I have been known to do on occasion when speaking about the subject. Mr. Conyers, out of my deep respect for you, the other representatives here, my fellow witnesses, and viewers of these historic proceedings, I was able to make it through an entire testimony without using any profanity. However, if anyone deserves to be angry and use profanity, it is I. What happened to Casey and humanity because of the apparent dearth of honesty in our country's leadership is so profane that it defies even my vocabulary skills. We as Americans should be offended more by the profanity of the actions of this administration than by swear words. We have all heard the old adage that actions speak louder than words and for the sake of Casey and our other precious children, please hold someone accountable for their actions and their words of deception."


Last week, the Pentagon relieved a four-star general of his command allegedly because he had an affair, while separated from his wife, with a woman not in the military or the government; and yet not a single top official or high-ranking officer (except for scapegoat Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinski) has suffered for American acts at Abu Ghraib, or murder and torture throughout our imperium, or for torture and abuse at our prison in Guantanamo, or for any of the disasters of Iraq. In such a context, the words "please hold someone accountable" by the mother of a boy killed in Iraq, a woman on a mission who doesn't plan to back down or leave off any time soon – well, that truly constitutes going directly for the president's political throat. It's mano a mano time, and while I would never underestimate what this administration might do, I wouldn't underestimate the fierce power of an angry mother either. The Bush administration is in trouble in Iraq, in Washington, and in Crawford.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War.

[Note on sources: Cindy Sheehan is first and foremost an Internet phenomenon. Those of you who want to read her writings since 2004 should visit her archive at the always lively libertarian site, LewRockwell.com. (Rockwell seems to specialize in strong women, publishing as well the writings of ret. Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski.) For the Sheehan phenomenon in its present incarnation check out a new Web site www.meetwithcindy.org, but then go to the must-visit site, AfterDowningStreet.com, which has a fascinating, ever-updated Sheehan subsection.]

Copyright 2005 Tom Engelhardt

Note:


www.meetwithcindy.org may be overloaded, or blocked by the Forces of Darkness at the moment.

Try again. First it wouldn't work, then it worked for me. The link I put in this message worked, but Tom Dispatch's didn't. Hmmmmm.

Keep trying. It's worth seeing. It's worth contributing somehow.

We have to start somewhere.

As was said of the first Gulf War: They have all the power and we have Garry Trudeau . . .


--Z

Bless you Zlatko for this. This article was incredible to read, incredibly good.
Will check out her site....I really really dig this woman. She speaks my language.
She's calling them on their fucking shit.
She's a hero!
I wish I could be there with her!
Thanks again....

H

Dear Hester:


God Bless you and find you better employment up in watery ( and beautiful!) Astoria, my dear.

The Crawford Peace House, linked to Cindy's site, is also worth looking over.

I'm going to do, in my obscure way, what I can to prevent this gang of thugs taking over my country. Unfortunately, with the complicity of the "electorate" in this country, we are in very bad shape.

Yes, Cindy Sheehan is my current heroine, too.

SAY NO TO THE MACHINE-- YES TO ART!


Zlatko

Many thanks for this, Zlatko.

Perhaps we are stirring from our unaccountable slumber..... finally starting to see some light at the end of this dark tunnel.

Butler Shaffer has some clear, cogent comments to make about Cindy and our current government ( and government in general) in his essay. It's interesting to note that he quotes Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. at the close. Vonnegut is one of my oldest heroes: he's an artist who tells the truth through swift strokes of burning satire and magically original turns of language.

I don't expect Bushco to admit to a "granfalloon" ( from "Cat's Cradle), but I hope some of you StudioEight people can see the light mnaz refers to.


I particularly like this passage from Shaffer:

"There is, however, a cost to politics that none of the participating parties can afford to confront: the diminution of respect for the worthiness of the individual. Politics both degrades and destroys life, nowhere in a more depraved manner than in the institution of war. For centuries, young men and women – and their families – have been told fantastic lies to get them to throw themselves on a grenade in furtherance of some allegedly "noble purpose." The current war in Iraq is but the latest chapter in this swinish endeavor, with administration liars and their media megaphones constantly changing the rationale for the resulting death and destruction."


This essay is from LewRockwell.com:



(paste)

The War Against Cindy



by Butler Shaffer



Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

~ Mark Twain

I got both into and out of active politics while in my late twenties, shortly after my graduation from law school. I was impressed with Barry Goldwater; became executive secretary of my state’s Republican party organization; and got elected as part of our state’s delegation to the 1964 Republican national convention. My initial enthusiasm for political action quickly dissolved in the realism that politics was nothing more than a vicious racket; that trying to reform the process was as pointless as trying to clean up the Mafia. 1964 was the last year in which I devoted any of my energies to such purposes, including voting.

During my short stay in the political circus, I noticed attributes of both "liberals" and "conservatives" that carry over in the present. In terms of how they communicated with the general public, liberals were brighter and more clever than conservatives. Like snake-oil peddlers or good magicians, liberals could put on a show to bamboozle people to embrace their programs. In contrast, conservative policies were presented with the level of excitement one would get from reading the annual report of a corporation.

With the failure of its economic and social interventionist policies becoming more evident in recent decades, liberalism has had a difficult time rationalizing its existence, and has become as useless to its constituencies as legs on a snake. Modern conservatism, on the other hand, has become anchored in maintaining the status quo, a purpose often tied to police, military force, and other instruments of institutionalized order. With liberalism in a thoroughly lobotomized state, conservatives find themselves in an open field with which to pursue their preferences for expanded coercive policies.

There is, however, a cost to politics that none of the participating parties can afford to confront: the diminution of respect for the worthiness of the individual. Politics both degrades and destroys life, nowhere in a more depraved manner than in the institution of war. For centuries, young men and women – and their families – have been told fantastic lies to get them to throw themselves on a grenade in furtherance of some allegedly "noble purpose." The current war in Iraq is but the latest chapter in this swinish endeavor, with administration liars and their media megaphones constantly changing the rationale for the resulting death and destruction.

One woman has chosen to call all of this into question. Cindy Sheehan – whose son, Casey, was killed in Iraq last year – has been waiting outside George Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch for him to come out and explain to her "what was the noble cause Casey died for"? She openly confronts the Bush administration’s claim that ending the war now would "dishonor" those who have died. She responds that "by sending honorable people to die, they so dishonor themselves. They say we must complete our mission . . . but why would I want one more mother to go through what I have, just because my son is dead?" She wants to tell Mr. Bush "don’t you dare spill any more blood in Casey’s name."

This is powerful language, not just because it comes from a mother whose son was killed as a result of an act of unprovoked aggression by the United States against Iraq; but because her words are a clear challenge to the collective mindset upon which every mob depends for its power. Cindy’s stance is reminiscent of that of Wang Wei-lin, the young man who confronted the row of Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989. When the human spirit stands up to the cold, faceless, dehumanizing, destructive machinery of the state, there is a release of emotional energy whose force transcends material calculation.

Cindy’s efforts have met with the unsophisticated response one has come to expect from modern conservative voices. The reptilian "see-act" reactions of such people as Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and John Gibson, only scratch the surface of the thoughtless rage with which conservatives confront a world beyond their ken. So, how did the Bush-leaguers propose to deal with Cindy’s actions? By threatening to have her arrested…, in the name of what has become the default explanation for state excesses: "national security"! As Mr. Bush gushes about Americans fighting for "freedom," his administration threatens Cindy with arrest for exercising hers!

The liberal establishment – the left wing of the state’s bird of prey – would have been just as indifferent to Cindy’s plea as are the conservatives. Liberals would not, however, have been so unbelievably stupid as to attack a lone, grieving mother, and threaten her with arrest. A liberal president would have met with this woman to "feel her pain" – with full media coverage, of course – before proceeding with the conduct of his bloody warfare.

Because the state depends, for its existence, upon the enforcement of collectivized thinking, Cindy Sheehan – along with her message – must be marginalized. Lies must be metabolized by the body politic; the immune system must remain on the alert for viruses of truth and understanding that might infect individual minds and enervate the collective organism. Such responses remind me of the apocryphal description of lobsters in a pot of water who, upon seeing a fellow crustacean trying to escape, pull him back with the others.

In an effort to render Cindy’s thoughts inconsequential, the established order has paraded onto television families whose sons died in Iraq. One spoke of the "very noble cause" for which his brother had died, and praised America for the willingness to "sacrifice our people." When asked about Cindy’s actions – which it was the network’s purpose to have this man criticize – he responded that we should "praise the sacrifice," and the fact that the soldiers had "died for a cause greater than themselves." The mother of another dead soldier – when asked to contrast her position with Cindy’s – stated "we support our president," adding that she believed her son had died for a noble cause.

Other relatives of Casey Sheehan issued a statement – at whose behest it was not made known – disagreeing with Cindy’s "political motivations" and "publicity tactics." Of course, their public statement was free of "political motivations" and lacking in "publicity tactics," as they concluded that the rest of the family "supports the troops, our country, and our President."

I have no quarrel with the families of dead soldiers wanting to believe that their children died for some important purpose. Even Cindy Sheehan’s question to George Bush asks for an explanation of the cause for which her son died. It is a part of human nature to want our lives to have some transcendent purpose, and when young people die before they have had an opportunity to define and act upon such a meaning for their lives, it is truly sad. To believe that there was something "noble" in the death of a young man or woman becomes a way of surmounting the feeling that their lives were meaningless. Such emotions are often found following the murders of small children, with parents engaging in efforts to draft a piece of legislation or create a foundation, either of which might bear the name of a fallen child.

In Gaelic, the name "Sheehan" means "peace maker." It is precisely the desire of Cindy and millions of others to foster peace and prevent additional deaths – whether of Americans or Iraqis – that underlies the campaign President Bush and other statists strive to marginalize. This war has been nothing but one string of ever-changing lies from the beginning. The spinmeisters continue to exploit the suffering that their lies, forgeries, and deceptions have created for untold thousands of people. The twisted-ribbon bumper-stickers that read "support the troops" have a hidden message that often comes through in the course of further discussion: "support the war and support President Bush; sacrifice the troops."

As this psychopathic administration now scans its world atlas for new targets upon which to direct its forces of "shock and awe," it is time for all of us to understand that there is nothing "noble" in the systematic slaughter of people. There is no "honor" in bringing grief and suffering to others; and no transcendent "purpose" in being part of a collective of fungible human beings to be exploited for whatever ends suit those with ambitions over the lives of others. "Life" belongs to living individuals, not to the state, a message each of us must impart to our children and grandchildren as they learn to resist the seductions of those who would destroy them. It is also time for Americans to take a stand with Cindy Sheehan and help this country rediscover its soul, and return to the sense of decency from which it has so aimlessly strayed.

We might begin our transformation with the lesson offered by a friend of Kurt Vonnegut as the two returned from Europe following their World War II soldiering. Vonnegut asked this man what he had learned from his wartime experiences, to which his friend replied: "not to believe my government."

August 15, 2005

Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law.

Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com

(A nice Salon.Com piece on Cindy Sheehan.

The Dragon vs. St. George continues):


( paste)


Published on Tuesday, August 16, 2005 by Salon.com



The Mother of all Battles


Cindy Sheehan has almost single-handedly launched an American antiwar movement. And in the process, she's exposed a president's feet of clay.

by Joan Walsh

The smearing may continue, but it's already too late: Cindy Sheehan has launched an American antiwar movement. Maybe, as Matt Drudge blared over the weekend, she's said controversial things about Israel. Maybe the IRS will chase her for tax evasion, since she's reportedly announced that she won't pay taxes for 2004, the year her son Casey died in Iraq. Maybe her family has been shaken by her activism. Maybe the smears will even work, and cost Sheehan some of her mainstream political credibility. It doesn't matter: Someone else will take her place.
Sheehan's central demand -- that the president meet with her and explain why her son died -- has immense power in a country that's beginning to understand it was lied to about the reasons for the Iraq war, at a time when the carnage seems not only endless but futile. To build on that power, the antiwar movement being born at Camp Casey must understand and hold onto the source of Sheehan's moral authority: her authentic grief over her son's death and her fearless demand to talk honestly about it, even with supporters of the war.

Bush backers are clearly spooked by Sheehan, and they're shifting their stories as fast as they can get away with it. Early last week, you'll remember, she was a naive flip-flopper who supposedly changed her mind about the war and President Bush, because she'd had some mild words of praise for the president after they met last June. That line of attack didn't work, so this week she's a hardened left-wing agitator, plotting alongside the likes of Michael Moore, Medea Benjamin and Viggo Mortensen to help America's enemies. Need some proof? She's got Fenton Communications doing her media, for God's sake!

There's actually a tiny shard of truth in the latest right-wing attack on Sheehan, but it serves to underscore how dangerous she is to their cause. Sheehan has in fact been active in opposing the war since just after Casey died -- she starred in anti-Bush ads last year. (She was the lead in Michelle Goldberg's Salon feature on the ads last September.) Almost a year later, Sheehan has managed to break through to the American public, in a way that she obviously didn't in the Real Voices ads. But it's not because of the help of Code Pink and Fenton (which joined her after she was already in Crawford, by the way). It's because Americans are souring on the war and ready to hear what she has to say.

After more than two years of denial, the war is coming home to the American people. It's a journalistic cliché to talk about what you learned on summer vacation, but indulge me: With mostly network news and USA Today to provide my news-junkie fix, I learned this August that the war is finally a mainstream news story. I'm just old enough to remember grim footage from Vietnam on the nightly news, and it's starting to look familiar -- maps of the latest attacks, the dead and wounded soldiers, the grieving families and, now, Cindy Sheehan and antiwar protesters. If there's anybody still eating dinner watching the "CBS Evening News," now with Bob Schieffer and not Walter Cronkite, it's unsettling suppertime fare.

But the news is following public opinion, not leading it. The percentage of people who support the president's handling of the war has been sinking, as the number of casualties, and the apparent power of the insurgency, continue to rise. The other thing that's starting to break through is the president's cluelessness and callousness, his tin ear when it comes to the war and to Cindy Sheehan's appeal. Bush is such a polarizing force in American politics that it's hard to objectively describe either his personal political assets or his flaws. Most of his opponents can't even imagine his appeal to his supporters -- the regular Texan, the man's man, the guy you'd prefer to have a beer with over John Kerry -- and of course his admirers can't see what enrages his detractors, the smirking shiftless bully behind the regular-guy veneer.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but it felt to me as if with Bush's latest remarks about Sheehan over the weekend, the clownish lightweight his critics know and despise was beginning to shine through for all to see. If you haven't already, take a moment to ponder what he told Cox News about why he could find time for a bike ride on Saturday but not to meet with Sheehan:

"I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say. But I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life ... I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy. And part of my being is to be outside exercising. So I'm mindful of what goes on around me. On the other hand, I'm also mindful that I've got a life to live and will do so."

You don't have to be Cindy Sheehan to think that yammering on about "staying healthy" and living a "balanced life" while so many are suffering and dying in Iraq is unthinkably cruel, as well as unbelievably politically tone deaf. When I read Bush's quote -- I read it over and over -- I found myself wondering not just about his character but about his fundamental emotional health. It's as if he's confessing he couldn't stay "balanced" if he had to confront Sheehan's grief, and even worse, her questions about why her son died.

And yet, even as Sheehan's public relations victories give people reason to be optimistic about the administration's unraveling in Iraq, liberals and war opponents have to be careful not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It's important to understand why Sheehan matters, and how she's gained traction on the war. Yes, it's the uptick in violence in Iraq, and the decided downturn in optimism, even among war supporters, who are continually defining success downward. Sunday's Washington Post had a great account of how the war architects are ready to declare victory -- not a Democratic Iraq but "some form of Islamic republic" -- and get out of Vietnam, I mean, Iraq. And yes, it's also true that August is a slow news month, giving Sheehan more room to tell her story. (I'd add that karma required that the president's stubborn monthlong vacation in Texas -- whether it's after he got a warning about terrorists using airplanes as weapons in 2001, on the eve of 9/11, or during one of the bloodiest months yet in Iraq -- would come back to bite him.)

But mainly it's the sincerity and humanity of Sheehan's core message. The anecdotes coming out of Camp Casey tell the story: Sheehan's quiet discussion with a soldier who opposes her views, which ended in a hug. Another Camp Casey activist had a respectful talk with a trucker who supports the war but stopped by to see if his dead son was listed among the casualties there. (He was, and the visit reportedly ended with him declaring his love for Sheehan.) Against the backdrop of an administration that refuses to acknowledge the dead, that prohibits photos of coffins and flies the wounded home under cover of darkness, that lets the president vacation and "stay healthy" instead of talking to the mother of a dead veteran, Sheehan and Camp Casey can get attention and win converts just by bearing witness to the violence and despair of a war whose goal nobody really understands anymore, in which victory seems less and less likely.

To build on her success it's important that organizers understand her appeal. Sheehan doesn't have all the answers -- she's smart enough to know she doesn't need to provide them. By simply asking why her son died, she's starting a dialogue about a war in which we've been lied to from the outset.

Moving forward and coming up with a broader message that can unify an antiwar movement will be tougher. Even war opponents aren't sure whether the message should be "Out now," or "Out soon," or "A lot of us out now and the rest asap." But if the goal is to build a big-tent antiwar movement, the messages must be simple, inclusive and from the heart.

The right will continue to use Sheehan's more controversial statements against her, of course. And it could, conceivably, hurt her appeal with the American people -- especially if antiwar allies choose to play up those positions. While I think there's plenty of room to blame the pro-Israel Project for a New American Century for helping lead us to war on false pretenses, as Sheehan does, let's remember that we won't end the war by requiring a litmus test on Israel and Palestine. Too often antiwar organizers have driven away supporters by leading with their most divisive views -- and by failing to communicate with those who hold different views.

Sheehan is outspoken -- and like all Americans, she has the right to be outspoken -- but she hasn't made that mistake. Camp Casey has become an outpost of grief and dialogue, and that's what gives it worldwide recruiting power. In Kentucky, the Republican grandmother of Marine Lance Cpl. Chase Johnson Comley, killed in Amiriyah, Iraq, earlier this month, told local media she wished she could join Sheehan in Crawford because she's "on a rampage" against Bush and the war. "When someone gets up and says, 'My son died for our freedom,' or I get a sympathy card that says that, I can hardly bear it," 80-year-old Geraldine Comley told the Lexington Herald-Leader. "And it irritates me no small amount that Dick Cheney, in the Vietnam War, said he had 'other priorities.' He didn't mind sending my grandson over there" to Iraq.

Michael Moore couldn't have put it any more harshly. Smart organizers will make sure the Geraldine Comleys of the world are always welcome at Camp Casey. Because, sadly, their ranks are growing by the day.

Joan Walsh is Salon's editor in chief.

© 2005 Salon.com

remember that neighbor of Bushies that owns the land next to the road where they are all camped out. The one that said the terrorists would be coming over that hill if we were not fighting in Iraq. He just went to the fence where they are all at and fired his shot gun into the air twice. He is tired of them being there, says he wants them to go, take the porta potties with them too

did you see the daily show last night? funny bit on her and that dick pres you got there!

No I don't have cable. A great show. Sorry I missed it. Dick president don't even begin to cover it. One good thing by the time they are finished with america we will never be a threat to anyone again. That is if all hell don't break out first.