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FullMetalPatriot on Obama Photobombs History
Protesting the protest
I was gonna blog about this today, but while heating my lunch I saw an opinion column written by Mark Davis which said it much better than I could have. Here’s the link, but since the column changes every few days, I’m gonna clip and paste the article.
Protest the war if you must, but not at ‘Camp Casey’
05:06 AM CDT on Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Since my overall view of the Cindy Sheehan circus is that it has received an absurd amount of attention, one might fairly ask why I would add to it today.Two reasons: Her stunt, so energizing to her fans and infuriating to her critics, is instructive in a couple of ways; and, since she insists on asserting that she is doing this to honor her fallen son, it offers a chance to reflect on what it truly means to “support the troops.”
First, a remedial course in the obvious. Ms. Sheehan has every right to engage in whatever public pronouncements she wishes, wherever the law allows.
So let’s move to an assessment of what she has a right to do while expecting to be taken seriously. It is in this area that she loses by almost every objective measure.
She is not made noteworthy by the extremism of her anti-war tirades; she shares that with a few million Americans who have chosen to step beyond civil debate with the tired slander of “Bush lied,” “The war is for oil,” and other failed canards.
She does have one slightly less-popular rant, in which she states that the war is to placate the Jews. This golden oldie has earned her a new buddy in David Duke, whose Web site now sings her praises.
The praise she actually seeks is the good will usually bestowed on a grieving mother carrying on a crusade for her fallen son.
Her grief is not at issue. No one begrudges her the pain of her loss or even the hefty political bitterness it has sparked, if she were not making such a public spectacle of it.But she is, and as such, it is more than fair to identify it as an obscene game of scamming people into thinking this is about her son Casey, who was killed last year in Iraq during a tour of duty he willfully undertook.
Columnist Christopher Hitchens calls this “ventriloquizing the dead,” and that imagery seems sadly accurate. There is not one shred of evidence that her son shared his mother’s partisan anger.
Yet there she is, asking people to set up “Camp Caseys” all over America. She says it is for him, but it is instead for her self-aggrandizement and plays superbly into the hands of a bored press corps forced into Central Texas exile by President Bush’s vacation. The chance to play this up into some “President vs. The Grieving Mom” morality play must make Crawford almost bearable for them.
So, how to turn this pathetic spectacle into something constructive? By using it as a point of comparison with intellectually honest war criticism.
If someone believes a military campaign against global terror is doomed, that we emphasized Iraq at the expense of catching Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan or that we have no chance of spreading democracy throughout the Middle East, I will acknowledge – although disagree – that those are points thoughtful people can make.
If others believe our preparations were flawed, our plans incomplete and our resolve mixed and intermittent, I will admit that these are points that may have merit.
But winning people over with superior argument is not the point of “Camp Casey,” where signs assault both logic and his memory with the absurd contradiction: “Support the Troops: Bring Them Home.”
It’s impossible to support the troops by bashing the mission, the purpose and the commander in chief the vast majority of them hold dear. “Support” means more than the wishing that they return safely.
Ms. Sheehan can fraudulently wrap herself for as long as she wishes in the honorable camouflage of her fallen son. But if she becomes the face and voice of war opposition in America, that is a bigger problem for the president’s enemies than for the president.
The president’s problem, far larger than any gaggle at the end of his driveway, is a growing war skepticism at a time when our resolve is more important than ever. Mr. Bush has already afforded Ms. Sheehan more courtesy and face time than the average bereaved family member usually gets.
What he needs to focus on now is answering the more measured and worthy criticism from the segment of America that does not share his vision.
Mr. Davis, my hat’s off to you.
Readers, what do y’all think about this “Camp Casey” thing?
Posted by FullMetalPatriot
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT
12th gen. American, Constitutionalist, Harley-riding Texan, gun owner & NRA member, blogger, illustrator, Florida Gator alumnus. #TCOT
