Cindy Sheehan, as you likely know, is the mother of a child killed in the Iraq war, who has set up a campsite outside of George Bush’s Texas ranch in order to get a meeting with him.
This is a serious post mostly, but I have to begin by saying that whenever I read anything about this subject, I never see “Cindy Sheehan,” I always see “Cindy Crawford.” No doubt that’s because Bush’s ranch is in Crawford, TX, so that’s always the byline of the story, and the word “Cindy” always occurs in the first line, so for a long time my mind kept calling her “Cindy Crawford.” Now I’m not even sure I know who Cindy Crawford is (some blonde actress, or a model?), and I’m pretty sure she has no political association, but there it is. Maybe it’s the double-Cs that pull me into the association.
Anyway, as most things political today do, the Cindy Sheehan situation has generated a lot of ugliness. It isn’t pretty to see the Left using someone who (admittedly, I haven’t followed this closely, so go easy on this next statement) is obviously distraught and seems a little personally unsteady to further their anti-war agenda; they seem to be doing the very thing they are incensed about, fixated on their mission rather than showing real compassion for the suffering of one of their troops. And it isn’t pretty to see the Right pile on the insinuation and the character assassination to further their pro-Bush agenda; this woman, after all, lost her son … show her some courtesy, decency, and respect.
But beneath all the mud, I would think that the pro-Bush folks ought to be concerned about Ms. Sheehan’s continued campaign. Because for all they can try to impugn her character, motives, and truthfulness (and again, I don’t really know the facts on any of these), the fact is that she and her son’s death lead directly to consideration of the single, key question that’s been hanging about the Iraq War since before it began: Is it worth it? It has made me pause to ask: Is it worth my sons’ lives? And that question, in turn, resonates with all the questions about validity and factual basis for entering the war in the first place. If I’m George Bush, I’m not sure, with gas approaching $3.00 per gallon and the Iraqi nation looking, quite frankly, not very trainable, that I want many people to be thinking about Cindy Sheehan’s dead son and asking the question: ‘Is it worth it?’
The longer an unstable situation in Iraq goes on with no apparent progress toward resolution, the more this question is going to get asked, and the more folks who are in not Left or Right, but rather folks in the middle, who up to now have withheld judgment and hoped for the best, are going to start answering “no.” If that happens, it seems to me that a lot of political bets are off.
Categories: Politics