For a great look at Ms. Sheehan's views, please see Christopher Hitchens' recent op-eds, Cindy Sheehan's Sinister Piffle and What Cindy Sheehan Really Wants. (Hey, anyone who puts "sinister" and "piffle" in the same headline has got to be worth reading.) As you read Hitchens, take time to follow the many links he posts in his essay. It is quite a tour. That Mr. Hitchens and I would not agree on much matters little to me. What matters is that he has a handle on this latest gratuitous info-mercial presented by the main-stream media and the leftists who have exploited it.
I have no strong views about Ms. Sheehan. She will soon be forgotten. This is in no way meant to diminish her grief. It is merely meant to mentally prepare myself for the next cause celebre that will beg for my attention. And since my time on earth is finite, I need to use that time as wisely and frugally as possible. After all, any time spent on anything is time one can never retrieve.
But today I want to expend my time on two things central to the story of the Crawford standoff, where Ms. Sheehan, I believe, expects President Bush to Crawl-Forward to her in deep contrition.
The first is a rebuff of the silly, vapid remarks offered by two Boston talk-radio personalities who believe President Bush should meet – individually – with the "parents" of all soldiers killed in the "War on Terror". Of course, this sort of expectation comes from the same folks who believe the President should not waste so much time vacationing. But what greater vacation would there be from presidential duties than meeting with grieving loved ones individually? Moreover, why limit visits to parents? Why not step- and grandparents, wives, husbands, fiances, girlfriends and children?
A simple math calculation may move us along to the next scene in this absurd theater. Let us assume that when the year is done, 2000 American troops will have been killed in Iraq. Let us give them each 2 parents. That leaves us with 4000 grieving moms and dads, though some soldiers will have only one parent, others might have four (counting step-parents). Let us assume that 25 percent of the soldiers leave behind a spouse. That makes for 4500 grieving family members. Now let's assume that there are 750 children left behind; 750 fiances, and 500 girlfriends and boyfriends. That gives us about 6500 people the president should comfort with his counsel. Now, assuming that Mr. Bush meets with all these people, giving them 5 minutes each (not much) of his time, his aides will have to earmark 32,500 minutes for such services. That's a mere 541.66 hours. If President Bush worked 24-hours a day, without rest, he could dispense his comforts in 3.22 weeks. At 12-hour days, he could fulfill his pastoral duties in 6.44 weeks.
And this does not include comforting grieving siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles.
The question is this: What is the cutoff number of dead soldiers that makes it impossible for the President to speak to grieving parents face-to-face, one-on-one? Is 1000 a good number? Do 2000 dead soldiers leave behind too many loved ones to receive presidential solace? Who among us dares to come forward with the number?
"A NOBLE CAUSE"
Ms. Sheehan claims that she wants to know why her son died. She offers that she heard Mr. Bush speak about her son dying for a noble cause. What noble cause, Mr. Bush? is her question. And her other question is whether the President has encouraged his own daughters to enlist in the fight if the cause is indeed as noble as he claims.
Ms. Sheehan's question about the President's daughters is mired in the fallacious. Ms. Sheehan connects support of a war with participation: If you support X, put your money where your mouth is, and put on your boots. But one need not be involved in X in order to rightly support it. I can support my child's love of skateboarding without trying the sport myself (I could be wheelchair bound). I could send my parents to a nursing home without living there myself; or I could support my neighbor sending his son to camp, though neither of us had ever gone camping. I appreciate opera without singing opera; I appreciate Ms. Sheehan's right to speech without participating in her sort of remonstrance.
But if Ms. Sheehan's logic is to be followed, she herself cannot speak against something unless she is involved in that which she rebukes. Her statements lead to the absurd situation where the opera singer smugly dismisses the critic's reviews on the basis that the critic himself is not an opera singer. If Mr. Bush cannot call the war noble without direct participation (why would his daughters' enlistment qualify and not his own?), then Ms. Sheehan cannot call it ignoble without direct involvement (and losing a son is not direct involvement). Moreover, if BOTH the President's daughters did enlist and were killed, would that give him twice the cachet that Ms. Sheehan apparently possesses?
Lastly, who among us would want to be either the Commander-in-Chief, or the daughters of that commander? The Bush family has and will long continue to live under state protection, surrounded by safeguards. Ms. Sheehan has lost something dear to her: her son. But the entire Bush family has also sacrificed something: their freedom. While Ms. Sheehan is free enough to grieve her son's death by camping ad infinitum outside a Crawford ranch, the Bush daughters could not safely camp there, or anywhere, for five minutes (without being surrounded by perhaps the best security forces in the world). Does anyone really envy the gulag which is the Bush compound at Kennebunkport? Is that really a vacation behind the security fence at Crawford?
I would not sacrifice one second of my life to be in President Bush's shoes, would you?
The sacrifices of the Iraq War, many of which are hidden, are nonetheless ubiquitous. Most will never capture the film producer's attention. But those who sacrifice are not just among the many grieving mothers. They are everywhere among us.
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes
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