I would like to think that this woman has suffered and is acting with the best of intentions.
President George W. Bush draws antiwar protesters just about wherever he goes, but few generate the kind of attention that Cindy Sheehan has had since she drove down the winding road toward his ranch here over the weekend and sought to tell him face to face that he must pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq now.
Sheehan’s son, Casey, was killed last year in Iraq, after which she became an antiwar activist. She says that she and her family met with the president two months later at Fort Lewis in Washington state. But when she was blocked by the police a few miles from Bush’s 1,600 acres, or 650 hectares, in Texas on Saturday, the 48-year-old Sheehan, of Vacaville, California, was transformed into a media phenomenon, the new face of opposition to the Iraq conflict at a moment when public opinion is in flux and the politics of the war have grown more complicated for the president and the Republican Party.
Sheehan has vowed to camp out on the spot until Bush will see her, even if it means spending all of August under a broiling sun by the dusty road. Early Sunday afternoon, 25 hours after she was turned back as she approached Bush’s Prairie Chapel Ranch, Sheehan stood red-faced from the heat at the makeshift campsite that she vowed would be her home until the president relented or left to go back to Washington.
A reporter from The Associated Press had just finished interviewing her. CBS was taping a segment on her. She had already appeared on CNN, and was scheduled to appear live on ABC on Monday morning. Reporters from across the country were calling her cellphone.
[…]
As the mother of an Army specialist who was killed at age 24 in the Sadr City section of Baghdad on April 4, 2004, Sheehan certainly has a compelling story. She is also articulate, aggressive in delivering her message and armed with a story most White House reporters had not heard before: how Bush handles himself when he meets behind closed doors with the families of soldiers killed in Iraq.
The White House has released few details of such sessions, which Bush conducts regularly as he travels the country, but it generally portrays them as emotional and an opportunity for the president to share the grief of the families. In Sheehan’s telling, though, Bush did not know her son’s name when she and her family met with him in June 2004 at Fort Lewis. Bush, she said, acted as if he were at a party and behaved disrespectfully toward her by referring to her as “Mom” throughout the meeting.
By Sheehan’s account, Bush said to her that he could not imagine losing a loved one like an aunt or uncle or cousin. Sheehan said she broke in and told Bush that Casey was her son, and that she thought he could imagine what it would be like because he has two daughters and that he should think about what it would be like sending them off to war.
“I said, ‘Trust me, you don’t want to go there,”‘ Sheehan said, recounting her exchange with the president. “He said, ‘You’re right, I don’t.’ I said, ‘Well, thanks for putting me there.”‘
Compelling, indeed. Down right heart-breaking. But is it accurate?
According to Sheehan’s hometown paper, her story at the time she met with the president was very different.
Sincerity was something Cindy had hoped to find in the meeting. Shortly after Casey died, Bush sent the family a form letter expressing his condolences, and Cindy said she felt it was an impersonal gesture.
“I now know he’s sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis,” Cindy said after their meeting. “I know he’s sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he’s a man of faith.”
The meeting didn’t last long, but in their time with Bush, Cindy spoke about Casey and asked the president to make her son’s sacrifice count for something. They also spoke of their faith.
[…]
The trip had one benefit that none of the Sheehans expected.
For a moment, life returned to the way it was before Casey died. They laughed, joked and bickered playfully as they briefly toured Seattle.
For the first time in 11 weeks, they felt whole again.
“That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together,” Cindy said.
As to not knowing the name of Sheehan’s son, this story points out that the families of seventeen lost soldiers were present in this gathering, one of many the president has willingly chosen to face for no gain of his own.
Sheehan now disavows her earlier thoughts on that meeting.
”I was still in shock then,” Sheehan said. “Now, I’m angry. I want the troops home.
As I stated at the opening, I want to think the best of Sheehan’s intentions. I owe that to her son, a volunteer who gave the ultimate sacrifice. I do, however, believe that she is being manipulated in this matter, however willingly it may be.
From the International Herald Tribune piece, the media swirl is no accident.
It did not hurt her cause that she staged her protest, which she said was more or less spontaneous, at the doorstep of the White House press corps, which spends each August in Crawford with little to do, minimal access to Bush and his aides and eagerness for any new story.
She did not go camping out at Crawford alone. Instead, she went there as part of the Veterans for Peace Impeachment Tour, so forget that spontaneous stuff. I know not of Sheehan’s politics but, from the bio page of the veterans on this tour, I can find the following gem:
This administration has committed crimes on a scale rivaling the criminals of World War II.
Sheehan has surrounded herself with people who absurdly equate the actions taken so far in the war against radical Islamist terror with the likes of the Holocaust, the rape of Nanking and the outright murder of hundreds and thousands of POWs.
I will not question Sheehan’s motivations and I will acknowledge her loss and pain. I will also ask that she look at those around her and consider if she is following the best course in her attempt to honor her son.
Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee led me to the local-paper version and gives his thoughts here.