The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it - Henry David Thoreau

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

I’ve been claiming since the whole debacle began that Casey Sheehan’s mother had absolutely no real interest in meeting with President Bush.  She was looking for a propaganda victory.  If he decided to see her again, she could go crazy and rant and scream, and she’d get a huge PR victory in the papers.  If he ignored her, then she’d have another propaganda victory.  And now that the month of August is over, she admits it.

A woman who led an anti-war protest for nearly a month near President Bush’s ranch said Tuesday that she’s glad Bush never showed up to discuss her son’s death in Iraq, saying the president’s absence “galvanized the peace movement.”

Cindy Sheehan’s comments came as war protesters packed up their campsite near the ranch and prepared to leave Tuesday for a three-week bus tour.

“I look back on it, and I am very, very, very grateful he did not meet with me, because we have sparked and galvanized the peace movement,” Sheehan told The Associated Press. “If he’d met with me, then I would have gone home, and it would have ended there.”

Bullshit, Cindy.  This was never about answers or accountability or getting a meeting with the president.  This was about assuaging the massive sense of guilt you feel at not being about to prevent your little boy from growing up and becoming a man, a man who just might have an opinion different than your own.  This was about prostituting the memory of the fine, honorable son you raised so that despicable vermin like MoveOn and Michael Moore and Al Sharpton can get their radical left-wing agenda on the front pages, and you could position yourself as some kind of untouchable, sainted martyr. 

But then again, it’s always been about you, hasn’t it?  That’s why just the other day the Los Angeles Times quoted you as saying, “I know that the Camp Casey movement is going to end the war in Iraq.  When you read about the Camp Casey movement in the history books, you can say, ‘I met Casey’s mom.’” There you go, you egomaniacal harpy.  It’s about you, it’s always been about you.  It’s about your canonization in the annals of left-wing activism, about elevating your status from grieving mother into empowering activist.  As I’ve said before, in a sadly perverse way your son’s death was the best thing that ever happened to you, because it gave meaning to your otherwise wretchedly average life. 

And your son, and the sacrifice he made?  Well, that’s not that important, is it?