My friend Elizabeth sent me an e-mail petition a few days ago to sign and show my support for Cindy Sheehan, the bereaved mother of a son killed in Iraq. I’m sorry, Elizabeth, but I won’t be signing it or sending it on. It’s not that I don’t believe in bereaving mothers, it’s that this bereaving mother doesn’t know what she believes in.Cases in point: What is she asking for? Answer, a meeting with the president. She already got that one along with the families of 272 other servicemen and women who died in Iraq. I guess one meeting wasn’t good enough for her because this time she wants to tell him what she really thinks, which is diametrically different from what she did say to the Vacaville newspaper after her first meeting. Now she has added a new twist. Not only does she want to give the president a few nooggies, she also wants him to force the Israelis to get out of all Palestinian lands as defined by…..what? Who the hell knows where Palestine is anymore? Certainly not Ms. Sheehan, who seems to have stumbled into the foreign relations racket a bit late in life. I doubt Bush knows either. In fact, I thought Palestinian lands were in Lebanon – that is until the Syrians didn’t want to listen to their complaining while they were busy changing a reasonably corrupt Christian democracy into an Islamist theocracy.
But the MEDIA is there now and so that makes all the difference. Now her stand (or is it a sit?) buys her 15 minutes of fame on all the networks and gets her a meeting with Steven Hadley and deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin. She talked to them for 45 minutes. Hadley is the National Security Advisor and rarely talks to anyone without security clearance. Lobbyists earn top dollars to arrange meetings with Hadley and Hagin, and she gets 45 minutes to vent. But it’s not good enough, and neither she nor her public relations team will leave until they meet the one man the left claims is nothing more than a hand puppet of Cheney and Rummy and doesn’t know anything anyway. Maybe she just wants a closer look at the strings.
Personally, I wouldn’t have sent the two out to meet her, but it’s one of those events that happen to political leaders who have someone in the bunker yelling, “We gotta give her something!” They should have known that giving her Hadley and Hagin was only going to lead to her asking for more. Personally I would have pulled a Mr. Burns and unleashed the hounds on her.
The fact that we are even discussing this, or the media has set up “Cindy Watch 2005” demonstrates how slow August is for the chattering class and how boring Crawford can be in the middle of summer.
There is something more to this story than a woman changing her mind and then losing it, though. There is an underlying view that the war in Iraq is something that people can watch as if they were spectators, handicapping and rating the successes and failures from some imagined position of neutrality. Do they suppose that a defeat in Iraq would be a defeat only for the Bush administration? The United States is awash in human rights groups, feminist organizations, ecological foundations, and committees for the rights of minorities. How come there is not a huge voluntary effort to help and to publicize the efforts to find the hundreds of thousands of "missing" Iraqis, to support Iraqi women's battle against fundamentalists, to assist in the recuperation of the marsh Arab wetlands, and to underwrite the struggle of the Kurds, the largest stateless people in the Middle East? Is Abu Ghraib really the only subject that interests our humanitarians?
These are noble reasons for caring people to get heat stroke in Texas. Live 8 drew nearly as much media attention to the lack of Western support (money) for Africa. Why not a concert for those in need in Baghdad? They have spent a generation under a brutal regime that sacked away billions while many lived in fear. Sounds a lot like Africa to me. There has to be someone out there who can carry a tune who wants to draw attention to a people in need.
Unless someone gives me a persuasive reason to think otherwise, my provisional conclusion is that the human rights and charitable "communities" have taken a pass on Iraq for political reasons that are not very creditable. And so we watch with detached curiosity, from dry land, to see whether the Iraqis will sink or swim.
2 comments:
Mikee I love you to pieces and your time in Eastern Europe has made you a formidable commentator on that part of the world. Unfortunately that experience does not translate to your knowledge of the Middle East. I am by no means an expert but I do know a little bit about Middle Eastern politics. I appreciate and agree with your assessment of the difficult predicament that human rights organizations are in when it comes to the real victims of the war, the Iraqi people. However I thought that all the money that taxpayers were giving to support this "democratization" of Iraq was supposed to help Iraqi's and rebuild their infrastructure. Unfortunately anyone who knows anything knows that most of the money goes towards no-bid contracts and security detail. No to little of the projects even go to Arab companies let alone the Iraqi people. In regards to Cindy Sheehan I think that listening to Rush Limbaugh still does not give you sufficient room to criticize her or the facts of the matter. The Vacaville newspaper did record the meeting but did not make her request to speak with the man who made the final decision to send her son to war, any less deserved. Of course Dubya is a puppet and if I hear you say that we underestimate him one more time, I will release those "photos." But ultimately he does make the decision no matter how much I wish someone else would. Cindy Sheehan may have little experience in Foreign Affairs but I still think she ranks up there with Karen Hughes and "Brownie." At least she has given something to this country other than "10" at an Arabian Horse competition. Love you Mikee but no Iraqi constitution will ever work as long as it is tainted with the stench of American so-called democracy. Would the American Revolution have worked if the French had won the war for us and then tried to set up our constitution. There are few similarities between the two and I think you know that!!
I think the French did set up our Constitution. No wonder we're srewed up.
I never claim to be an expert on anything, just an observer of obvious weirdness. What's weird to me about Mother Sheehan is that she no longer has become the mother of a dead soldier, she's now the center of a Leave Iraq Now movement. She doesn't even speak for herself anymore and has a "spokewoman" instead.
I would have had much more respect for her if she would have camped out at Crawfor for 3-4 days and then quietly left after Bush refused to speak to her. I think she would have received much broader support from all over the country if she did that, rather than turn her son's death into a Don Quixote-like endless march with public address speakers.
After what she said to McCain following their meeting, I think Bush made the right decision.
Just the same, you know I will pay your ransom when a member of the religion of peace kidnaps you. And, in case you're wondering, I never favored invading Iraq. Now that we're there, though, I think it would be a huge mistake to leave with our tails between our legs. It would sort of send the wrong message to the wrong people.
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