“My Son Died for Nothing”        
by Mike Whitney
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 22, 2005



 

“I know you can't bring Casey back. But it's time to admit mistakes and bring our troops home now.”

-- Cindy Sheehan, Camp Casey, Texas

The anti-war movement has finally found a pair of shoulders big enough to carry the load: Cindy Sheehan. Sheehan has single-handedly energized the “Bring the Troops Home” campaign and put the Washington warmongers on notice.

They have plenty of reason to worry, too.

The big guns on the Right, Limbaugh, Hannity, Drudge and O’ Reilly, have been pounding away hour by hour, day by day, wielding every vicious slander they can muster, but without affect. The right wing, mudslinging machine simply hasn’t matched the grit of the unyielding Sheehan.

Who could have guessed that a middle-aged mother from Vacaville, CA could be so dogged?

“My son died for nothing,” Sheehan raged, “He was sent to fight in a war that had no basis in reality and was killed for it….I say my son died for lies. George Bush LIED to us and he knew he was LYING.

Why are our young people fighting and dying in Iraq? What is this Noble Cause you are sending our young people to die for?...Why did you lie to us? Why did you lie to the American people?  Why did you lie to the world? Why are our nation’s children still in harms way and dying every day when we know you lied?”

Sheehan is untouchable. The Bush propagandists haven’t laid a glove on her and they’ve savaged their own credibility in the process.

The media has tried to connect Sheehan to the mythical “American Left” suggesting she’s a pawn of Michael Moore.

Ridiculous. It only shows their frustration.

Attacking the mother of a dead soldier is like putting out a campfire with your hands.

It can’t be done and it’s crazy to try.

The dissolute Bill O’ Reilly, a man who was sued for harassing an employee with sexually explicit phone calls, has the gall to challenge Sheehan’s patriotism?!!

What a joke.

O’Reilly never served a day in uniform in his life and quivers whenever a car backfires too close to his padded LA studio.

What a miserable excuse for a human being.

Everyone from Wolf Blitzer to Rush Limbaugh has tried to take Sheehan down, but nothing has worked. The Forth Estate has lost its thunder by wasting its energy on petty diversions, fabrications, and personal attacks. Now, Sheehan’s image is growing larger and the media looks more and more like the wretched, hectoring bullhorn it really is.

Meanwhile, Bush is planning another five day “Mission Accomplished” tour around America to promote his wilting Iraq policy. He announced his trip on his weekly radio address where he reiterated the same fictions that drove the nation to war.

“Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy,” Bush boomed.

No one’s buying Bush’s palavering anymore.

The last time the Crawford chickenhawk appeared in a crowd of Americans who weren’t “handpicked” by Republican staffers was 9-11.

Think about that.

No president in the history of this country has been so widely reviled that he couldn’t show his face in front of the American people. That is, not until the deserter-in-chief took office.

Come out, come out, George Bush.

Come out from behind the concertina wire and your phalanx of security thugs.

You ran away from the Texas National Guard and now you’re running away from a wretched 48-year-old woman.

Come out of your bubble world and see the misery you’ve caused, you chicken-hearted phony.

Sheehan has tapped into the bottomless ocean of rage that seethes just below the surface of American life. That rage is appearing everywhere and cracking the citadels of power.

“I have been known for some time as a person who speaks the truth and speaks it strongly,” Sheehan said. “I have always called a liar a liar and a hypocrite a hypocrite.”

Ka-boom! A direct hit!

This is why Bush won’t face her. He knows he’d wither if he heard the truth. He knows he’d have to slink back into his spider hole and wait for his handlers to re-inflate his ego before he could play president again.

Sheehan occupies rarified ground; she’s the mother of a dead Marine and the nation’s heart is with her. She is completely above the fray, impervious to any of the “slings and arrows” aimed at her.

Since she began her crusade, America’s political dynamic has changed dramatically with the country leaning more and more heavily towards withdrawal. It would take a miracle for Bush to regain the momentum for the war.

Sheehan took on the world’s most powerful man and left him running for cover.

Bush has been beaten and he knows it.

Now, he should do the right thing and bring the troops home.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state, and can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com.

Related Articles

* Government by Dirty Tricks by Patricia Goldsmith
* Bush Launches “Operation Cindy Sheehan” by Ahmed Amr
* The Iraq War and MoveOn by Norman Solomon
* Blaming the Antiwar Messengers by Norman Solomon
* Mona in the Field of Crosses at Camp Casey, TX by Greg Moses
* Cindy Sheehan Confronts Judith Miller’s War by Ahmed Amr
* SING GOD DAMN IT by Patricia Goldsmith
* Get a Life, Mr. President by Peter Kurth
* Rage Against the Killing of the Light by Norman Solomon
* The Revolution is NOW... by Sheila Samples
* Plaming Cindy Sheehan by Ahmed Amr
* C'mon Dubya, Talk to the Lady by Ken Sanders
* How Building a Saudi City Made a Lefty Out of Dick Underhill, VFP by Greg Moses

Other Articles by Mike Whitney

* "Shoot to Kill": Tony Blair’s First Trophy
* Greenspan’s Role in the Housing Bubble
* Failing in Iraq
* Revving Up World War III
* Pretty Hot in Crawford, Pretty Hot in Hell
* Straight-Shootin’ George Galloway
* “Operation Community Shield”: Comrade Chertoff’s Preemptive Crackdown
* Kristallnacht: What Happens When the Public Says Nothing? 
* Burying Blair: Post-Mortem for the British PM
* “Withdrawal” from Iraq?: Forget About It
* The Globalization of State Terror
* Tom Friedman: Fabricating the Roots of Terror
* Doomsday: The Final Months of the “Housing Bubble”
* John Roberts and the National Security State
* Guantanamo: the Calculus of Human Misery
* Did Greenspan Know About the London Bombings Two Days Before?
* Another Casualty in Rumsfeld’s Information War
* Genesis of an American Gestapo
* Bush's Orgy of Carnage
* Goodbye to Sandra Day O’ Connor . . . and Good Riddance
* The Rumsfeld Solution: “Liberating Iraq, One Journalist at a Time”
* Show Your Independence on the 4th -- Burn a Flag
* "Up in Smoke": Bush Flops in Prime Time
* More Rumsfeld Lies About Insurgent Meetings
* Incinerating Iraqis: The Napalm Cover-Up
* Guantanamo: The New-World Icon
* The Bush Radio Address: More Delusional Blather While Iraq Bleeds
* The Friedman Solution: Reinstate the Draft
* Body Slamming the 4th Amendment
* Operation Desperation: Rumsfeld’s Baghdad Fiasco
* The EU Constitution: Don’t Believe the BS
* Protecting the Plutocrats
* What Was Laura Bush Doing at the Al Aqsa Mosque?
* Free Jose Padilla!
* Alberto Gonzales’ Kristallnacht: Purges for a Safer America
* Tom Friedman: The Imperial Chronicler
* Gods, Gays, and George Bernard Shaw
* A Tentative Strategy for Ending the War
* The Specter of Violence in America
* Free Speech in the Crosshairs
* Why America Needs to be Defeated in Iraq
* More Madness at the Bush News Conference
* Ratzinger’s Plan to Hide the Pedophiles
* Let’s Let Atheists Back into Politics
* Pope Ratzinger: More “Pie-in-the-Sky” for the Struggling Masses
* The Purveyors of Violence: The NY Times in Falluja
* Screw You, Paul Volker!
* Pope TV and the New World Media
* The Economic Tsunami: Sooner Than You Think
* Destroy Abu Ghraib!
* Terri Schiavo and the Battered Judiciary
* Railroading Moussaoui
* The Wolfowitz Appointment: A Red Flag for the Coming Wars
* “Economic Meltdown” -- Sorry, but We’re Toast
* John Bolton and the Road to Tehran
* Clearing the Way for the American Police State
* Challenging the Language of Violence
* Jose Padilla and the 10 Commandments
* Crushing the UN for a Stronger America
* Europe to Bush: “Hands Off Iran”?
* The Incredible Shrinking Dollar
* Assassinating Al-Hariri Fits Washington’s Plan
* Washington’s Plan to Foment Civil War in Iraq
* Condi’s Euro-Tour
* Folksy Tom Friedman and New Age Imperialism
* Government Without Consent
* The Desperate State of the Union
* Iraq’s Election Fiasco
* Boarding Up the “Window of Opportunity”
* KGB Chieftain Finds Home at Homeland Security
* Bush’s Grand Plan: Incite Civil War
* Pink Slips at CBS

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