Cindy Sheehan -- yet another poor spokesperson for leftist causes

You know, the Citizen is constantly amazed that the Left is as self-destructively focused on offering up truly flawed spokespersons, one after another, without ever, finally, waking up to that failing and actually requiring of their spokespeople that they pass some basic tests: be able to speak clearly; be able to speak coherently; and to be able to speak in a way that actually, dare we say it, makes sense?

Take Cindy Sheehan (please take her, preferably someplace quiet and where her rhetoric can't hurt anyone). The background, for those who don't know it: her son went to Iraq and died, and now she's an indignant and angry person who leads anti-war rallies and who serves as the darling of the (left-leaning, or at least anti-right) media. Nothing wrong with that. Her words state that as a mother, she has the obligation to speak up for what she thinks and why she's offended at her son's death. That's also fine. The problem is the rest of it.

For instance, Mrs. Sheehan evidently thinks that she's the only mother entitled to an opinion, since she shouts down other mothers who have dead sons from the Iraq war who disagree with her. We won't touch the hypocrisy there -- it's okay if you're Cindy Sheehan, but if you're another mother whose son died in Iraq and you, like the son himself, support the cause of being there, then you aren't allowed to speak and shouldn't be "hogging the microphone". A moment's weakness on Mrs. Sheehan's part? Nope. Let's remember that she called the hurricanes that ravaged the South, killed many, and left literally hundreds of thousands of people damaged... she called them "little bits of wind and water" as she whined that she couldn't get press coverage like the fawning she was getting throughout the Summer. Poor Mrs. Sheehan couldn't get the microphone anymore, and evidently she of the pristine motivations (if you listen to her describing herself) couldn't be bothered to feel anything for those hundreds of thousands of people who were hurt, killed, and lost everything in the storms.

We also have Mrs. Sheehan, whose son did not believe as she does, gifting us with her views on world politics. For instance, it's all a "Jewish conspiracy". We should support the Palestinians who never did anything wrong, in her world-view, against the evil tyrants of the Jews. We should realise that it was a Jewish cabal that led George Bush into war in Iraq. Oh, let's keep listening the most recent example of horrific bigotry and Anti-semitism that is Mrs. Sheehen. Or, let's not - and actually keep our sanity intact, thank you.

For all of it, the part that most offends the Citizen is that she allows no room for the mothers who mobilized to express their opposition to her and her viewpoints - after all, there can be only one offended mother, and that's Mrs. Sheehan, and no one else is allowed the time to talk or the capacity to actually be right. When her group made little crosses and put the names of the dead on them, and stood over those crosses and announced that they were speaking for these people, they evidently forgot to make sure that they were in fact speaking for them. A score of mothers descended on there and pulled up the stakes that represented THEIR children, for whom Mrs. Sheehan does NOT speak, and they stood in front of the press and rightly and correctly denounced the arrogance of Mrs. Sheehan in doing this. And what did our brave and pitiable Mrs. Sheehan do? She had her people put new stakes in the ground, once again with those same names on them. After all, it's not about what those individuals thought, nor what their mothers think. It's only important that SHE, the only mother who's allowed to be offended, who is the only one allowed to think or dare to be right about these things, does what SHE wants to. Lord forbid she actually have any real emotion, any real sympathy for the dead, any real thoughts at all about the other mothers who also lost sons and daughters. After all, through her actions, she's shown she doesn't care at all about any of them -- she cares only for Mrs. Cindy Sheehan, herself.

Let's not forget her sense of country. Quote: "I'm going all over this country telling moms: 'This country is not worth dying for'". We have to assume, given her comments in support of Islamic Jihad, that supporting terrorist baby-killers who murder children in restaurants are worth supporting and dying for. Yikes.

Or: "We have no Constitution. We’re the only country with no checks and balances." Um, Mrs. Sheehan? You might want to be bothered to, say, take a few seconds of time and go to an elementary school, where they can introduce you to some rather strange concepts like "checks and balances" and how the Constitution works. Here's a clue, since you evidently lack the capacity to check your own facts: just because you disagree with a President, does not make the President a criminal, nor does it mean the Constitution, which is in full power here, no longer exists. Such wild statements that have no bearing on reality only reinforce the opinions of those who look at her words and find her... frighteningly ignorant.

But we can go on, since she provides nothing if not a steady stream of extremist, anti-Semitic, empty-headed comments that are only frightening when we realise how many people just cheer-lead for her:

"It’s OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons but we are waging nuclear war in Iraq, we have contaminated the entire country." -- Um, Mrs. Sheehan? We've not launched or used a single nuclear weapon, to constitute a "nuclear war", in Iraq. Nor have we, in context of your statement, contaminated Iraq with nuclear after-effects.

"I will stay here until George Bush talks to me. We're not leaving here until he speaks to me at last, which he hasn't done yet!" -- Umm, Mrs. Sheehan? I have to assume grief is such that it causes terrific memory losses, since Mrs. Sheehan and George Bush did in fact already have a meeting, earlier in the year. But hey, the rhetoric wouldn't be as good if she acknowledged reality, would it?

Poster held by one of Mrs. Sheehan's group: "We support our troops when they shoot their own generals." -- The Citizen will not even respond to this, given how utterly disgusting and reprehensible it is. The Citizen prefers to allow Mrs. Sheehan and her ilk to wallow in their self-degredation, if they insist on spouting this sort of viewponit.

And the final quote from Mrs. Sheehan, with context:

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." And, later: "That was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together," Cindy said (referring to the personal meeting the President instigated, by inviting the Sheehan family as a whole to meet with him).

And Cindy Sheehan on George Bush a few months later: "Every time we tried to talk about Casey and how much we missed him, he would change the subject. And he acted like it was a party."

And Mrs. Sheehan later: "And I'm gonna say, "And you tell me, what the noble cause is that my son died for." And if he even starts to say freedom and democracy' I'm gonna say, bullshit." -- from her Address to Veterans for Peace Convention, August 8, 2005.

And of course we can't ignore her comments that the whole war effort was "only about oil" (yup, we invaded Iraq so we could get cheaper oil -- so, I'll remember her genuis the next time I'm paying nearly three times as much as I was before the war. And I'll happily count how the U.S. has annexed Iraq and taken all the oil for ourselves -- oh, yes, that's right: none of that happened.).

So we have Mrs. Sheehan on the record praising the President for his religious faith, as sincere -- until she became aware that she could become a spokesperson for the antiWar Left. Then, we get the other Mrs. Sheehan -- whose own words are specifically contradicated by the earliest Mrs. Sheehan. Let's call them Cindy Version 1 and Cindy Version 2, since the two versions, by their own words, don't agree with one another.

There are plenty of places to find nice, documented Cindy Sheehan quotes. They're all equally offensive. Anyone who calls for the murder of U.S. Generals by their own troops, and states support for such action; anyone who thinks that we went to war "for oil" (which has become more expensive, not less; and for those with an ounce of intelligence, if we wanted oil, we would have made more deals with Hussein and lifted the ban instead of deposing him, as that would have actually given us a more-stable source of oil at cheaper prices... but again, it wouldn't make as nice a Left-side rhetoric piece, would it, to acknowledge reality?); anyone who uses her own grief for political purposes, and refuses to allow other mothers to do the same when they disagree with her... is not someone that anyone should be following. It is someone, however, who should be pitied and who needs deep counseling. And, preferably, some lessons on basic and consistent logic.