Cindy Sheehan, the ongoing saga

So we have the latest from Cindy Sheehan to dwell on. Seems that she wrote a letter to the President's Mother, criticising the former first lady's parental skills.

First, when other grieving mothers of sons and daughters who have died in Iraq tried to write to Sheehan during the summer, we were treated to Miss Sheehan complaining how despicable and unworthy these other grieving mothers were, for daring to disagree with her and for addressing themselves to her and her actions. That's an interesting (and arrogant) standard, one which we now have Miss Sheehan violating herself. If it was so "despicable" for someone who disagreed with her to write her, it's also despicable when she does it herself. But then, that would require Cindy Sheehan to actually apply the standard she forces on the world around her to herself.

Second, she again repeats the tired refrains we've all heard before. The war was for oil. Well, that doesn't even pass the smell test. Were we interested in cheap oil, as she implies, we would have simply lifted the sanctions and gone back to working with Hussein, as we did as a nation in the 1980s. THAT would have guaranteed cheap oil -- not continuing to apply sanctions. If the war were "for oil", then after militarily defeating Hussein we would have at least immediately upgraded the Iraqi oil infrastructure so that it could immediately begin pumping oil at high quantities. We didn't. We would have nationalized the oil infrastructure, to let us control it -- we didn't. We did literally NOTHING after defeating Hussein militarily that would result in "cheap oil" -- which is the point. If cheap oil were the goal, we wouldn't have gone to war in the first place; if cheap oil were a goal of the war itself, we would have done things very differently than we did. At no point does the phrase "the war was for oil" reach anything approaching even logical -- it is transparently ideological, which does not require the same honest standard as logic.

Lastly, we again are treated to Miss Sheehan's ongoing hubris. When she put up crosses in Texas with the names of the dead soldiers on them, she didn't bother to find out if that was okay with the other grieving mothers of those soldiers -- she just did it, piously standing over those crosses and lecturing the world. When those grieving mothers showed up to remove the crosses with THEIR children's names on them, we were treated to Miss Sheehan -- putting them back up. She demands that we respect her as a "grieving mother", and that that instantly qualifies her as an expert on international affairs, and that that instantly makes her worthy of respect -- but she refuses to give the same respect to other grieving mothers. Not only is that a double standard, it's a particularly heinous double standard -- if one grieving mother is worth respect and listening to, then they all are, even if they happen to disagree with Miss Sheehan.

Then again, that evidently never bothered to occur to her as she was angrily telling those other grieving mothers that they shouldn't speak up or take up "her microphone time" (love that phrase). Sort of like the enormous respect she showed the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita -- when she complained that she wasn't being listened to anymore or getting airtime, and I quote, "because of a little rain and wind which aren't nearly as important as what I'm trying to say". A little rain and wind? Can you show any more disrespect for people who just had their lives thrown into utter disarray, their homes ruined, their loved-ones killed? A Cat-5 hurricane, a "little rain and wind"? But that isn't the worst part, it's what's behind the words that's horrible. We're treated again to the fact that, in Cindy Sheehan's world, she's the only one who should ever get any attention, she's the only expert on whatever she's saying, and no one else, particularly those who disagree with her but also those who suffered through the hurricanes, should get any attention.

As standard-bearers and spokespersons go, she is literally the worst for any cause. What happened to the day when liberalism had intellectually-honest spokespeople like Daniel Patrick Moynihan? Where did those honest, thoughtful liberals go? Or have the Michael "never-saw-a-fact-I-couldn't-ignore" Moore and Cindy "respect grieving mothers, but only THIS grieving mother" Sheehan chased them out of the party?

Frightening.