The Mother of all Battles

[dweller]

Cindy Sheehan has almost single-handedly launched an American antiwar movement.
And in the process, she's exposed a president's feet of clay.
by Joan Walsh

The smearing may continue, but it's already too late: Cindy Sheehan has launched an American antiwar movement.
Maybe, as Matt Drudge blared over the weekend, she's said controversial things about Israel. Maybe the IRS will
chase her for tax evasion, since she's reportedly announced that she won't pay taxes for 2004, the year her son
Casey died in Iraq. Maybe her family has been shaken by her activism. Maybe the smears will even work, and cost
Sheehan some of her mainstream political credibility. It doesn't matter: Someone else will take her place.

Sheehan's central demand -- that the president meet with her and explain why her son died -- has immense power in
a country that's beginning to understand it was lied to about the reasons for the Iraq war, at a time when the carnage
seems not only endless but futile. To build on that power, the antiwar movement being born at Camp Casey must
understand and hold onto the source of Sheehan's moral authority: her authentic grief over her son's death and her
fearless demand to talk honestly about it, even with supporters of the war.

Bush backers are clearly spooked by Sheehan, and they're shifting their stories as fast as they can get away with it.
Early last week, you'll remember, she was a naive flip-flopper who supposedly changed her mind about the war and
President Bush, because she'd had some mild words of praise for the president after they met last June. That line of
attack didn't work, so this week she's a hardened left-wing agitator, plotting alongside the likes of Michael Moore,
Medea Benjamin and Viggo Mortensen to help America's enemies. Need some proof? She's got Fenton
Communications doing her media, for God's sake!

There's actually a tiny shard of truth in the latest right-wing attack on Sheehan, but it serves to underscore how
dangerous she is to their cause. Sheehan has in fact been active in opposing the war since just after Casey died --
she starred in anti-Bush ads last year. (She was the lead in Michelle Goldberg's Salon feature on the ads last
September.) Almost a year later, Sheehan has managed to break through to the American public, in a way that she
obviously didn't in the Real Voices ads. But it's not because of the help of Code Pink and Fenton (which joined her
after she was already in Crawford, by the way). It's because Americans are souring on the war and ready to hear
what she has to say.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0816-22.htm

dp

[Grateful for Hope]

1. I think this is a very good point

"It's because Americans are souring on the war and ready to hear
what she has to say."

Although, more to the point, it might be that the media is ready to hear what she has to say, spurred on by a series of polls that show how much the country is souring on the war.

[EVDebs]

2. It's now becoming a "Teach - In" and the WinterSoldierII Congressional

hearings however will not be held until enough of the soldiers start coming home. Unfortunately for the Republican Party in '06, they've said they're trying to bring some home by '06, at the same time that the Islamic Republic of Iraq will probably be 'declared'.

A bigger cluster-farkel you cannot have dreamed up.

It takes a Neo-Con to really screw things up.