President faces a new insurgency

[FormerRepublican]

"Cindy Sheehan couldn't have picked a more apt date to begin the vigil that ambushed a president: Aug. 6 was the fourth anniversary of that fateful 2001 Crawford vacation day when George W. Bush responded to an intelligence briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" by going fishing.

On this Aug. 6, the president was no less determined to shrug off bad news. Though 14 Marine reservists had been killed days earlier by a roadside bomb in Haditha, his national radio address that morning made no mention of Iraq. Once again Bush was in his bubble, ensuring that he wouldn't see Sheehan coming. So it goes with a president who hasn't foreseen any of the setbacks in the war he fabricated against an enemy who did not attack inside the United States in 2001.

When these setbacks happen in Iraq itself, the administration punts. But when they happen at home, there's a game plan. Once Sheehan could no longer be ignored, the Swift-boating began. Character assassination is the Karl Rove tactic of choice, eagerly mimicked by his media surrogates, whenever the White House is confronted by a critic who challenges it on matters of war. The Swift-boating is especially vicious if the critic has more battle scars than a president who connived to serve stateside and a vice president who had "other priorities" during Vietnam.

True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a "crackpot" by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Rush Limbaugh went so far as to declare that Sheehan's "story is nothing more than forged documents -- there's nothing about it that's real."

But this time the Swift-boating failed, utterly, and that failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse of political support for the Iraq war.

The hope this time was that we'd change the subject to Sheehan's "wacko" rhetoric and the opportunistic left-wing groups that have attached themselves to her like barnacles. That way we would forget about her dead son. But if much of the 24/7 media has taken the bait, much of the public has not.

The backdrops against which Sheehan stands -- both that of Bush's what-me-worry vacation and that of Iraq itself -- are perfectly synergistic with her message of unequal sacrifice and fruitless carnage. The public knows that what matters this time is Sheehan's story, not the mother who symbolizes it. Sheehan's bashers, you'll notice, almost never tell her son's story. They are afraid to go there because this young man's life and death encapsulate not just the noble intentions of those who went to fight this war but also the hubris, incompetence and recklessness of those who gave the marching orders.

Spc. Sheehan was both literally and figuratively an Eagle Scout: a church group leader and honor student whose desire to serve his country drove him to enlist before 9/11, in 2000. He died with six other soldiers on a rescue mission in Sadr City on April 4, 2004, at the age of 24, the week after four U.S. security workers had been mutilated in Fallujah and two weeks after he arrived in Iraq. This was almost a year after the president had declared the end of "major combat operations" from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.

This summer in Crawford, the White House went to this playbook once too often. When Bush's motorcade left a grieving mother in the dust to speed on to a fund-raiser, that was one fat-cat party too far. The strategy of fighting a war without shared national sacrifice has at last backfired, just as the strategy of Swift-boating the war's critics has reached its Waterloo before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury in Washington. The 24/7 cable and Web attack dogs can keep on sliming Cindy Sheehan. The president can keep trying to ration the photos of flag-draped caskets. But this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home than it does over the one in Iraq."

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/237698_rich24.html

OK, I cheated and included the whole opinion on this one. It's just too good to break into pieces. It literally gave me shivers.

American insurgency is right.

[wli]

1. bad bad bad ... "insurgency" will bring out the Homeland Offense Gestapo

Very very bad word to use to describe the peace movement.

[cliss]

2. Nice. I tend to agree with this verdict.

When Cindy Sheehan surfaced, I could smell disaster. This is the kind of enemy Bush can't fight. He's backed into a corner. If he attacks her, he'll arouse the righteous wrath of the American people.

If he ignores her, he's seen as "lazy", "not caring", "horrible man" and so on, as he drives right by. If he swallows his pride and meets with her, he's seen as "weak", "caving", and so on.

Cindy holds an incredible amount of power. It was very strategic to park herself in the ditch by his ranch, rather than Washington. Now, Bush's comings and goings are always noticed and commented on, all with sourness and smacking of lips.

Men are not supposed to fight women. The fact that she's a woman, and a mom who lost a son in Iraq, gives her 4 aces, plus a Joker thrown in.

This is one fight he can't win.