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Reprinted with permission...
The Price of Freedom
24
Cindy Sheehan
Becoming a disabled vet during a time of "peace", I saw things, did things that you average Americans could not fathom. All for the sake of our freedoms.Who cries for my shipmates lost at sea? It was peacetime so no attention was called to it. Who stands out when a pilot goes down on a trianing mission? Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, die every day. EVERY DAY! it's the life we lead. It's a dangerous job, and I did it for the love of my country. The greatest freedom YOU have is not having to worry about weather or not our military will defend you. It is thier(our) duty. It is not a choice.We accepted that when we signed up. No one forced us.And we did not get to pick or chose whom we would defend. I lost friends and loved ones both in peace and in war and thier sacrifice is greater than your lose. But to you, it appears, we should sit on our hands and let madmen destroy the world. So Sorry, I have seen it first hand, this cruelity called terrorism.
Another Jane Fonda.Good Grief.
All that is necessary for the truimph of evil is for good men to do nothing!
Have a Nice day. God bless our troops and America!!
I received this message on my MySpace page. The person’s picture that accompanied the message was of a young man standing next to a bright-shiny red truck. Obviously, he hasn’t taken advantage of his GI education benefits to avail himself of an English Comp class, but that is beside the point.
When I receive a message like this, I have to pay attention to it. This young man has lost friends in what he calls “peace” time. He has served his country unlike the Commander in Chief and the Vice Commander in Chief. He took his oath and service seriously, but I had and have a fundamental question for him---what freedoms did Casey pay the ultimate price for? What freedoms did my family gain from Casey’s death and what price did we have to pay?
I had to carefully explain to the young vet that BushCo can now read our emails, listen to our phone calls, open our mail, look at our phone and bank records and imprison us without our fundamental rights of habeas corpus. The people of Iraq don’t even have the freedom of going to school, mosque or the market without the potentiality of being blown to tiny pieces. They did go out and “vote” in a day that they were finally protected by the US military for candidates that didn’t even get to campaign for fear of assassination.
I would like to tell this young vet and the millions of Americans who disapprove of Bloody George and his war OF terror who don’t do anything but complain what this raping of our freedoms cost my family and 3046 other families to date here in America.
There were 24 of our troops killed in the 3rd bloodiest day for American soldiers since the sinister invasion almost four years ago. Their families don’t even know (but I know the moms suspect) that their loved one has been killed on foreign sands so our land of the free can become the land of the less free. These 24 families are going to discover what the term “hell on earth” really means.
On the 2nd day after Casey was killed, Sgt. Major “I don’t know, but I will find out and get back with you” Mills came over to our house and nervously opened his Casualty Manual. As with the Sheehan family, Casey was the Sgt. Major’s first casualty. As Casey’s first of kin, I had to sign paper work designating a funeral home and about the funeral and other things I signed in a fog of immeasurable pain and shock. I am not sure what I signed and I don’t think the signatures would hold up in a court of law. Before he gratefully got to escape our house of sorrow, he handed me a check for $12,000 (that has since been increased to $100,000) for incidentals and informed me that I was the beneficiary for Casey’s life insurance.
The $12,000 went quickly for funeral costs. The surviving men in my family needed suits and the sisters needed appropriate funeral dresses. I had no “mother of a hero” funeral clothes. The Army only pays $4600.00 for funerals and a pittance for headstones if you don’t want to use their rigid style. The dozens of people who filled our tiny home every day needed to be fed and supplied with a seemingly bottomless well of alcohol. Our friends and neighbors in Vacaville were very generous, but all of the money we received went to a Catholic summer camp where Casey worked for a few summers. These are just monetary costs of freedom and don’t even approach the emotional and physical costs of freedom that these 24 new families are going to be forced to experience by this insanely greedy administration over the very weak protestations of a complicit Congress.
The sleepless nights; the gallons of tears; the regrets; the guilt; the physical and mental effects of depression; the different ways that each family member grieves; the anger; the unrelenting and unremitting pain; the trips to a cemetery that becomes too familiar---where new graves or headstones are noticed; the dreams; the nightmares; the abandonment of the military and the country that your son died for; the loss of appetite, the gain of appetite; the loss of hope---etc. etc---forever and ever.
Bloody George is sending more of our children to die and kill innocent Iraqis. My one consolation in Casey’s death is that it was swift---in his first battle after only being in country for 5 days. He said that he couldn’t kill anyone and I, gratefully, don’t think he did. What really chaps my hide is that Congress won’t do anything meaningful to stop Bloody George, for example, cut off the money pipeline where the money flows directly from China to the Pentagon. Except for less than a handful of members, no one in Congress, or this administration has had to get one gray hair from worry. None of them will ever sob over their child’s grave or have to stay at a Fisher House while their family member is recovering from the grievous wounds of an IED blast. Not one of the people who send our children off to war will ever lose their jobs or marriages because of their own crimes.
I told my young veteran correspondent that even if we believed that our troops dying in Iraq was securing our freedoms or making us safer, that the price was still too high. Why are mostly white American’s freedoms often bought and paid for by the blood of brown people? From the almost virtual extinction of our own native population, enslavement of Africans, mass murder of Filipinos, war crimes against Japanese in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Koreans, Vietnamese, and now Iraqis and Afghanis, these peoples have paid and are paying an exorbitant price for our freedoms. If one person has to die to make me free, then I don’t want that freedom. It is a freedom that is purchased by bondage and carnage which is inherently compromised and soiled.
The one thing that I heartily agree with that my vet friend wrote is:
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing!
In the age of American Idol and Fox News, evidently evil is triumphing. It is time for the ¾’s of our nation who oppose what’s going on to get off of their couches and stop allowing a handful of grieving parents, ballsy women in pink, courageous military families, Raging Grannies, and a bus load of Iraq vets to do the heavy lifting for the peace movement.
We families and vets are already shouldering a heavy burden.
Help us stop Bloody George.
Because of the apathetic inaction of the majority masses, 24 new families will discover the heavy toll of freedom.
Go to United for Peace and Justice and find out how you can join hundreds of thousands---hopefully millions---of Americans around the country the weekend of January 27-29 to say no to the Bush regime and war---yes to impeachement and peace!
Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Sheehan who was killed in Bush's war of terror on 04/04/04.
She is the co-founder and president of Gold Star Families for Peace and the Camp Casey Peace Institute.
She is the author of three books, the most recent is: Peace Mom: A Mother's Journey Through Heartache
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