There's a great editorial in the NYT about Bush's inability to deal with Cindy Sheehan and what she represents and that is the needless deaths in Iraq of American soldiers. They point out that Ms. Sheehan's son was likely killed by Moktada al-Sadr and his followers. I've excerpeted the last two paragraphs.


Mr. Bush's stand-up shtick for the Beltway press corps wasn't some aberration; it was part of the White House's political plan for keeping the home front cool. America was to yuk it up, party on and spend its tax cuts heedlessly while the sacrifice of an inadequately manned all-volunteer army in Iraq was kept out of most Americans' sight and minds. This is why the Pentagon issued a directive at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom forbidding news coverage of "deceased military personnel returning to or departing from" air bases. It's why Mr. Bush, unlike Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, has not attended funeral services for the military dead. It's why January's presidential inauguration, though nominally dedicated to the troops, was a gilded $40 million jamboree at which the word Iraq was banished from the Inaugural Address.

THIS summer in Crawford, the White House went to this playbook once too often. When Mr. 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.


Response

We picked this fight with Iraq and now we're paying for it. When we went into Kuwait and kicked the Iraqi army out, our goal was clear. I said before this thing started that it's entirely something different to invade a country with the purpose of taking it over. There are a lot of people there who resent our presence. We've killed thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. Why? WMDs? Nope. Democracy for Iraqis? Doubtful, there are dozens of countries out there with equally repressive governments? Oil? Doubtful because we don't import that much oil from the Middle East anyway. So why? To try and build the future of America by dominating the the earth for the next century. That's why. Pure and simple. Is it worth Casey Sheehan's life. His mom certainly doesn't think so. What do you think?

posted by Stithmeister @ 5:16 PM
 
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At 7:01 PM,  Anonymous said...

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At 9:33 PM,  Stithmeister said...

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