The inevitable Cindy Sheehan post

I’ve tried, oh how I’ve tried, to avoid adding to the cacophony of opinions on Cindy Sheehan, but this article today by Peter Beinart struck a nerve:

As the parent of a dead soldier, Sheehan has so much moral authority precisely because so few Americans (including so few of us who supported the war) risk sharing her plight.

It’s telling, perhaps, that Beinart doesn’t mention Casey Sheehan until paragraph 9 of an eleven-graf article, and even so only in through the prism of his mother’s grief. For the Crawford demonstrators, Casey must be a one-dimensional character, an unwitting pawn of the Bush/Israel cabal. He must be infantilized and subjugated to the Cause. We must never know that Casey Sheehan signed up for the military, re-enlisted three years later, and then volunteered (over the objections of his C.O.) for the mission that ended his life at Sadr City. If he had survived, he would have been decorated as a hero. But since he died, he’s no longer a hero, but a duped victim in the ghoulish ventriloquism of his mother.

But let’s face it: the MoveOn crowd doesn’t want to talk about Casey. They really want to focus on the “plight” of Cindy whose anguish waned enough during her first meeting with President Bush that she said relatively nice things about him to her local paper. Now Bush is the “top terrorist in the world.” It’s obvious that Sheehan has no goal beyond the unblinking television cameras, tracking her pensive gaze at a makeshift cross adorned with American flags.

I’ve avoided writing about Cindy Sheehan because I think she’s internalized her anguish such that it’s become bigger than herself and her family. (It’s noteworthy that not a single other member of the Sheehan family has joined her in Crawford, or even stepped outside their homes to make a public statement to the press.) But let’s not hear anything more about the “plight” of Cindy’s own making. “Mother Sheehan” wants to elevate her sorrow to national prominence for political purposes; unfortunately, unlike other mourning parents, she wants her son remembered with pity, not honor.

Follow-up – Here are some choice quotes and an appropriate editorial cartoon.