The ugly, angry left exploiting the grieving

Even talk-radio host Alan Nathan, a man given to building a platform for the broad spectrum of views on the radio has had his fill of Cindy Sheehan – but more to the point it’s the hangers on in her camp and the network supporting their movement with, among other things, taxpayers’ funds intended for universities.

« Current war-protesters have all the intellectual prowess of a bird flying north for the winter and their moronic fumbling illustrates how they just don’t make anti-war activists like they used to.

Lesson one when choosing a figurehead for any cause is first to ensure that she’s not currently engaged in a separate and easily defined act of perfidy against a professed loved one – in this case, her killed son on whose behalf she supposedly speaks. In short, she’s using her son’s death to advance the very cause against which he stood. Casey Sheehan re-enlisted five months into the Iraqi War and eventually chose to participate in the very battle that would take his irreplaceable life because he believed in the effort. It would have been equally disrespectful for her to use him as a prop to support the war had he died on the battlefield not believing in the effort. It’s not so much a question of “pro-war vs. anti-war” as it is a question of whether or not anyone has the moral right to defile a son’s legacy by using his name in opposition to that legacy – whatever it might be.»

A transcript to the conservative talk-show hosted by Rush Limbaugh seemed to be the right place for a shocked press photographer at this so-called “peace camp” to vent his frustrations:

«RUSH: Whoa, whoa, whoa. You spoke with who?

CALLER: With Cindy Sheehan.

RUSH: You spoke with Cindy Sheehan? Did she cuss you out?

CALLER: No, but I gotta tell you: if they find out out there, they're not the nice people that CNN is showing. I saw them go over and just about attack a young girl who was very distraught because her brother had died in Iraq, and they had all those crosses up, and his name was on the cross. So the mother and the sister came out to remove that. They didn't want him to be a part of that, and so they encircled her, tried to stop her from being able to get the cross, she finally did. They were just about at the point of attacking her, told her that her brother was a murderer, that he had killed innocent people, and that he died for nothing.

RUSH: (Laughing.) Oh, God.

CALLER: You know, and as a photographer I understand, you know --

RUSH: Well, now, I gotta stop you there on that, Michael, because they're parroting what Cindy Sheehan is saying when they tell you that.»

That group, and that whole very much shut in subculture- reminds me of something that the late Abba Eban, a statesmen-like man in every way once said:

« A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.»