In an earlier blog, I’d suggested that the president was feeling compassion for the war-dead and wounded, but was also feeling overwhelmed and helpless about the mess in Iraq and thought this might be the reason he wouldn’t meet with Cindy Sheehan and answer her question, “what is the noble cause Casey died for?”
I received a surprising number of comments on that blog and the majority of people disagreed with me, each adamantly claiming that the president did not care about our soldiers dying. Many believe the president will never meet with her.
One reader suggested that perhaps the president wouldn’t answer Ms. Sheehan’s question because “we get these ever-changing reasons for why we're there, this incessant and disgusting link between 9-11 and Iraq, and the absolute refusal to ask anyone (besides the troops and their families) to sacrifice anything,” and that such a statement wouldn’t sound good as a presidential sound bite.
The number of comments pleased me (because that’s what blogs are all about – starting conversations). But I noticed something else about the comments, too. People were speaking up – sometimes vociferously. And I think we have Ms. Sheehan to thank.
Ms. Sheehan found her voice and put action behind it. We needed (and still need) someone like her – someone that asks a simple question and keeps asking and keeps us focused.
In other words, Cindy Sheehan persists. She speaks out. She risks arrest. She is not afraid.
As one blog reader put it, she is one “gutsy lady,” whose “Gaelic name – O’Siochain – means peace.”
And perhaps it is this peaceful persistent woman that has dragged us from our torpor and helped us find our own voices, which if the comments are any measure, we are finding with more surety.
And as we all begin to speak against the war, maybe the president will be forced to answer Ms. Sheehan’s question.
Or maybe it has already been answered since the administration is now saying that we’re going to have to settle for less than what we wanted in this war. A recent Washington Post article says that we will have to significantly lower our expectations: about our mission in Iraq “The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society where the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.”
So then, the “noble cause” seems to be slipping away.
All the more reason for others to join Ms. Sheehan in vocally speaking out and losing our cloak of silent acceptance.---Written in collaboration with Jennifer Hicks