As I predicted, this sad ‘circus’ is about to get a whole lot uglier:
David Clemons seethes when he sees Cindy Sheehan on television, standing among small white crosses in an antiwar encampment named for her dead son.
To Mr. Clemons, her protest is a crushing insult to his own son, who was also killed while fighting in Iraq.
“The lady is not honoring her son’s sacrifice, because we don’t have a draft, and he went and signed his name on the dotted line,” said Mr. Clemons, of Winchester, Tenn., whose son, Nathan, 20, was killed by a roadside bomb on June 14. “She’d better not be presenting herself as the voice of all the fallen.”
Andre Lieurance, a retired naval officer whose son, Victoir, 34, was killed by a bomb just last week, said he found Ms. Sheehan so stirring that he might join her vigil at Camp Casey.
“I just want some answers about why we’re over there,” said Mr. Lieurance, of Knoxville, Tenn. “I don’t even see the purpose anymore. It’s frustrating, and I’m angry.”
Though Ms. Sheehan has so far failed to persuade President Bush to meet with her in Texas, she is being closely watched by a small group of Americans who can relate to her pain, regardless of whether they agree with her. Even Mr. Bush was forced to react to her campaign when he said last week that she “doesn’t represent the view of a lot of the families” of soldiers that he had met and that withdrawing from Iraq, as Ms. Sheehan has demanded, would weaken the United States.
The competing messages have raised debate among parents of the war dead, who appear as divided as the rest of the nation in their opinions of Ms. Sheehan and her quest. In interviews last week with several dozen parents of troops killed in Iraq, some said she had moved them to speak out, whether for the war or against it, while others said that her vivid protest had dashed what little peace they had found since their children died.
But hey- it might hurt Bush in the polls, so this is a good thing, right? At any rate, here is a caustic piece by Noemie Emery about the whole affair.