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US Warhawks Continue Sheehan Smear Campaign

Not surprisingly, the simplicity of a mother demanding government accountability for the death of her son (as represented by Cindy Sheehan) is anathema to the warhawks. This is especially true for the neo-conservatives who doctored Iraqi pre-war intelligence and bungled the ensuing occupation and inevitable insurgency. Even as the Sunnis are left out of the new draft Iraqi Constitution negotiated by the Kurds and radical Shiites, Mark Styn in the Chicago Sun-Times makes the effort to vilify Sheehan and all other like-minded activists for their patriotism:

[I]n the wreckage of Pat and Cindy Sheehan's marriage there is surely a lesson for the Democratic Party. As Cindy says, they're both Democrats, but she's "more liberal" and "more radicalized." There are a lot of less liberal and less radicalized Dems out there: They're soft-left-ish on health care and the environment and education and so forth; many have doubts about the war, but they love their country, they have family in the military, and they don't believe in dishonoring American soldiers to make a political point. The problem for the Democratic Party is that the Cindys are now the loudest voice: Michael Moore, Howard Dean, Moveon.org, and Air America, the flailing liberal radio network distracting attention from its own financial scandals by flying down its afternoon host Randi Rhodes to do her show live from Camp Casey. The last time I heard Miss Rhodes she was urging soldiers called up for Iraq to refuse to go -- i.e., to desert.

On unwatched Sunday talk shows, you can still stumble across the occasional sane, responsible Dem. But, in the absence of any serious intellectual attempt to confront their long-term decline, all the energy on the left is with the fringe. The Democratic Party is a coalition of Pat Sheehans and Cindy Sheehans, and the noisier the Cindys get the more estranged the Pats are likely to feel.

Sorry about that, but, if Mrs. Sheehan can insist her son's corpse be the determining factor in American policy on Iraq, I don't see why her marriage can't be a metaphor for the state of the Democratic Party.

What Mr. Steyn fails to address in his column is the Republican Party's own set of loonies (American Taliban). Of course, it is easier to attack a grieving mother than the policy makers.

posted by the prisoner @ 1:00:00 PM