Texans Put Their Magnets Where Their Mouths Are

Everyone knows by now that Cindy Sheehan, mother of fallen soldier Casey Sheehan, went to "kill some time" down in Crawford Texas while Bush was in the middle of his whirlwind record setting vacation tour.

The protest, for lack of a better word, that Sheehan is staging has been peaceful, legal, and if you ask most Americans these days, pretty damn necessary. Even though she's met with Bush in the past, she wants to speak with him face to face, without the festive atmosphere, asking him one simple question: Mr Bush - given faulty intelligence, manipulation of facts, and completely flip flopping the reasons for going to war in the first place - why are you such an asshole?
Actually, she wants to know why we're still in Iraq, and for what cause did her son die for if soldiers were sent to Iraq to die for totally different reasons.

It makes sense, but I can answer Cindy's first question pretty easily.

Cindy - we're still in Iraq because we took what was a nation almost entirely free of car bombings, snipers, and dead contractors hanging from overpasses, and completely screwed it up. Instead of setting up a little flytrap for terrorists as your president suggested, the terrorists have actually set up a flytrap for our troops. Iraq's lawmakers are getting kidnapped or executed. We're pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into a fire extinguisher, while watching the fire grow. The country has little electricity, little security, little water, and little hope. We've taken a sovereign nation - albeit ruled by a brutal dictator - and turned it into one of the most violent, dangerous, civil-war bound nations on the planet. Therefore, the reason why don't leave is because we're trying to clean up our mess. We leave now and Iraq officially renames itself to the People's Republican of Taliban. If we stay, we end up fighting against people who are fighting off foreign invaders - until they either die or run out of bullets. It's not exactly a, "should I have the veal, or the lamb" type of choice, but it's what's on the table, brought to you by the smirking smartass you saw desperately trying to fumble through his last press conference.

Regardless of what you think our choices are or should be however, most of our red state, giant beltbuckle wearing, evolution-phobic neighbors in the Republic of Texas are not happy that mothers of dead troops dare ask questions of our President. To the families who have lost loved ones, it's as if many of these people are saying, "sorry to hear about your dead kid. Now shut hell up, buy some more 'support our troops' magnets at Wal-mart, and do you know who was voted off Survivor last night?"

I think the greater point is - mind your damn business. Keep your American flag pendant shined up on your lapel, add your 8th ribbon magnet to your car, and if people keep dying for a cause that we never signed up for, tough shit. How dare you ask questions, educate yourself, or demand answers. People are upset at Cindy, because they feel she's taking it too far and turning this into a political issue.

Well guess what.

The Iraq war IS a political issue. This country and it's media LOVE the grieving mother or grieving widow story, and everyone empathizes - but that empathy stops as soon as said mother starts getting active or political, or does something about her grief. The message here: Mothers are sweet when they're crying holding a crisply folded American flag, but Mothers who question the justification behind their tears are extremists.

Perhaps this is the attitude of one Larry Northern, our favorite ironically named Southern redneck, as he drove his pickup truck trailing a pipe and chains behind it through a display the protesters set up of hand-made crosses, American flag, and names of fallen US soldiers written on them. Larry is most likely a Bush supporter, and therefore a big supporter of the troops - apparently only the living ones (see video of the story here).

Perhaps this is the attitude of Larry #2, Larry Mattlage. He lives next door to Bush and will be damned if these liberal hippy mothers of dead soldiers question his neighbor. He expressed his support of the troops by firing his shotgun twice in the air as a sign of displeasure toward the soldiers' family members. His sense of humor apparently a little more developed than the other Larry, Bush's neighbor said he was getting ready for dove-hunting season (*rim shot*).

Or, maybe this is the attitude of Rush Limbaugh, when about Cindy Sheehan he claims, "her story is nothing more than forged documents. There's nothing about it that's real, including the mainstream media's glomming onto it. It's not real. It's nothing more than an attempt. It's the latest effort made by the coordinated left!"

Or, maybe this was the attitude of our former first lady when she said on good Morning America in 2003, "why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Way to support the troops, Babbs - now go back to your knitting.

There are always going to be people who oppose all war and a single death related to anything war related is simply a wasted life. I'm not one of those people, and I'm the first to point out that the two World Wars of the last Century had some very real and vital causes, and I don't think Cindy would be protesting her son's death had he fallen in the hands of Hitler's Army.

Iraq is much, much different because the more information we've found out about what got us in this mess, the more Bush and his ChickenHawk cabinet lose their credibility. Specifically:

-We were told by our president not to trust the UN's assertions that they had destroyed most of Saddam's illegal weapons, couldn't find any more, and needed more time to prove that there was nothing there.
-We were told about connections, even though most on the left knew they were false, to Al Qaeda and 9/11. The administration played on the emotions of this country to rally around our nation's newly found patriotism, and turned a positive, more united than ever America into one that is bitterly divided today
-We were told that Iraqis were imprisoned, begging to be liberated by a Western nation and that we'd be greeted with flowers and ticker tape parades. Instead of throwing confetti, they're throwing grenades.
-We were told we could use revenue for Iraq's oil and subsidize this war - hundreds of billions of American dollars later this is obviously not the case.
-We were told we'd fight them over there so we wouldn't have to fight them over there. Tell that to London and Madrid.
-We were told they hate us for our freedom - now Americans are realizing they hate us for our foreign policy. If they hated countries for their freedom, there are plenty of nations out there a lot more liberal and free than us they'd have bombed a long time ago.
-We were told that the nation of Iraq would participate in it's own nation building - but the divisional sects of Muslims are on the bring of civil war with each other, with growing interest from Iran in helping the Shiites, and from the rest of the Arabian peninsula sympathizing with the Sunnis.
-We now have evidence - from authors close to the president like Bob Woodward, to cabinet officials like Paul Oneil, to foreign sources such as the downing street memo that this war was planned from the start and starting it was the full intent of the Administration despite what information we had.

So given that the war is mess, we're losing lives and money and the reasons we were told we needed to go to war turned out not to be true, and the "just trust us" policy of the Bushies has completely collapsed, a lot of Republicans are really upset - not because of reasons I just listed, but because Americans are now starting to do what we should have done 3 years ago - hold the president accountable.

At first glance you might say the Republicans' motto is put up or shut up when it comes to war. Cry at your husband's funeral all you want, but questioning why he died makes you a traitor. But then I was so strongly reminded of the suddenly anti-war republicans during Clinton's war overseas in Kosovo against a brutal dictator slaughtering his people - and I remember the "wag the dog" themes and the "no blood for Monica" outcries and think to myself: "These guys aren't for or against war? They're simply loyal to whatever President Bush wants." In fact, click here to see what some of the same people speaking out against protests toward this Iraq war said about Kosovo.

And I guess that is the kind of brainwashed subservience we're fighting over in Iraq in the first place.