Sheehan III

"if bush and jesus were really so tight, he’d invite [Sheehan] to the ranch and wash her feet. know what i’m sayin’?" ("spike," commenting on another blog)

David Rovics has a new song for Cindy Sheehan at his website:

Cindy's got some questions
And so does everyone
Because she is every mother
And he was every mother's son

Whether Cindy Sheehan changed her story is extremely doubtful. It's much less doubtful that she changed her emotions about the meeting. Now here's where the attacks from the righties get confusing. First, they say she had an anti-war agenda even before Casey Sheehan went to Iraq, certainly before he died. But then she magically lost this agenda upon commenting on her initial meeting with the President. Then (presumably in response to prodding from anti-war groups), Sheehan went back to being militantly anti-war and anti-Bush. As I said at the very beginning of this discussion, it is impossible to know know exactly what every single agent feels in every instance in this episode (or any other). By focusing their rhetorical strategy on assigning such motives, conservatives force themselves into defending not merely a flip-flop theory, but a trip-flop theory.

But the important thing here, is that there is really no strong evidence that she changed her story, while there is very clear evidence that the story was quickly distorted (and the distorted version aggressively spread) by the right's spinmeisters. Here's Media Matters getting to the bottom of it:

Drudge...took Sheehan's quotes from The Reporter out of context in falsely claiming a shift in her position. The June 24, 2004, Reporter article also quoted Sheehan expressing her misgivings about Bush and the Iraq war:
"We haven't been happy with the way the war has been handled," Cindy said. "The president has changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven false or an objective reached."
The 10 minutes of face time with the president could have given the family a chance to vent their frustrations or ask Bush some of the difficult questions they have been asking themselves, such as whether Casey's sacrifice would make the world a safer place. ...the family decided against such talk, deferring to how they believed Casey would have wanted them to act....Sheehan was not referring to her meeting with Bush as "the gift the president gave us." She was actually referring to the trip to Seattle, as Reporter staff writer Tom Hall noted in an August 9 article responding to Drudge...Sheehan said sharing their story with those families was rewarding...Drudge included that quote in his Monday morning report, but didn't explain that it referred to sharing time with her family, not the president."
Reporter editor Diane Barney also responded to Drudge in an August 9 column, in which she said that Sheehan's positions on Bush and the war have not changed since June 2004. "We don't think there has been a dramatic turnaround. Clearly, Cindy Sheehan's outrage was festering even then," Barney wrote. "In ensuing months, she has grown more focused, more determined, more aggressive. ... We invite readers to revisit the story -- in context -- on our Web site and decide for themselves." ...
Throughout the day on August 8, Drudge's false story needed little time to spread to conservative weblogs:
Drudge posted the Sheehan item on August 8 at 10:11 am ET.
Right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin posted the item on her weblog one hour later, at 11:22 am ET.
At 12:40 pm ET, the Drudge story appeared on C-Log, the weblog of the conservative news and commentary website Townhall.com.
At 2:33 pm ET, MooreWatch.com posted the story.
At 3:23 pm ET, William Quick of DailyPundit.com posted the story.

What is particularly depressing for the warborgs is that even if their version of events were 100% true, it wouldn't make Bush and the neocons any better at telling the truth or managing a war.

The President has been forced to respond, in some respectable way, to Sheehan (more evidence that this is a no-lose issue for the anti-war movement and, I'd add, an inevitable outcome of a criminal war conducted in a society with at least some semblence of democratic checks and balances). I will address some of the President's specific points below:

“In recent days, we have seen again that the path to victory in the war on terror will include difficult moments,” the president said near the end of his speech. “Our nation grieves the death of every man and woman we lose in combat, and our hearts go out to the loved ones who mourn them. Yet, even in our grief, we can be confident in the future, because the darkness of tyranny is no match for the shining power of freedom.”

Now, many have commented, both for better and worse, that the power of Sheehan's protest is emotional. I think it's slightly more than that: It's a deconstruction (forgive the term) of the emotional manipulation Bush and the warborgs have repeatedly deployed to exploit 9-11 and the tragedy of war for their own political ends. Dana Cloud has written of the emotionalized closure of the public sphere and the reliance of such closure on assumptions of appropriate behavior by women and mothers. What Bush is doing in the quote above is simply feeding the link to the criticism Sheehan is enacting.

“So we will honor the fallen by completing the mission for which they gave their lives, and by doing so we will ensure that freedom and peace prevail.”

Again, shallow repetition of what has been said again and again. Sheehan's response: What is this mission or noble cause, in the face of your Administration's lies about the reasons we went into Iraq? In the face of your refusal to adequately fund this allegedly vital mission, placing uniformed working people in harm's way? What kind of freedom and peace will prevail based on such lies and inadequacies?

“We're hunting down the terrorists and training the security forces of a free Iraq so Iraqis can defend their own country,” he said. “Our approach can be summed up this way: As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down. And when that mission of defeating the terrorists in Iraq is complete, our troops will come home to a proud and grateful nation.”

As he is prone to do, Bush lifted the "stand up/stand down" quote from an earlier speech, the one he gave at Fort Bragg. And like everything else he says, each sentence and turn of phrase raises more questions. Why do you get to now pretend that this was the reason we went into Iraq? Why do you get to "sever" out of past dubious justifications? What of the fact that our presence there has caused the very terrorism we are now fighting, just as US geopolitical manuevering created Saddam Hussein and sanctioned his evil in the first place? Why must these men and women whose very deaths you invoke as justifications for their mission be sacrificed again and again as pawns of a continuous cycle of hegemony, arrogance, and inevitable blowback? And even granting you every benefit of the doubt, why haven't you made their safety (or the health of ex-soldiers) a top priority? Bush just repeats the same tired slogans over and over, which may explain why as many as 6 in 10 surveyed Americans are opposed to the war.

But he closed the speech this way: “The terrorists cannot defeat us on the battlefield. The only way they can win is if we lose our nerve. That will not happen on my watch. Withdrawing our troops from Iraq prematurely would betray the Iraqi people, and would cause others to question America's commitment to spreading freedom and winning the war on terror.”

Ah, how original. If we question the war, the terrorists win. We're spreading freedom (not creating more Husseins and Bin Ladens) Anyone else getting tired of this sad excuse for a President?