...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Tuesday, August 09, 2005
      ( 3:49 PM )
 
Supporting Cindy

Raw Story has an interview with Cindy Sheehan, conducted by phone last night. In less than a week, this bereft mother has begun a new wave of awareness and action across the country. All she asks is that the President actually pay attention and address those who have sacrificed the most for his war. Rightwingnuts (like my commentator below) insist she is some kind of partisan or that she is "using" her dead son for her own purposes. She is his MOTHER, for godsake. I'm so sick and tired of these people judging a mother who has lost the son she carried in her body, the boy she raised, the man she proudly watched go to serve his country, calling her names, accusing her of being a threat! Not only won't the president talk with her or even acknowledge her - but for some reason there are actually people in this country who are so twisted that they have to defend this administration no matter what lies it tells and no matter how many it hurts, and they defend it by attacking a MOTHER WHO HAS LOST HER SON.

I have a 3 year old son. He came out of my body. He is beautiful and funny and smart and fun - I probably couldn't say anything about him that any mother wouldn't say about her child. When I look in on him sleeping at night (because, like every mother, I do that - every night), he is so peaceful and content. I want to hold him, I want to close him in my arms and protect him from anything that could ever happen to him. I want him to always be happy and funny and adventurous. I love him so much, and I've only known him 3 years. It feels like my heart is breaking every time I think of what Cindy must feel, or the other gold star mothers and fathers and families. I cannot begin to grasp the loss of my son - after knowing him for decades, after loving him and raising him and being his mother.

If Cindy's pain and the pain of mothers like her goes unacknowledged, it stains this entire country. Even more than we already are stained by the very actions that killed her son.

There are thousands of mothers in this country who have lost their sons and daughters in the last 2 years to this war. There are tens of thousands of more Iraqi mothers who have felt the same losses. Who will end it? Obviously not those who aren't risking their own children. So when one mother, one simple woman who just couldn't take it anymore, who has tried what she could, decides she's just going to sit there and do what moms can do really well: watch, why are so many rightist apologists so uncomfortable and so threatened? Because they are unable to take a simple walk in her shoes or sit in her lawn chair. They cannot bear to ask what must it feel like to experience the loss she and other mothers feel because then they will have to ask why. And to ask why would mean that they had to question the artifice upon which their unthinking beliefs are based.

Even if you have lost your child in this war and you cannot agree with Cindy Sheehan's desire to hear from the president what he believes her son's death was worth - you cannot deny her right to seek answers or her right to draw attention to the thing that should make every single American uncomfortable every single day until this war and occupation is over: the ongoing and senseless loss of lives because of what we have done. And don't argue to me about Saddam's wickedness. There were a hundred other things we could have done to stop him that was well within our capabilities. If you can't think through the lies and analyze the truth for yourself, at least take a step back and just say nothing about a woman who has more courage and feeling in her pinky finger than you have in your entire body.

To help Cindy, go here.

To support all the Gold Star Families for Peace, go here.

To read diaries from Cindy, go here.

To be honest with yourself, go here. Remember, the official casualty count is only those who die in Iraq. Anyone who has died on the way out, in Germany, or later in the US has not been included in this count.

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