Cindy Sheehan: A Misguided Mother

I used to consider myself a bit of a leftie, but it just seems in recent years that the left has gone over the deep end into completely laughable uselessness that not only irritates but frightens me. Case in point: Cindy Sheehan goes off the deep end, saying that a cabal of Jewish neocons controls American foreign policy:

"You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism," Sheehan declares.

Should we remind her that terrorism existed long before Israel won Gaza in the Six Day War? Oh wait--she means "get Israel out of Palestine" as in "Israel should not exist." Riiight.

Sheehan stated that her son joined the military to protect the US, "not Israel." Wow. This is the latest in the centuries-old blood libel used against Jewish people. The accusation that Jews are drinking the blood of Christian children (hence the term "blood libel"). In the modern sense, Sheehan is exploiting the ridiculous fear that somewhere, somehow, Jews have their hands on the levers of power and are using it to Kill Your Children for their own benefit! Yes, you can always list a bunch of "itzes" and "cohens" and imply that they are really in charge, but it would seem to me that the people controlling our foreign policy right now are named Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld (and most recently, Powell). Especially since, as a Jewish person, I did not receive the memo that we are in control of the United States defense department, military and media. You would need to look to Rupert Murdoch for that honor, I'm sure.

To further show how off the rails Ms. Sheehan has gone (from justifiably grieving and angry mother to lefty, shrill nutjob), look no further than the rousing support she is receiving from David Duke:

In truth, Cindy Sheehan is absolutely right. Her son signed up in the military to defend America, not Israel, and to safeguard our own democracy, not the democracy of some foreign nation that neither wants nor needs it. In advancing this war for Israel, government and media advocates obviously couldn’t get Americans behind the war by saying it was a war for Israel. They had to make up bogus reasons for the war, such as saying that Iraq was an imminent threat to America and that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Now that these lies have been exposed, they have changed the rationale for the war to “fighting for democracy” and “fighting against terrorism.”...Cindy Sheehan is right!"

I don't want to be the person who says this to a grieving Gold Star mother, but seriously: when you espouse a position to which DAVID DUKE attaches himself, it may be time to rethink the mainstream viability of your "movement."

In a larger context, I see this happen at every progressive/liberal/left event I've ever been to. As soon as you set up an Earth Day march down past the monuments in DC, the Free Mumia/Legalize Pot/NAMBLA people show up to muddy your message. Why? Because we let them. We don't want to devalue someone else's movement, so we just let them tag right along, saying nothing, all the while impeding the impact of our own movement on those whose minds we seek to change.

I kid you not. I have attended THREE separate marches/protests/celebrations in DC in the same number of years and every single one of them was, if not hijacked at least marred/obfuscated, by the fringe groups who also came out and who were not turned away at the door. If Cindy Sheehan really wants to be credible, she needs to get back to the basics of what moved her to act in the first place: not antipathy towards Jews disguised as antipathy toward Israel, not a message that dovetails nicely with that of a shameless white supremacist, and not a demeanor that implies that she somehow has more "moral authority" to stand there than any other parent who has lost a child in service to his or her country. She has tainted her original and quite valid message to the extent that she is now a caricature of her former, seemingly-noble self. If I were the POTUS, I wouldn't touch her with a barge pole. And THAT is the double tragedy: that not only does she feel that her son died in vain, but because of her associations and ridiculous statements of late, her efforts to aright the situation are now also in vain.

I'm sure I've not only shocked and stunned people with my opinion on this, but have also pissed you off. Oh well. Let the flames begin, I suppose. Just don't set up camp outside my house with a David Duke cheering section...