Tannishblog

If you can’t shoot the messenger, shoot the message: that’s what pro-slaughter warhawks are trying to do with Cindy Sheehan. Rush Limburger compares her to Bill Burkett, who tried to blow the whistle about Our Favorite Shrubbery’s lack of National Guard duties. Bill O’Reilly, as usual, claims that Cindy is “associating with the most radical elements in this country,” but then he likes to call others extremists when they disagree with his extremism. David Horrorwitz on MSNBC states that Cindy “exploits the death of her own son,” and by saying so exploits her anti-war message for his own agenda.

It’s the message, the meaning of Cindy’s protest that’s being smeared and obscured; she just wants an answer to a simple question: What is this “Noble Cause” the President talk about that led her son to fight and die in a war overseas?

But the answer is increasingly obvious: there is none. What we are doing to Iraq is anything but “Noble,” and we have no “Cause” to do it. Our Vacationing Shrubbery cannot respond; to answer honestly would condemn him to answering other tough questions he has on the table, to answer dishonestly would likely lead to the impeachment some optimistic Democratic-type dream about. You know the phrase: Catch 22 (thanks, Joseph Heller, wherever you are.)

Like any massive object, American political opinion is turning the corner. Too late for hundreds of fine American idealist killed and wounded, too late for their families, whose lives will forever be scorched by the flames of war, and far too late for the thousands of Muslims who, just like their American Christian counterparts, just wanted to live out their lives as unaffected by political ideology as possible – even in a difficult political environment. These so-called “Brown People,” are just like us. It is important to recognize this fact.

Because our nation is more capable of military retribution, real or contrived, for acts of extreme violence toward this country does not make it a god-given right to destroy another nation. There are many nations in our sad, confused world that are killing off their people, far more heinously and hideously than did Saddam Hussein. The question I see no one asking is why not war against these states?

Cindy Sheehan’s question is akin to most blunt political queries: either academic or rhetorical. If academic, there are no answers that do not involve personal bias, if rhetorical; the answers are so obvious as to not require utterance.

Such is the case against this war: Why are we here? Because some in America believe that after the cold war ends, the time for American Imperialism begins. Why in Iraq? Because that’s where the oil is, and we, as a national economy, are too afraid to take the necessary sacrifices to find other fuel sources. Finally: what is this so-called “Noble Cause?” Fattening the coffers of war profiteers, of which there are many in Texas.