Peace mom lights a fire and a furor

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Robert L. Jamieson Jr.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Peace mom lights a fire and a furor

By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Cindy Sheehan is no Rosa Parks. Nor is she Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.

She is just a mom, a soldier's mom who purposefully packed her bags with grief and anger and questions about why her son died fighting in Iraq.

She then plopped down near the vacation doorstep of a president who has treated her like he treats his critics, a mosquito buzzing in his right ear.

She never wanted a polite conversation with Bush over barbecue, which is why I took her to task in Saturday's column.

All along, Sheehan had a game plan, veiled with help from anti-war protesters who back her, to ignite combustible molecules of anti-war sentiment in need of a spark.

Now Sheehan has lit the fuse.

Across the country, tens of thousands of people came together last night in vigils to show solidarity with this mom who could. In Seattle, people gathered at Green Lake to send the message to a president who would rather ride his bike down the twisting paths of a Texas ranch than speak straight to a country that shares Sheehan's concerns.

I deplore the disingenuous way Sheehan has politicized the death of a son who signed up to fight, but this much is true: In Sheehan, America may be finding its anti-war voice.

It remains to be heard how loud this voice will get, or whether Sheehan's crusade will mushroom into a Million Moms March. Any populist scrutiny on the matter of an imploding Iraq is better than the whimpering of recent years.

Howard Zinn, who put together "A People's History of the United States," says: "The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress."

Sheehan's squatter stunt may prove to be one such point. But please, let's not rush to put her on the same hagiographic pedestal as great names in history who put their lives or physical safety on the line for social change.

People keep comparing Sheehan to Rosa Parks, who risked bodily harm by sitting at the front of a bus and defying a racist law.

Sheehan, who met with Bush at Fort Lewis last summer before upping the ante this year risks, what, public ridicule? She just sits outside Bush's vacation property and doles out quotes for reporters.

A moral thread does connect Parks and Sheehan -- for Parks it was equality and dignity; for Sheehan, it is pointing out, from a grieving mom's perspective, how an unjust war in Iraq is stealing the lives of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

But to suggest a moral equivalency to the women's actions is off base.

People who blithely invoke Parks' legacy to put a shine on Sheehan do so only to ennoble a cause that doesn't need such a wild stretch.

The United States invaded Iraq under the false pretense of weapons of mass destruction that never turned up. More than 1,800 U.S. soldiers have died since fighting began, and thousands more have been maimed or injured.

Insurgents in Iraq are growing stronger, more determined. Meanwhile, American troops are not getting proper equipment such as protective vests and armored vehicles because Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the administration can't get their acts together.

Sheehan has become a human prism through which desperate and frustrated Americans are funneling their concerns and emotions; she is not unlike an inkblot test in which people see what they want to see.

People e-mailed and called me from all over to say I was wrong to attack the messenger whose message -- if not means -- I happen to share.

Sheehan, they say, speaks for people. She camps out for them. In the cases of moms and dads who have lost soldier sons and daughters, she is them.

But there is a danger when people like Sheehan come to symbolize a cause greater than themselves and ordinary people unquestioningly cling to their every word -- just as people in high places clung unquestioningly to Bush's every word on Iraq.

The mom wants Bush to pull U.S. troops from Iraq immediately. Measured thinkers in Congress worry this would only worsen an already bad situation by turning Iraq into a free-for-all romp for terrorists.

I wonder whether the pro-Sheehan folks who gathered in Seattle and elsewhere last night care about such important distinctions.

Or, is it only important for them to have Saint Sheehan say something, anything, so long as it fuels the anti-war fires?

P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. can be reached at 206-448-8125 or robertjamieson@seattlepi.com.

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