Cindy Sheehan Faces Down the Pigeons

Jim Jamison, speaking after the Cindy Sheehan program held last Friday in our Crossroads city, is quoted [Terre Haute Tribune Star, April 14, 2007] as follows: “He [Jamison] believes Sheehan’s anti-war message ‘hurts the troops. They want to see they have support from their country they are defending, and they don’t get that from her and the messages she puts out.’”

Enough! This is hogwash . . . and worse.

The troops have always had the full and unqualified support of the anti-war movement. It is Bush’s flawed and failed policies that are questioned and opposed by Cindy Sheehan and the many other individuals and organizations opposing this war. And this is how a large majority of Americans feel and vote today.

Jamison represents a group of self-styled patriots calling themselves “Gathering of Eagles.” They are dedicated to disrupting Cindy Sheehan appearances in Indiana. But their shrill, finger-pointing, synthetically patriotic rhetoric is no longer effective. Americans have concluded that our troops deserve more than this. Americans have decided not to be swayed by the rants of these Rumsfeld clones, “tail-enders” who confuse mindless flag waving for serious thinking. People have come to recognize the lies that led us into this tragic war. They will not accept putting our courageous military personnel in harm’s way for another year.

Once for the war, Americans now know in their hearts and minds that our troops have given all and more to a policy founded on lies and doomed from the start. They are saying, enough!

Jamison’s self-glorifying “Gathering of Eagles” group ignores the facts of history and the facts on the ground in Iraq today. Their support of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld fiasco is now reduced to red-faced emotionalism. They are not Eagles; they are Passenger Pigeons. They continue to dutifully and unthinkingly carry the false, ever changing and hollow messages of this administration. But the credibility of these messages, like the Passenger Pigeon of the past, is long extinct.

Our troops have given all and more than anyone could ask. We now enter year five of this war. Yesterday the deaths of five good, strong and true Americans in Iraq were announced.

Enough.
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For a perceptive account of Cindy Sheehan's Terre Haute appearance: Stephanie Salter: "Cindy Sheehan an ordinary woman on a path that’s extraordinary" go here.