Friday, August 12, 2005

Cindy Sheehan Protests Because She Has Something At Stake

Have you seen all the spewing hatred aimed at Cindy Sheehan? Go look at thirty-seven year old news footage and you'll see the same bitter and vile criticism leveled at the young, often scraggly-haired anti-Vietnam War protesters.

The reason why there were so many young protesters in the 1960s is because they were the ones plucked from their lives to go die in Vietnam.

They had something at stake.

Without a draft, today's young people have less at stake, less a sense of urgency to protest.

Who does? Who's got some "skin in the game?" as Cindy Sheehan said?

Mothers.

She is the 48-year-old California mother whose son Casey was killed in Iraq last year.

And so it stands to reason that it is Cindy Sheehan and other mothers who not only speak the most forcefully against the Bush administration's senseless, wasteful policies, but that they are the ones targeted by the insecure right wing whose rise to power has been fueled by character assasination and who are willing to abide the real assassinations of soldiers and their families whose trust was betrayed by a president who doesn't think things through and refuses to acknowledges the consequences of his policies.

Toward the latter part of the Vietnam war, older people wised up and joined the youth to protest the stupid policymaking that led to useless death.

The same thing is happening now, but the little children are listening to their mothers.