Why President Bush Should Not Speak to Cindy Sheehan

– http://www.dtmagazine.com/opinion81...

Cindy Sheehan, speaking live on the Ed Schultz radio show (and elsewhere) on Thursday, August 11, said that the media and Congress have not held the president accountable for his actions. She added that the President’s decision on whether or not to speak to her, the Gold Star Mothers for Peace and the American people is the President’s accountability moment.

Sheehan, the mother of Casey Sheehan, who died fighting for America in Iraq, has been holding a vigil outside the President’s Crawford, Texas ranch since August 6th, asking that Mr. Bush come out and speak to her personally and answer some of her questions. Cindy Sheehan wants to know for what noble cause her son died, as the President continues to purport that American soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq are doing so for some "noble cause" without defining one. Further, Mrs. Sheehan wants to know what many other Americans want to know - what exactly is our mission in Iraq, why are we still there and when are our men and women coming home?

The President has refused to speak to Mrs. Sheehan or the other Gold Star Mothers directly, opting to first send representatives (national security advisor Stephen Hadley and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin) out to speak with her on Saturday, the 6th, and then on the 11th, spoke at a podium on his ranch, attempting to address the issues of Cindy and the Gold Star Mothers for Peace.

The President’s hollow rhetoric, that bringing the troops home now would send the wrong message to terrorists, fell on deaf ears.

It’s time for the President to speak plainly and clearly to the American people. It’s time for Mr. Bush to admit that he led us to war on faulty intelligence - much of it manufactured, distorted, managed, massaged and fixed by John Bolton, Vice President Dick Cheney and other CIA and State Department officials, that he failed the American people on 9/11 (by either being directly responsible for the attacks or failing to authorize the correct preventive measures), and that the War in Iraq is not fighting terrorism, rather, that it is fueling terrorism.

Naturally, nobody expects Mr. Bush to admit any of his or his administration’s failings, shortcomings or outright scheming to defraud the American people and destroy the United States of America. Nobody expects Mr. Bush to be held accountable for any of his grave misdoings, because, after all, he’s the president, and to many - especially the propagandists and sheep-like followers on the right of the political spectrum - and therefore, like the Pope or kings and monarchs of the middle ages, infallible.

As we well know, the President is hugely fallible, and his mistakes, lies and distortions of the truth have and will continue to be paid for in the blood of our soldiers, Iraqi security forces and innocent civilians. But Mr. Bush should not be forced to speak with Mrs. Sheehan, nor should anyone encourage him to do so because his inaction fuels the cause of the antiwar movement. It may well be the best fuel for the movement.

Mr. Bush should spend his vacation month of August clearing more brush on his lovely Texas pig ranch, chill out by the pool, sip a couple hundred mai tais and ignore Cindy Sheehan and the American people. He should have no problem with that last suggestion; he’s been doing it for nearly his entire public life.

No, Mr. Bush should pay no mind to the killings in Iraq, the high price of gas, the trade deficit, budget deficit, or the fact that Osama bin Laden is still free because to do so would prove that he’s not quite as witless, stubborn, stupid, or deceptive as many of us believe. Mr. Bush should continue to spout nonsense about spreading democracy and sticking to the mission.

As far as the "mission" is concerned, whatever our mission was in Iraq, it’s well past over and we’ve failed. Saddam Hussein never had weapons of mass destruction nor links to Al Queda. We are not going to win anything over there and it’s time to bring our troops home. Our original mission in Afghanistan was to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, not to topple the Taliban or establish democracy. Bin Laden is still on the loose and having 138,000 armed troops in Iraq isn’t getting us any closer to catching him.

Cindy Sheehan has shown the best of American resolve and commitment to principle by calling the president out. On the other side of the fence down in Crawford, George W. Bush is showing the American people and the world what he’s made of by not coming out and speaking to Cindy one-on-one. He is displaying smallness, pettiness, cowardice and an unwillingness to admit his mistakes and take full responsibility. He is showing the world what a tiny, shallow, selfish, uncaring shell of a man he really is, and that is good for the cause of true freedom and liberty, because the more he displays his colors and personality in this manner, the sooner the American public will cease to support him and begin to rally for his permanent ouster.

The more the public sees the president as the unyielding, arrogant, brutish little man he is, the sooner they will wake up to the idea that Bush and his minions stole not one, but two, elections, that responsibility for 9/11 falls directly on his shoulders, that the reasons for going to war in Iraq were outright lies and that his administration, especially the likes of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove and John Bolton, are likely the sleaziest and most corrupt pack of liars and criminals ever to set foot in Washington, D. C..

It’s a great idea, for the left, that is, that the president refuse to speak with Cindy Sheehan because she will not go away. The longer she sits under the hot sun of Texas, the more people will join her. And if the President decides to ignore her for the entire month of August, Cindy Sheehan has vowed to follow him back to the White House. Many, many more will join her and follow her and sit in vigil with her. If the President doesn’t want to talk to Cindy Sheehan, it will be at his own peril and that of his administration. We can only hope to see an extended stand-off between the government and protesters, a la the Ukraine. It’s due time for the multi-colored revolutions - those very same revolutions the right likes to call the "flowering of freedom" or "democracy on the march" - to make an appearance in the heartland of democracy, the land of the free, the home of the brave, the America we love.

The sooner the public awakens to the corrupt and ineffectual administration and its callous leader, the better. The time to take back America is now and Cindy Sheehan has shown us the way. The media will not take on this fight, nor the Congress. The American people must join together and stand beside Cindy Sheehan for the truth, for accountability, for the end of the war in Iraq and the end of this ruthless, untrustworthy, un-American administration.

After that, we can focus on the many criminals and cowards in Congress.

God bless Cindy Sheehan and God bless America.

Rick Gagliano is the webmaster and publisher of Downtown Magazine (www.dtmagazine.com) and writes frequently on politics, elections, sports, media and current events.