I hate to be the ten millionth person to talk about Cindy Sheehan, but I've been listening to the local NPR webstream (mostly for hurricane Katrina news) and Cindy Sheehan happened to be the featured guest, via phone from Crawford, TX. Not only did the woman sound like she had the mental acuity of one who has taken few too many Sudafed, but as soon as host Neil Conan asked a moderately tough questions, she refused to answer ("Can we talk about something else? I don't really want to talk about that"), said she only had two minutes left to talk (she was supposed to be there for the better part of the hour), then abruptly hung up in the middle of a national broadcast. And they were the obvious questions - Didn't your son make a free choice to enlist in the army?, etc. My opinion of her has changed from misguided grieving mother to bona fide flake.
I don't know how I feel about this "she's being exploited by evil left-wing groups with an agenda" argument. Certainly her case is being fueled by excessive media attention and support from left-wing groups that will snatch up any kook with excessive media attention as a spokesperson (at least so I surmise), but Sheehan has freely chosen to take up this cause without even thinking her way through the tough questions she should have asked herself long ago. Blue ribbons all around for freely acted stupidity.
And just so it can finally go on record: if you or your spouse/child/friend/neighbor/favorite football player enlist in the armed forces, there is a chance they may get killed. It's one of those crazy things about being paid to kill other people - sometimes the people you are trying to kill try to kill you back. Be as sad as you want, but please don't act so fucking surprised when it happens.
p.s. Does anyone else find it fucking hysterical when blogger's spell check picks up "fuck?" Like it says, "Oh, golly, I simply have no idea what this word is; were you trying to spell 'bucking' instead, dear wholesome blogger?"
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4 comments:
hrm. i guess i don't understand this post.
i mean, the question about the "free choice" made by sheehan's son seems to me to be a red herring. the core of her argument, sloganized as "what is the noble cause?" strikes at the core of the government's responsibility to its people and its soldiers. when one volunteers for the army, makes the "free choice," one expects not to engage in a frivolous conflict. it is an abuse of responsibility on the part of the commander-in-chief to break this part of the bargain.
besides, since when do 19 year olds make good decisions anyway? they are more likely to be brainwahsed than anything else. luckily for me, the two major errors of judgment i made under such hypnosis -- selling all of my bauhaus albums and going to graduate school -- were not fatal. nobody really needs to own "burning from the inside," in the first place, provided you can cop the 12" of "she's in parties."
if i could remove that comma, i would. you know the one.
I think one would have to be extremely naive to enlist in the army - even at the tender age of 18 or 19 - with the idea that every conflict you could fight in will be completely just and noble. In the history of armed conflict, an objective view would likely find a small percentage of wars waged for what might be called just or noble reasons. Our fine nation doesn't have a great history of in the last 50 years either. With Vietnam and Gulf War I as the most recent examples, putting two and two together would make it hard to believe signing up for the army would get you in some kind of noble conflict save for an off chance Canada would decide to invade (though in my opinion, they'd probably do a much better job running things around here).
As for the ability of 19 year olds to make choices, people of that age are allowed the same decision-making responsibility all other adults are on many other matters as grave as signing up for the army (except for alchohol consumption, go figure). it sucks to be the one without experience, but it doesn't mean you're not capable of making an informed decision.
Great blog points. I am sick of her now too but she is good script for budding writers.
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