Mark Steyn. Brilliant. As usual.
This piece you must read. There are excerpts below, but the intellectual clarity and depth of this essay is barely represented, even in extensive quoting.
…Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ‘children’. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing.
…‘Cindy Sheehan is my hero,’ says Christine Lahti, former star of TV’s Chicago Hope. ‘You can run, Bush, but you can’t hide. Her courage is waking up America.’ Evidently it woke up motion-picture personality Viggo Mortensen, who flew to Crawford on a pilgrimage to Mrs Sheehan. For the press corps, it’s not exactly the Spielberg/Clinton summer summit in the Hamptons, but it’s as close as they’re going to get.
Note to self: add Lahti and Mortensen to boycott list.
Cindy herself is somewhat less tolerant:
…‘We have to impeach George Bush down to the person who picks up the dog shit in Washington! Let George Bush send his two little party animals to die in Iraq.’
… ‘You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana…. You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine.’
…‘America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for.’ That was part of her warm-up act for a speech by Lynne Stewart, the ‘activist’ lawyer convicted of conspiracy for aiding the terrorists convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Finally, the coup de grace:
…if Mrs Sheehan can insist her son’s corpse be the determining factor in American policy on Iraq, I don’t see why her marriage [divorcing over her activism] can’t be a metaphor for the state of the Democratic party.
Amen.