Please read below...and pray for our soldiers around the world.
THE GRIEVING MOTHER CAMPED IN CRAWFORD IS CLUELESS
By Marilyn Duff
The grieving mother camped on the road outside Bush's home in Texas
has company in her grief.
Somewhere in Baghdad or Pakistan, maybe at this moment, a mother
swathed in black robes squats on the floor of a hut, watching the elders of
her tribe strap a bomb to her handsome teenaged son.
They cinch up the belts and murmur to him of the car he will get to
drive at high speed, his future as a hero of Islam, and, of course, the
seventeen virgins who await him in "heaven." She sobs as other women try
to comfort her. The boy is her favorite. A golden child, he was with a
mop of black curls and eyes that looked up at her when he nursed at her
breast, when she taught him to walk and when he offered bunches of desert
flowers from his small hands.
Now she can see the fear in his eyes, but because she is a woman in
an Islamic country she is powerless to stop the fanatical leaders of Jihad.
Her son is to die. She knows it. But she cannot stop it.
It was the same kind of Islamic men who stole four American
jetliners full of fathers, mothers and little children and flew them into
the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Here in
America we were 'giving peace a chance' that day, we and all those people
in the upper floors of the two towers, sipping coffee at their desks and
chatting at the water coolers when their world exploded into flames.
The same kind of fanatical Muslim Jihadists who strap bombs to kids,
even Downes Syndrome kids, did not care about little children on airliners,
or loving dads in business suits whispering goodbye on cell phones in the
back rows of jets.
So Cindy Sheehan down there in Texas blames George Bush for her
son's death as a soldier in Iraq. But her son was of legal age when he
signed his name and enlisted. He made the choice. And though he may have
signed up for the benefits the military offers, and which she doubtless
approved at the time, he also swore to defend his country.
"His country." America. The leader of the free world, and now the
foremost defender of Western civilization, Democracy, freedom of speech,
liberty to worship as we choose, and the pursuit of happiness - no matter
how we live our lives. America, the exception to all other countries in
the world with our glorious constitution and Bill of Rights. America, the
envy of the world.
The men who strap bombs to schoolboys in Iraq know nothing - nothing
- of Democracy or civilization.
What Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville should know - what Barbra Streisand,
Susan Sarandon and the Dixie Chicks should be mindful of, is that women
have the biggest stakes of all in this war.
If Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville really wanted to honor her son's memory and
add meaning to his heroic sacrifice, she would be using her pulpit to talk
to the women swathed in black and squatting in the huts of the Middle East.
She might say to them: "You have the power to stop this insanity.
In order to save your remaining children and the future unborn, you must
all become secret agents, seditionists, spies, and soldiers in burkhas.
"Turn your hatred of the arrogant Arab males who started this mess
into action. Use those black robes to secret the weapons needed to destroy
radical leaders.
"Use your jobs - even as lowly street vendors in the markets of your
cities - to get information to Coalition Troops about where the next
Improvised Explosive Device is planted.or the whereabouts of vicious
leaders like Abu al Zarqawi. A hollowed out eggplant makes an excellent
hiding place.
"Use your positions as cooks in mountain camps to poison roomsful
of Al Qaeda - or maybe even the big man himself.
"Use your knowledge of weapons respositories to blow them up
yourselves.
"Use your position as wives to stop a husband who is a leader of
Jihad in his bed as he sleeps.
"You who have given life, use whatever you have to stop this insane
cult of death."
The women could do it. But they, unlike Cindy Sheehan of
Vacaville, would have to be willing to die for their efforts, as they most
surely would in the most male dominated and controlled society in the
world.
Cindy Sheehan's family members do not support her efforts as she
camps out in Crawford, planting crosses in the dust. Her son's
grandparents, along with other relatives, have posted an email message
saying that she "appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and
notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation."
Her husband, Patrick Sheehan, also disagrees with her. He says, "I know
[President Bush] is sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know
he's a man of faith." He adds, "I now know he's sincere about wanting
freedom for the Iraqis."
That, Cindy Sheehan, is freedom. A wife and a husband can disagree,
and she can go on doing what she's doing. She won't be beheaded in the
town square of Vacaville. And that's what soldiers like your son are dying
for in Iraq.
