Crawford Protests Generate Heat but No Light

This week-end, the American media covered the Cindy Sheehan vigil outside the president’s Crawford, Texas ranch and the counter-protest that the president’s supporters held. The feelings there were clearly deep, but the amount of thinking going on was negligible. The imminent hurricane disaster awaiting New Orleans quickly moved this story off the front page, but America is well past the point where some serious thinking about Iraq is due.

On the anti-war side, the argument has to move beyond weapons of mass destruction, toppling Saddam and freeing Iraq. None of it was true, and those who opposed going to war on those grounds have been proved right. But so what? There are about 138,000 US troops in Iraq, and there are consequences if they leave and there are consequences if they stay. The anti-war crowd now has to argue that staying is worse than leaving, and mounting casualties is not a sufficient argument on its own. War trades lives for political objectives (an ugly truth but a truth nonetheless). They must illustrate why the lives aren’t worth the political objectives being pursued. And it is legitimate to point out that sending troops thousands of miles from home without sufficient equipment in insufficient numbers to die for goals that the president can’t articulate is a lousy way to support the troops. Or more succinctly, since when is it patriotic to get US troops killed without a cause?

For the president and his supporters, the situation is much different. The deceit from the White House, either deliberate or not, has rendered the credibility of this administration null and void. The president could say “it’s a beautiful day” and many would immediately go outside to check on the weather. So, not only must they argue that American objectives are being successfully pursued in Iraq, they must also provide hard evidence because their word isn’t worth anything. For example, if Avis or Hertz could rent cars at Baghdad Airport that could be driven into Baghdad proper without getting shot at, that would help.

In all of this, Cindy Sheehan is offering the president a chance to confront his sagging poll numbers and the growing number of middle Americans who are finally regretting that they voted for him in November. She wants to ask him to his face just what noble cause her son Casey died for. If Mr. Bush had one fraction of the sense Mr. Truman had, he’d walk down the driveway, and in front of the world media say, “What did you want to say to me?” She could then pose her question, and he could tell her in one sentence what the cause is that has taken almost 2071 coalition lives, 1877 of them American including Casey Sheehan. “Mrs. Sheehan, your son died to . . . .” Trouble is, Mr. Bush doesn’t have a predicate for that sentence that doesn’t sound like one of his previous deceptions.

If American troops left right now, there would be a civil war in Iraq (well, a bigger one), instability that would adversely affect world oil markets and the global economy, a rise in anti-Americanism throughout the Muslim world (because if the Great Satan can be beaten once, it can be beaten again), and a rise in isolationism in America. Mr. Bush has to convince the nation that the presence of US troops is preventing, or at very least diminishing, all of that. One wishes him luck, as it seems he is in dire need of it.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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