Cindy Sheehan gives away the game
By TigerHawk
1/26/2006
For those of you who still think that it is useful for leading Democrats to associate themselves with Cindy Sheehan, read this interview. The rest of you, don't waste your time.
counterpunch.org
There is one bit worth pointing out, though. Glenn Reynolds linked to this via Alarming News yesterday on the basis of this particular gem from Sheehan:
<<< And about Bill Clinton . . . . You know, I really think he should have been impeached, but not for a blow job. His policies are responsible for killing more Iraqis that [sic] George Bush. I don't understand why to rise to the level of being president of my country one has to be a monster. I used to say that George Bush was defiling the Oval Office, but it's been held by a long line of monsters. We don't have to support our administrations to love our country. True patriots of my country dissent when our country's doing something so wrong. >>>
Since Sheehan almost magically attracts the interest of the press, may I suggest that the next honest American reporter with the opportunity should ask her who, precisely, she thinks was our last non-monster president. If she says "Jimmy Carter," then get back to me and I will remind you that he encouraged the Shah of Iran to take any and all steps necessary to put down Khomeini's revolution (which the dying Shah, concerned perhaps for his future in another place, did not do).
The bold language, though, is particularly interesting. Sheehan here alludes to the left's claims about the effects of the post-Gulf War sanctions regime that contained Saddam's Iraq. Those policies included the Northern and Southern Watch no-fly zones, and the economic embargo that morphed in to the "oil for food" program under pressure from naive humanitarians and European businessmen. Iraq, which constantly struggled against those sanctions, argued that hundreds of thousands of people were dying as the result of them. This was never plausibly true, but it caught hold among the anti-American crowd and was the main source of the political pressure to lift all containment of Saddam.
Sheehan, therefore, has done us the useful service of reminding the world that the left can't keep its story straight. Before the war, leftists in fact did argue that the sanctions were immoral (a basis to impeach Bill Clinton, apparently). Since Sheehan's taste for radical politics is quite recent, she must have learned this at the knee of one of her new friends.
Since the war, post mass graves and all, the left has decided that the best argument is not that sanctions should have been lifted -- that, after all, would not stand up to scrutiny even at CNN -- but that we did not need to invade Iran because Saddam was "contained" by, er, sanctions! Whoever taught Sheehan failed to explain the nuance that the story has changed with the post-war publicity of the full depth of Saddam's crimes.
The cynicism of those who believe the best course was to have left Saddam Hussein in power is astonishing. That they should claim that this is American "patriotism" is absurd.
tigerhawk.blogspot.com
instapundit.com
alarmingnews.com |
