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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (171540)	9/30/2005 11:58:49 AM
From: Geoff Altman	Respond to of 281500

Dennis, I've no qualms with this: A lot of people in our government share the blame for the situation we are in now, but the buck stops at the top. This is what I have big problems with: Maureen Dowd of the New York Times claims that Sheehan's "moral authority" on the war is "absolute." This is obtuse. Sheehan's diatribes against George Bush -- "lying bastard"; "filth-spewer and warmonger"; "biggest terrorist in the world" -- have no more moral standing than Joseph Kennedy's vilification of Franklin Roosevelt. And if Sheehan speaks with absolute moral authority, then so does Diane Ibbotson -- and the other mothers who have lost sons in Iraq yet continue to support the mission their sons died for and bitterly oppose Sheehan for discrediting it. The antiwar movement has found itself ill served by endowing absolute moral authority on a political radical who demanded that American troops leave not just Iraq but "occupied New Orleans." Who blames Israel for her son's death. Who complained that the news media went "100 percent rita" -- "a little wind and a little rain" -- rather than covering other things in the world, meaning her. Most tellingly, Sheehan demands withdrawal not just from Iraq but also from Afghanistan, a war that is not only just by every possible measure but also remarkably successful. The mainstream opposition view of Iraq is that, while deposing the murderous Saddam Hussein was a moral and even worthy cause, the enterprise was misconceived and/or bungled, too ambitious and unwinnable, and therefore not worth expending more American lives. That is not Sheehan's view. Like the hard left in the Vietnam War, she declares the mission itself corrupt and evil: The good guys are the "freedom fighters" -- the very ones who, besides killing thousands of Iraqi innocents, killed her son, too. Is there something in these paragraphs that is incorrect? Feel free to correct them. If on the other hand they're factual quotes then it goes far beyond just being antiwar, it's hate mongering and that's something I absolutely have a problem with and so should every American. This hate mongering isn't just apparent with Sheenan, it seems to be rampant all over SI. No, I'm not the moral authority on this either, since I started posting on political type threads I've been infected with it as well but as of right now I'm going to stop myself no matter how wacked out someone elses opinion seems to me. There's something else that really disturbs me more than any political issue and that is if you're a person like me that equates politics with making sausage, that can't stand the fact that now days MSM is filled with, kernels of truth/half truths/blatant lies on every conceivable issue, that are stretched to the Nth degree (most of the time to fit the agenda of the reporter or the agency supporting them), where does one go to get one complete story that's just a list of the facts? I don't give a damn where the facts are coming from, I'm a realist. I don't subscribe to any one platform Republican, Democrat whatever, because I see good and bad in all of them and frankly I don't care where a good idea comes from as long as it works!