CS Monitor opines on Cindy Sheehan and the "politics of Grief"

Brendan O'Neill, the online magazine's deputy editor, offers a regretably Foolable account here.

He does dish it out to both sides in the Iraq war debate. I'll give him that, especially since he counts himself an opponent of the war. However, being anti-war, he makes two regretable mistakes so common among Reasonable MSM pundits. First, he oversimplifies the US and Britain's reasons for the Iraqi war--without once mentioning Saddam Hussein and the preponderance of evidence regarding connections to Al Qaeda. I'm not talking about 9/11, mind you. I'm talking about Answar al Islam and Al Zarqowi's favored treatment. Mr. O'Neill simply puts out the predictable tirade about the search for WMDs that weren't found:

Today, doubt and uncertainty - and even shame - about the Iraq war from the top of society down has turned families' grief into bitterness, and even public rage. In the past, bereaved families took comfort in the belief that their son or daughter died for a greater cause; traditional notions of honor, patriotism, and duty would have given their loved one's death on the battlefield some meaning.

Now, families have few ways to make sense of the deaths in Iraq. The casus belli that their sons and daughters gave their lives for - the need to get rid of Saddam Hussein's deadly WMD - turned out to be false.

Now, if Mr. O'Neill had demonstrated that the Bush Administration had overemphasized the hunt for WMDs as one of the several reasons why the coalition for the willing invaded, then he might have made a better argument. If he made a point of saying that perhaps the US and her allies had not exhausted all peaceful options before launching an invasion, he might have a valid argument. But he did not say either of those things. Instead, he just hung the administration on the search for weapons that yielded nothing but blood and iron--with their butcher's bill. He has not convinced this Fool that the US invasion rests on faulty foundations, and I was an ambivelent supporter of the invasion at best! (For the record, I'm an whole-hearted supporter of the US and her allies securing the peace in Iraq before withdrawing.) Would that this were Mr. O'Neill's only mistake.

However, he makes another error that trips up his argument. He argues in the broadstrokes of one that considers all war wrong from an a priori standpoint--especially if the party at war is the West:

It's almost as if some in the antiwar lobby want the families of the dead to do their dirty work for them, as if it is enough to point to a weeping mom to make the case against war. They are relying on images of hardship and sorrow rather than making the hard political case against Western military intervention abroad.

Excuse me, but antiwar forces have to make case "against Western military intervention abroad"? Is he serious? Any who adopt this view of his would foreswear even the defensive action the US took against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Such people that find this legitimate might as erect a neon sign over the NY skyline that reads "Strike us down, anytime. We won't do a damn thing!" They make a virtue out of a grievous sin. That sin would be the negligence of an appropriate common defense that all charged with responsibility for the Common good hold. In other words, it's not virtuous to foreswear all war on principle alone. Such pacifism exposes the citizens of States that practice it to irreparable harm at the hands of bloodythirsy and unscrupulous enemies. Islamo-fascists will consider such demonstrations of pacifism as signs of weakness. No responsible leader should ever employ such insane policies. Yet this, in fact, appears to be the bill of goods that Mr. O'Neill sells in this column. Ridiculous! There is such thing as a Just War. Whether or not Iraq remained one in its origin is a debate for another time. But to deny outright the existence of a Just War is just insanity dressing up as piety.

Mr. O'Neill does honestly expose the base political calculations of the Antiwar movement. He shows how they're willing to use Ms. Sheehans personal grief as a tool against the Administration's war policy:

There's another reason grief has become a "significant political force" - some in the antiwar movement are exploiting it. As the Los Angeles Times said of Sheehan's camp-out in Crawford, "leading liberal and antiwar activists [are] parachuting in to try to make her their long-sought voice." Michael Moore made Lila Lipscomb's grief into an international issue. Antiwar author Naomi Klein has described the image of a grieving mom or dad as "the mother of all antiwar forces."

There is something deeply cynical and morbid - and I say this as one who was implacably opposed to the war - about these attempts to further publicize and politicize the families' grief. It's almost as if some in the antiwar lobby want the families of the dead to do their dirty work for them, as if it is enough to point to a weeping mom to make the case against war.

He's clearly denounces such tactics as being beyond the pale of decency. He's right, of course. Rather than rally around this woman in solidarity for her loss, the antiwar movement uses her to seize headlines and camera time, hoping once more to turn aside a determined President. They could care less about her; if they cared, they would not exacerbate her grief, as Mr. O'Neill implies in his conclusion.

The Antiwar movement have become just one more party of Reasonable mouth-foamers. Their enablers among the Reasonable MSM give them the stage and microphone. They use it to the hilt, but all they're doing is soaking the carpet. They're just urging the ordinary American to reach for the broom. Unfortunately, Ms. Sheehan, who has thrown her lot in with them, will get swept away, too. The shame is that her raving on the behalf of the Michael Moore types does nothing to heal her grief or honor her son. It does not even help the antiwar cause.

At least the Foolable Brendan O'Neill can see this. Perhaps there's hope for him, and other Foolable pundits. Who knows? Maybe they'll lead the charge to the brooms.