[Mb-civic] The fallout from one mom's voice - Ellen Goodman - The Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

The fallout from one mom's voice

By Ellen Goodman  |  August 21, 2005

THE HEADLINE this morning labels her ''peace mom." It's a moniker that 
simultaneously personalizes and trivializes the lanky woman with the 
high-pitched voice who has been camping out in Crawford, Texas. It's a 
shorthand that both grants and diminishes her authority to speak out 
against the war, a moral authority won the hardest way possible, through 
the loss of her child.

We are now ending Week Two at Camp Casey. The August phenomenon of 2005 
is not shark bites or missing women, but a mother who showed up at the 
president's vacation doorstep. Cindy Sheehan came impulsively, 
intemperately to ask the president of the United States why he ''killed" 
the ''sweet boy" whose brief life span is tattooed on her left ankle: 
''Casey '79-'04."

If Week One was the Making of a Celebrity with dawn-to-dusk coverage, 
Week Two brought the backlash and the bloggers. Conservative cable kings 
like Bill O'Reilly proved that not even the death of a child grants you 
immunity from attack. Iconoclast Christopher Hitchens took her on with a 
glee he once reserved for Mother Teresa.

In Week One, antiwar groups found a face for their cause and promoted 
Cindy dot-orgs and meet-ups and vigils. In Week Two, prowar supporters 
have tried to make the war protest all about Cindy. She was dubbed the 
''Poster Child for Surrender" and ''America's Most Embarrassing Mother." 
But, in fact, this woman with a reckless courage born of grief and anger 
-- ''I'm not afraid of anything since my son was killed" -- directs her 
challenge to the ''swing voters" of this war. She presents a different 
image to those uneasy Americans who have so far held their tongues and 
their doubts out of respect to the war dead and their families.

The activism of ''peace mom" has not made peace in her family. She and 
her husband grieved in different ways until the announcement: ''Husband 
of 'Peace Mom' Sues for Divorce." Aunts and uncles on the prowar side of 
the family criticized her for ''promoting her own personal agenda and 
notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation."

Indeed, there's no way to know what Casey Sheehan would say about peace 
or mom. An altar boy who wanted to be a military chaplain's assistant, 
he ended up a Humvee mechanic and died rescuing injured soldiers. But 
the split in his family now echoes a split in the American family over 
how you pay homage to the fallen. Like the mom of fallen Army Spc. 
Wilfredo Urbina who wants success ''so all this pain will be worth it"? 
Or like Cindy Sheehan, who tells the president not ''to use my son's 
name or my name to justify any more killings"?

This war was sold to the public as a matter of self-defense against 
weapons of mass destruction. But the WMDs never appeared.

Next we were told that Iraq was the front line in the war against 
terrorists: ''better there than here." But evidence shows that the vast 
majority of the foreign fighters are not relocated terrorists but new 
recruits radicalized by the war itself. More recently, we were told to 
''stay the course" to ensure democracy in Iraq. But as Iraqis wrangle 
over a constitution that may not look anything like ours, the list of 
rationales gets shorter and the support for the war gets weaker.

Taken altogether, the polls show a majority of Americans now believe 
that it was a mistake to send troops to war, that the results are not 
worth the loss of American life, and that the war has not made us safer.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/21/the_fallout_from_one_moms_voice/
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