On Heroes, Victims and Losers

On Heroes, Victims and Losers
Vol: 49 Issue: 27 Thursday, October 27, 2005

On Heroes, Victims and Losers

The Michael Moores, Joe Wilsons, John Kerrys and Cindy Sheehans of America are beginning to see some real progress in their efforts to defeat America’s war effort in the Middle East.

Especially Cindy Sheehan. She has been the beneficiary of lavish attention being given her by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and the other usual suspects.

Why Cindy Sheehan? True, she lost a son in Iraq. Nobody with a heart would attempt to mitigate that tragedy in her life.

But, as the Left continues to gleefully trumpet, America just saw its 2000th American death as a result of enemy action in Iraq. So there are another 1,999 bereaved moms who grieve anonymously for their own sons and daughters.

Why isn’t the mainstream media all over them? Where are the reporters that should, since it is such a big story, be interviewing the parents of KIA 2000?

By and large, the majority of America’s grieving war dead families are not newsworthy. The loss of their sons and daughters didn’t turn them against their country. Instead, it strengthened their resolve to see this through to the end.

There are few parents of sound mind in America that have made it their mission in life to minimize the sacrifices made by their children in combat — or to destroy the cause for which they gave their lives.

In a sense, it’s hard to tell which is the sadder situation; the grief of those 1,999 other families, or the cynical efforts to exploit that grief by Cindy Sheehan and her herd of simpletons that are still trying to relive the Sixties.

Casey Sheehan died in Iraq in April, 2004, when his unit was attacked by RPGs and small arms fire. Sheehan was a volunteer who was eager to do his part to serve his country and he died a hero.

Assessment:

Let’s sidetrack for a moment and take a look at the word ‘hero’ as it has come to be understood since September 11th. In our national grief, we’ve come to assign the word ‘hero’ to anyone killed by terrorists in the past five years. The 9/11 victims are universally regarded as ‘heroes.’

There were heroes on 9/11 — lots of them. The ones who had a choice to save their lives and gave them instead in an effort to save others were ‘heroes’– like the firefighters, policemen, the passengers who revolted over Shanksville, Pa.

Then there were those who were killed without warning as they went about their daily routines. They had no choice, they were simply murdered. They were victims, which is not the same thing as ‘heroes’.

I mean in no way to diminish the victims, but if everybody is a hero, then there is no distinction between the firefighter who faced certain death running into the jaws of death to save lives and the victim who died trying to escape.

Casey Sheehan had a choice. One can find hundreds of references to Casey Sheehan’s mother but almost nothing about him. Casey Sheehan was a man worth knowing.

Casey enlisted in the Army when he was twenty years old. He decided to be a mechanic. He would undergo Combat Lifesaver training – a class on how to give IVs and treat trauma — an effort only second in intense learning to combat medic training.

Specialist Sheehan re-enlisted in the Army in 2004 knowing full well that he could be sent into a combat zone.

He wasn’t drafted, he volunteered for a second tour. He willingly answered the call of his country, and he willingly put himself between us and our enemies.

Sheehan died after volunteering to go out on a rescue mission to relieve soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment who had been ambushed with RPGs and small arms fire. They were pinned down and dying.

Casey knew the risks, took them anyway, and paid for our freedom with his blood. When volunteering for the mission, he reportedly said, “Where my chief goes, I go.” Casey Sheehan was a hero.

His mother has turned him into a victim and a martyr to the cause that took his life.

It is impossible to argue that Cindy Sheehan’s antiwar effort is aiding the US war effort, and it is equally impossible to miss the fact that her every word is front page news at al-Jazeera.

Cindy Sheehan is exemplar of the majority of the antiwarrior movement. To them, the ‘heroes’ are our enemy.

Liberal talk show host Bill Maher once remarked on television that it didn’t take any courage to kill our enemies from a distance. The real courage belonged to the 9/11 hijackers.

There is something glaringly off-center about the antiwar movement, however. Something unique. During the Vietnam War, the antiwarriors were against the war itself. Antiwar demonstrations grew so vociferous that Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, announced his refusal to seek a second term.

Instead, the White House was captured by Richard Nixon, a Republican. Watergate may have been the vehicle, but it was Vietnam that was responsible for Richard Nixon’s downfall, as it had been for Lyndon Johnson’s before him.

Do you see the difference? Opposition to the Vietnam War was genuine, albeit misguided. It cut across party lines, scarring Republican and Democrat alike. Antiwarriors of the Vietnam era had no partisan agenda.

That isn’t the case today. Opposition to the war in Iraq isn’t aimed at the war — it is aimed at the administration. The same leftists who now carry signs like ‘Impeach Bush’ and ‘Castrate Cheney’ (a sign at one of Sheehan’s ‘peace’ rallies) were outspoken about the need to bring down Saddam’s government, until the Bush administration actually started taking concrete steps to that end.

We’ve quoted various leading Democrats, from Hillary Clinton to Ted Kennedy, all endorsing Saddam’s removal until the Republicans came to power. The Left’s opposition, from the macabre, publicity-seeking Cindy Sheehan, to John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, isn’t to the war. Their opposition is to George Bush. Before September 11, the Left had already vowed to make the Bush presidency a failure by ‘whatever means necessary’, as Jesse Jackson promised supporters in Florida following Al Gore’s defeat in 2000.

The September 11 attacks against America handed them a gift that has kept on giving, and they continue to rewrap it at night so they can unwrap it before the cameras again and again the next morning.

It isn’t about the war with al-Qaeda. Few Americans honestly believe al-Qaeda will go away if America does. And it isn’t about the war with Iraq. As I’ve noted dozens of times, we won that war in 2003.

The Iraqi government is no longer our enemy. And we aren’t fighting the Iraqi government, but the same al-Qaeda we were fighting in Afghanistan. The same al-Qaeda that attacked America on September 11.

The same al-Qaeda that vowed it would do it again.

But the antiwarriors continue in their quest to destroy the Bush presidency, even if it means rendering the sacrifices made by 2000 genuine American heroes in vain. Nothing is as important to them as the destruction of the Bush administration.

Not even America’s sons and daughters on the battlefield.

“And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” (Matthew 10:36)