Ms. Sheehan and Mr. Bush

Over the past couple of years, war has been waged in the name of you and me over in a country that in recent history was cobbled together and called Iraq. During those couple of years, the best estimates that I have seen are that over 100,000 people have lost their lives. Most of those people have lost their lives at the hands of you and I, through the hands of our government. Most of those people are civilians – women and children in large part.

This translates to 100,000+ grieving mothers around the world. The vast majority of these mothers grieve over the loss of a child who wanted nothing to do with war, who played no role at all in the ideological battle that seems to be raging over how people choose to hire and fire forms of government.

A very small percentage of those grieving mothers lost sons and daughters who were part of our armed forces. To be more specific, under 2000 of those grieving mothers are Americans grieving the loss of their soldier-child.

And of those, only one has captured the attention of the American media and public. Cindy Sheehan sits by the roadside in Texas, and expresses her grief and her rage in a very public fashion. What is it, she wants to know, that her son died for in Iraq? She wants this answer to come from the man who sent her son there, George W. Bush. Mr. Bush, for his part, says that he understands that pain of Ms. Sheehan, but must get on with his life. And right now, his life consists of his annual 5 week vacation in Crawford, which comes after his last vacation in April…

And the right-wing media, for their part, have taken to attacking this woman, using the unfortunately now familiar right-wing tactic of mucking personal information about their “target” out and shifting the focus away from the issue and on to some voyeuristic personal item in the “target’s” life.

Whether we were or weren’t misled into this war is not the issue.

Whether we did or did not “cook” the intelligence to support our pre-existing desire to invade Iraq is not the issue.

Whether we have listened to our military planners and planned for and executed a wise war is not the issue.

Whether we will or won’t ever face the music and begin paying the financial cost of this war is not the issue.

How on earth we will defend ourselves in the face of an attack with our military stretched as it is today is not the issue.

Cindy Sheehan’s personal life, personal troubles, and human frailties are not the issue.

The issue is an emotional one first, and an intellectual one second.

As a nation, we have been asked to pay nothing for this war, so we feel no emotional pain. Rather than institute a draft – which we should have done as soon as we began gearing up for this war in 2003 – we have misused the Guard and Reserves. Rather than asking the American people to sacrifice financially to pay the huge cost of this war – certainly significant taxes are required to wage war – we continue to sweep the costs under the rug, keeping them off of the budget, conveniently hidden from today’s voters.

But for mothers who have paid the ultimate price, who have lost their son or their daughter in this war, there is no rug under which the cost can be swept. They bear the emotional pain of a nation on their shoulders, and they want to know who is willing to bear it with them. They want to know that we all will still believe in this was if we see it through the lens of their loss.

And will we? The President of the United States – the one who ordered her son into the war that killed him – is apparently not willing to put those glasses on. He is too busy with fund raisers for his Party, and bike riding, and napping. He says he “grieves”, and I believe that he does in his own way. But Cindy is asking him to grieve beyond the intellectual. She is asking him to descend with her into the depth of her emotional grief and rage. To see the cost of the war through a grieving mother’s eyes, and then to tell her again what the war is about, and that he believes in it, and believes the cost is worth it.

With children of draft age, am I willing to descend into that hell of grief with Cindy? I am not sure – tears are in my eyes just considering it. The selfish me is only glad that my children of draft age do not believe in this war, so unless a draft is instituted, I will not be asked to risk that price.

The patriotic me is sick to my stomach that this president is not willing to take this woman into his home and his heart, and to grieve with her. The patriotic me is sick to my stomach at the right-wing media machine who is out to destroy yet another patriot – to eliminate for political purpose one of the few in this country who have actually sacrificed, who have actually paid for this war.