Joan Walsh (Salon): The mother of all battles

[Jack Rabbit]

From Salon.com (Subscription or Day Pass Required)
Dated Tuesday August 16

The mother of all battles
Cindy Sheehan has almost single-handedly launched an American antiwar movement. And in the process, she's exposed a president's feet of clay.
By Joan Walsh

The smearing will continue, but it's already too late: Cindy Sheehan has launched an American antiwar movement. Maybe, as Matt Drudge blared over the weekend, she's said controversial things about Israel. Maybe the IRS will chase her for tax evasion, since she's reportedly announced that she won't pay taxes for 2004, the year her son Casey died in Iraq. Maybe her family has been shaken by her activism. Maybe the smears will even work, and cost Sheehan some of her mainstream political credibility. It doesn't matter: Someone else will take her place.

Sheehan's central demand -- that the president meet with her and explain why her son died -- has immense power in a country that's beginning to understand it was lied to about the reasons for the Iraq war, at a time when the carnage seems not only endless but futile. To build on that power, the antiwar movement being born at Camp Casey must understand and hold onto the source of Sheehan's moral authority: her authentic grief over her son's death and her fearless demand to talk honestly about it, even with supporters of the war.

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[fasttense]

1. God bless her, she is a strong and courages mother. n/t

[evermind]

2. If "Moms for Aggressive Warfare" or similar were to converge on Crawford

... would it be the "Battle of all Mothers"?

... sorry.