Is Sheehan a Spark or a Flicker?

[steve2470]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/08/18/BL2005081800744.html

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, August 18, 2005; 11:45 AM

Is Cindy Sheehan the spark igniting an antiwar movement that threatens the Bush presidency? Or is she just an over-hyped flicker that will be extinguished with the next turn of the news cycle?

The White House is counting on it being the latter. As the Washington Post's Jim VandeHei explained in a Live Online discussion yesterday: "The White House thinks this whole story is a silly obsession of bored reporters with nothing better to do during the slow August."

But with more than a thousand Sheehan-inspired vigils all over the country last night -- and a national conversation unleashed -- there are reasons to think the White House may be wrong.

A Conversation


Joe Garofoli writes in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Vacaville resident Cindy Sheehan camped out near President Bush's vacation ranch in Crawford, Texas, in the hope of inspiring a national conversation about the war.

<snip>

[Branjor]

1. I think she's a spark.

n/t

[etherealtruth]

2. Definitely a SPARK

The mothers I know that are traditionally republican (NOT RW nutjobs or religiously insane, just generally conservative) relate to Cindy Sheehan. They have sympathy for her but more importantly they have EMPATHY, realizing that they do not want one of their children involved in this war much less dying for Bush's war.

I haven't seen anyone (except on TV) that was comfortable with the attempts to vilify Cindy Sheehan.


(I refer to "mothers," but I DO believe that it is a movement of PARENTS)

[Maddy McCall]

3. Bush's lies were the spark. Cindy is the wildfire that's burning out of..

control, and spreading state to state and person to person.

The spark was already there. It just took the flame that is Cindy to ignite the wildfire.

And Bush's "firemen" can't put this fire out.

[shadowknows69]

4. "you can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire"

-Peter Gabriel, Biko

[Booster]

6. Yep, definitely a bonfire that going to get big enough to cook

Bush's goose. I'm really looking forward to the Sept. 24 Wash DC protests and hope everybody on the East Coast will go and it will be as big as the million man march. Come on East Coast - GO!

[William769]

5. Spark.

on some very dry wood.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

7. Looks like a spark. We'll know more in a month or two.

[jsamuel]

8. O------------------------***^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^

Spark that seems to be moving...

[ladjf]

9. She has already been a most wonderful blaze. If she never

surfaces again, she will have been a major step toward the day when the thugs are kicked out of office. Her most significant contribution is that she has shown us the way. We should follow her lead. She has laid out the blueprint.

[Just Me]

10. I'm tired of the misdiagnosis. This is fundamentally a pro-democracy,...

,...anti-corporatism movement. The reason we are in this war is because a pro-corporacratic cult has joined with extremist pro-Israel advocates and decided to exploit everyone to accomplish a vision that only advantages a few. The foregoing joint venture is the BushCO/neoCON regime. The regime is risking the lives and resources of their own people and nations in order to embolden their own profit and power over the world.

So, whenever others characterize what's happening as a one-dimensional "anti-war movement", they are simply trying to re-invoke something from the past that fails to apply to what's occuring today. The only consistency between the two involves the war-profiteers. Otherwise, the movement is much greater,...a movement to take back democracy from the corporacrats.

Hence, we ask, Mr. pResident,...what noble cause is really being served?

[Immad2]

11. Cindy Sheehan is a torch to re-light the flame of American patriotism and

to bring light to the lies and corruption of an administration. May the powers of peace be with her and her family wherever she may be.

[novak goes postal]

12. I have a feeling that she is showing what a coward

The Great Chicken President really is. The right wing has been looking at him as a cross between John Wayne and Jerry Fallwell.... His mask is slipping and the curtain is no longer hiding who he is.... and behind that they can see that HE is not brave nor is he a follower of the Prince of Peace. ( He went to war for no reason but to steal and make the Corporations more rich) I think Jesus would frown on the neo-cons...
Bush Hid in a bottle for his first 40 years while doing coke and booze, Lie,Stealing and all other disgraceful activities..... He went to Iraq to steal oil and money from the Iraqis and from the US treasury.... We will have trouble getting him out of that honey jar because he and his gang of criminals will have to do serious prison time and be prosecuted as war criminals in the Hague but as the film comes off the eyes of the kool-aid drinkers the Elected Republicans will wake up and realize that the elections are next year and they are up for re-election in a little more than one year from now.
The Yellow elephants will soon be un employed...... light another candle... and Pray...

[DemInDistress]

13. She's neither a flicker or a spark

Cindy to me is a "Lighting Rod".If Chimpus Maximus fails to meet with Cindy and I just heard he has 3 more weeks of vacation left,I can picture mass demonstrations in September outside the Whitehouse.