Reply #46: Edwards is . . . [View All]

[goodhue]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: A Mother and Her Son
From: "Elizabeth Edwards" <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, August 16, 2005 1:14 pm
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Dear Friend,

Casey Sheehan was born May 29, 1979, the first born child of
Cindy and Pat Sheehan. It was a long labor. Fifty-one days after
Casey was born, our first child, Wade was born, also after a
long labor. They started school the same year, played the same
games, watched the same television shows, loved the same
country. On April 4, 1996, three weeks after going to Washington
as a winner in a national contest about what America meant to
him, Wade died in an automobile accident. On April 4, 2004,
eight years later to the day, Casey, who loved his country
enough to wear its uniform, died in Iraq. Cindy and Pat's hearts
broke, as had ours.

We teach our children right from wrong. We teach them compassion
and honor. We teach them the dignity of each life. And then,
sometimes, the lessons we taught are turned on their heads.
Cindy Sheehan is asking a very simple thing of her government,
and she and her family, and most particularly Casey, have paid a
very dear price for the right to ask this.

Cindy wants Casey's death to have meant as much as his life -
lived fully - might have meant. I know this, as does every
mother who has ever stood where we stand. And the President says
he knows enough, doesn't need to hear from Casey's mother,
doesn't need to assure her that Casey's is not one small death
in a long and seemingly never-ending drip of deaths, that there
is a plan here that will bring our sons and daughters home. He
doesn't need to hear from her, he says. He claims he understands
how some people feel about the deaths in Iraq.

The President is wrong.

Whether you agree or disagree with every part, or any part, of
what Cindy wants to say, you know it is better that the
President hear different opinions, particularly from those with
such a deep and personal interest in the decisions of our
government. Today, another voice would be helpful.

Cindy Sheehan can be that voice. She has earned the right to be
that voice.

Please join me in supporting Cindy's right to be heard.
http://ga3.org/campaign/speakout/wxuii8x2q55k73t?

I grew up in a military family. My father and my grandfather
were career Navy pilots. I saw what it meant to live a life
every single day when the possibility of an honorable death is
always there, at the dinner table, on the playground, at the
base school. Will someone's father not come home tonight? And I
didn't just feel the possibility, I saw the real thing, and,
believe me, it stays with you, it changes you.

I also saw, then and more recently as I campaigned across this
country and spent time with courageous military mothers and
wives, how little attention is paid to the needs and the voices
of military families. It has to change. The sacrifices that our
military men and women make assure us that we have the strongest
military in the world, but the sacrifices that their families
make are too often ignored. The President's cavalier dismissal
of Cindy Sheehan is emblematic of a greater problem. This is a
mother who raised her son to love his country enough to serve.
This is a mother who lived the impossible life of a mother of a
soldier serving in Iraq, unable to sleep when he sleeps, unable
to sleep when he is on duty, unable to watch the television,
unable to stop watching the television.

And when the worst does happen, when the world comes crashing
down and she puts the boy she bore, the boy she taught, the boy
she loved in the ground, what does that government say to her?
It says we'll do the talking; we don't need to hear from you. If
we are decent and compassionate, if we know the lessons we
taught our children, or if, selfishly, all we want is the long
line of the brave to protect us in the future, we should listen
to the mothers now.

Listen to Cindy.

Join me so Cindy knows we believe she has earned the right to be
heard.
http://ga3.org/campaign/speakout/wxuii8x2q55k73t?

Elizabeth Edwards

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