What's a Mother to Do?

By now you've probably heard of Cindy Sheehan. The Vacaville California mom lost her son Casey in the Iraq war. She's found her way to Crawford Texas and "demands" to speak with the President about the war in Iraq.

Demands is probably a mischaracterization here. She demands like the Democrats demand control of what legislation gets considered, or which Supreme Court nominees are offered up for consideration. She is, let's face it, sitting in 95-degree heat-then-rain-then-heat, avoiding the fire ants in a roadside ditch in a very inhospitable part of Texas. She's demanding this audience with the Prez like I'm demanding a quarter million dollar salary.

Her story touches me like many of the other things that get headlines don't. There is an immeasureable sadness when mothers allow their boys to go off to fight old men's wars, then are forced to watch those sons lowered into the ground. Those mothers will never hold their sons again, never see grandsons, never know the pleasure of seeing the wisdom that often comes with age spread across their maturing son's face.

Maybe because I would hate to see that depth of sadness in my mother's life, this particular pain is something to which I can relate. And maybe it's made more acute to me because I'll soon have a draft-age daughter, and I have no faith that this renegade president is beyond re-instating the draft to manifest his advisors' neo-con goals.

Whatever the case, Cindy Sheehan says now that she'll be jailed if she's still outside Bush's ranch on Thursday, and she'll be considered a national threat. Also on Thursday's ranching agenda: Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice are slated to arrive. It brings to mind another visit by Condoleeza Rice to Bush's ranch. It was August of 2001 where she brought a report entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike Within the US."

Strange to think that these clowns, the only administration to allow a tragically successful inside-the-US terrorist attack, think that a 48 year-old unarmed mother is a national threat to security.

I swear to God: if I wrote this in a screenplay they'd laugh me out of Hollywood. "Who would believe this kind of shit?" they would scream at me as they shoved me out the door in anger.

Who indeed?