(A response to George Bush regarding Cindy Sheehan's request to talk with him)
With those words our president lost me. Does he really understand "Mrs. Sheehan's" position? Does he really understand that she has no position - that her role as the mother of a son killed in Iraq - is a position of so little importance that he doesn't have to acknowledge her demand with anything more than the words dreamed up by some top level advisor to make the issue one of politics and not of pain. She is not asking to talk to him because she is a democrat, or a war protester, or a liberal who disagrees with his policies. She's asking to talk to him so that he can explain how her son's life contributed to the betterment of the world. She wants to hear the president explain what her child's life was ultimately worth. Of course, since he is the president, he has the ability to refuse to meet with her, the power to ignore her request, the audacity to say, "I understand her position." Well, Mr. President, she doesn't understand yours and she wants you to explain it to her.
Also, Mr. President, you don't have the first clue what her position is. You have never sent a child to fight in a war. You haven't had one of your daughters die an untimely and lonely death in a place so far away you never got to hold her in your arms as the life ran out of her. You haven't had to live with the pain of losing a child to a war you disagree with and policies that you only support because you are trying to be a good citizen. You have never experienced the "position" of losing a loved child to a war not of your own making and that you don't believe can justify that loss of life. So, no Mr. Bush, you don't understand her position. You haven't carried a child under your breast for 9 months. And, taking nothing away from fatherhood here, you have never had the personal responsibility for incubating life.
Therefore, Mr. Bush, this is my position. Bet you won't understand it but try. My position is that mother's should have the vote on when, why, and where we go to war. That mother's on both sides of any escalating conflict should be the determiners of the common good. That mother's will then be able to bear more stoically the results of sending their own children off to be killed if they decide in favor of war. Because you see, Mr. Bush, your vision is clouded by your need to win, your need to succeed, your need to pay back. You, Sir, are ruled by your emotions and hormones, no less than we are. And in the case of war, Sir, you are not capable of making an accurate and honest assessment of the pain that is being caused by you, because for you the pain is a side issue, peripheral, a "position."
Are you too afraid that you don't have the words to soothe this mother's heart? That even in your own ears the explanations ring with a hollowness that you cannot hide. You have tried to hide the reality of our children's deaths in this war behind the curtain of justice, and right, and freedom, and terror, and WMD's. It is cowardly enough to wage war on an entire country from behind a desk and through others. But it is more cowardly to refuse a mother the explanation of why it was worth it for her son to die in your war. You, Sir, should be ashamed of yourself.
It is time for mother's to stand up and say NO to this war. To save those children who have not yet been killed by the hatred we have fueled with our moral superiority. No mother can watch this mother on t.v. and not feel the anguish of loss. She may become a political symbol or be one already but that's o.k. too because we need to be reminded that their are people in this world who's grief is the result of these painful "positions" of our President. I hope she stays there until he agrees to meet with her or hell freezes over and at this point the latter is sure to happen before the former.
