House of Eratosthenes

I’m not going to use the names “Cindy” or “Sheehan” in my headlines anymore. I may never use those names in the text of my posts, if I can get away with it. There are two reasons for this.

A little while ago I referred to a letter to this activist as “the second-to-last thing I’ll ever have to say about this”. “This,” of course, was the extended — or never-ending — demonstration being held by this activist in Crawford, TX. The phrase “second-to-last,” you might have guessed, is a reference to the prospect that there may be an upcoming meeting between the activist and President Bush. Of course I would want to say something about that. But the Democrat Party Machine, true to form, has smelled victory where they smell blood, as opposed to catching a whiff of it where they think they have a point of principle to make. We live in a world, whether I like it or not, where princes in ivory towers get to decide what is “news”. Aliens could be attacking us with superlasers that wipe out whole cities in a single blast, and if the princes in their ivory towers decide Jessica Simpson’s divorce is what’s news, we’re all going to talk about Jessica Simpson’s divorce. So lately we’ve all been talking about the activist. My previous pledge notwithstanding, I can’t avoid this activist anymore — but I don’t have to buy into the hype about her personal connection to this war. Which brings me to…
Her identity, and her personal life, have nothing whatsoever to do with the story. An activist is what she is. By now it is a matter of proven fact that she is not an “every-mom” who got that terrible knock-at-the-door, telling her her son was killed, and “decided” that the war was unjust, Bush is a bad man who is murdering thousands of people, etc. etc. etc. She is an activist who has been spouting some of this stuff for years, and since she’s made her new friends, is now spouting kookier and kookier stuff. Because she’s made the friends. Point being, her son dying in Iraq has little-to-nothing to do with forming the opinions she has, only, maybe, intensifying them somewhat. Her “son” might as well have been an ex-roomate’s husband’s brother’s ex-wife’s stepson killed in Iraq, for all it really has to do with the issues she wants to discuss. She’s not a product, she’s a label to slap on a previously-existing product. Democrats have found the product, which is a bottle of the same bullcrap they’ve been hawking for years now, sells better with that label. She is nothing more than this. If she’s a reminder that there are parents who have lost children in Iraq, then this has meaning only for people who forgot this in the first place. I’m not one of those people, and I don’t feel like writing anything addressed to the attention of those people.

Those bullets are not written well, because we have a lot of people who can read them a few times and look up and go “huh”? I know this. But like I said, these are issues that simply aren’t going to resonate with certain people, and no amount or quality of writing is ever going to change that.

But some people are aware of things. This guy gets it, for example. I caught wind of this via Bob Krumm, who hailed it as a “must read“. I found out about Krumm’s post, in turn, from Best of the Web.

Cindy sealed the deal.

I actually felt myself become a republican today. It was around 10am, when I read the latest update of the Cindy Sheehan saga in CNN.com. I then shot over to read some blogs about it, and perused the comments in some of them, which was nothing but a long series of petty (albeit entertaining) partisan bickering.

Then it happend. The good little democrat in me tied the little noose around his neck and jumped off the stool. He just couldn�t take it anymore.

Take what? The whining. The constant whining by the extreme left about the reasons for war, the incompetence of this administration, and how we�ve all been lied to, and how we should pull out of Iraq immediately, because, *gulp* our soldiers were in danger.

Guess what folks�.they signed up to join the Army, not the boy scouts. Anytime your orientation to a new job involves an automatic weapon, you should be smart enough to figure out there�s danger involved. I actually read some people�s comments about many of the soldiers over there being naive�.they weren�t expecting to go to war, so, they should be allowed to go home. Wow.

Soldiers know, when they enlist, that it is entirely possible they will be shipped out and never come home. It�s part of the job. The fact that people still walk in to recruiters� offices and sign that piece of paper make them heroes. To imply that they are simple kids who didn�t know what they were getting into, or even worse, that they died for no reason, or an immoral reason, does a horrible thing. It strips their sacrifice of the honor that it deserves. Even though those folks sitting out there in the Texas fields claim to honor and support the soldiers, they obviously have been blinded by their own selfishness as to the real way to support them.

Because, long story short, we can�t end this war now. That would send the message that those bastardly little terrorists have won. It doesn�t matter if the adminstration told us the desert sand was made of gold, and we are going over there to collect it in little buckets to bring home, the concrete fact that we are at war doesn�t change. We are there, and we have a job to finish. We�ve toppled a regime that was dangerous not only to its own people, but also to the rest of the world. Now, we are there fighting the same terrorists we are fighting in Afghanistan. We�ve given liberty to millions of people, and we�re trying to help create a government, in an area that is very volatile, that will be a bastion of freedom and hope for an entire race of people. I hate the fact that our boys are getting killed over there, and I wish it didn�t have to happen.

But, it is, there�s nothing we can do about it, except for doing everything we can to offer support and hope to the folks fighting over there. Arguing and whining about the reasons we�re there, and the need to come home not only kills morale, but it is a complete waste of time.

I just re-read the above post, and I apologize for the rambling�.just needed to vent a little. Here�s a breakdown of the way I see things:
-right or wrong, we�re at war. no amount of yelling will fix that now.
-we have to finish the job. HAVE TO. it may take another 1800 soldiers, but it has to be done
-whether or not we�re there for the right reason, we�ve done something great for that country

I never was a big fan of Bush. But, one thing I do believe�.he honestly wants to make this country, and this world a better place. Think about it�the war almost cost him the election. If we hadn�t invaded Iraq, he�d have won in a landslide.

I think it�s just my personality that lead me to this decision. I think the left is too concerned with everyone�s immediate rights and needs, and refuses to sacrifice a bit of comfort and happiness in the present, for something that will make life better for everyone in the future. You can take the environmental stance on that, and I�d have no argument�but I think there enough conservatives concerned with that to make it a moot point.

Mostly, I�m just really pissed off. We�re in a crappy situation, and it�s time for all of America to stand together, put on the big boy pants, and get through the next few years.

The three bullet points are particularly enlightening. All of life is like this, folks. You can whine, or you can do.

The jug-o-rum being sold behind the label with this activist’s face printed on it, is a very simple elixir with a very simple formula: We don’t do. We whine.

The elixir says, we should not have gone into Iraq, but now that we’re in, we must get out. And George Bush is a big doo-doo head, by the way.

But getting out would be really bad. Few people dispute this, and nobody is providing a credible argument for why it wouldn’t be bad.

And having not gone in in the first place, would be really bad. Few people dispute that, and nobody is providing a credible argument for why that wouldn’t have been bad.

I’m not sure which is worse: Not going in, or getting out now. We will never really “know” the answer to that. But I join millions in welcoming Scott Randolph to the fold of those who get it.

Update: According to Mr. Krumm, there is a whole new bandwidth issue now that Rush Limbaugh has read about this post on the air.

No, no, no. Scott Randolph’s post. Not this. I keep telling you people, “nobody reads this blog.” Certainly not Rush.

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Democrats Change a MindFriday, August 19th, 2005

Democrats Change a Mind
Friday, August 19th, 2005