Peaceful Siege Makes Chicken Hawks Squawk

by David Rossie

Nowhere is that more apparent today than in the case of Cindy Sheehan, whose peaceful siege of Prairie Chapel -- a reverse siege of the Alamo, with the good guys on the outside this time, and the bad guys on the inside -- has polarized the nation, or at least a part of it.

Who would have thought when Sheehan set up a roadside camp a few weeks ago, hoping to arrange a face-to-face meeting with the squire of Prairie Chapel, that her presence would have such a powerful polarizing effect?

Well, not the Bushies, that's for sure, and not the timorous members of the White House press corps, who figured on nothing more than the usual August stories about the squire's biking and brush clearing. But then something happened that none of them anticipated. Cindy Sheehan became a symbol for the heartache and frustration that this war has engendered.

On one side of the road, the grieving mother of a soldier son cut down in his prime. On the other side of the road, a self-indulgent, insensitive little man masquerading as president of the United States.

All of a sudden, it wasn't even about Cindy Sheehan, it was about Spc. Casey Sheehan and the 1,800-plus men and women like him who have had their lives stolen by men who have never had to face what they faced, and those who are yet to die in a war that was begun on false pretenses and with no end in sight.

Cindy Sheehan was supposed to wilt in the cruel Texas heat, give up and go home. Instead, she became a magnet, drawing scores of like-minded men and women: Other Gold Star mothers, war widows and veterans of the Iraq fighting, as well as anti-war activists.

The true measure of her mission, though is in the desperate counter-attack by a legion of right-wing ideologues: Intellectuals such as George Will and Christopher Hitchens; hacks l