It's a sign of the times that a mother who refuses to go along with the rationale for a war that cost her son his life is treated with such cheap disdain. To her credit, Sheehan exhibits a calm integrity responding to the snarls and bared teeth of the talk media predators. When far right columnist Michelle Malkin, author of a book defending the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during WW II, declared that Sheehan's son would not have approved of his mother's antiwar activism, Sheehan asked simply how many times had Malkin cried over her son's grave? Had she met her son even once? No matter. Malkin is the kind of sensitive soul whose response to the report of three prisoner suicides at Guantanamo was a touching "boo friggin' hoo." We can only imagine what Malkin might have said if the dead men had actually been legally convicted of anything.
More recently, Fox News host Sean Hannity had Sheehan as the inaugural "hot seat" guest on his new Hannity's America television program. Hannity was relatively restrained interviewing Sheehan, perhaps because he knows it looks bad to use his normal attack dog tactics against the parent of a dead soldier. Hannity's McCarthyite mind, however, remained on red alert throughout the interview. Did Sheehan regret occupying the same stage as Venezuelan "dictator" Hugo Chavez while he-take a breath!-condemns U.S. foreign policy? Did Sheehan stand by her denunciation of George W. Bush as a "lying bastard?" Did Sheehan actually believe the Iraq war is being fought to expand U.S. imperialist influence in the Middle East? Sheehan quite reasonably explained that she did regret using the word bastard, spoken as it was in a moment of anger. Otherwise, she apologized for nothing.
Actually, if anyone deserves to be on the political "hot seat," it is Hannity. This is a man who has spent the last four years publicly regurgitating every official Iraq deception, only to watch it all crumble before the "grave and deteriorating" reality that even the Iraq Study Group now admits is life in Iraq. Again, no matter. Hannity just soldiers on, grilling the war's doubters with his moronic "yes or no, answer the question"-style interrogations.
Characteristically, Hannity gave big play last summer to Sen. Rick Santorum's (R-PA) announcement of newly discovered evidence of Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). With great fanfare, Santorum, who was trying to save his sinking re-election campaign, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) claimed that 500 chemical munitions had been discovered in Iraq. Hannity and the ever-accommodating Fox News ran the "At Last, the Missing WMDs!" story as if it were a political bombshell. Never mind that the Defense Department quickly rebutted the Santorum et al "revelation," noting the weapons in question were mostly degraded field remnants left over from the Iraq-Iran war. Unfazed, Hannity continues to insist illicit WMDs did exist, but were secretly (magically?) spirited away before the U.S. invasion. No word yet on when Hannity plans to unveil dramatic evidence proving the earth is only 6,000 years old.
Partisans of Anti-Liberalism and Steak Houses
In the end, Hannity is just the classic war apologist, a media "patriot" whose hallmark characteristic is an utter incapacity for doubt. But it's a mistake to treat such talk media warriors strictly on political terms. Their role as pro-war cheerleaders is less a product of stalwart vision than it is just product, period. They are partisans of anti-liberalism and Ruth's Chris Steak House, vendors of flowers and tirades and a good night's sleep on a Temper-pedic mattress. They sell not just the Iraq war, but culture war.
They also sell a disingenuous regard for life. Indeed, the failure of the U.S. intervention in Iraq offers some far right ideologues the opportunity to reveal even starker evidence of their moral bankruptcy. Mark Goldblatt, a writer for the right-wing National Review, renders this service in dismissing the estimate of the Johns Hopkins report that 650,000 Iraqis have died of causes related to the war since the U.S. invasion. In an Oct. 13, 2006, column, Goldblatt argues that even if the death figures are accurate, they would represent a decrease from the roughly 150,000 civilians UNICEF and the World Health Organization say were already dying annually under the pre-2003 U.N. sanctions. Thus, some 525,000 lives were spared when Hussein was tossed out and sanctions lifted in May 2003, claims Goldblatt. This means President Bush's decision to overthrow Saddam in the end only cost 75,000 Iraqi civilian lives! But Goldblatt offers even more fantastic news. If we allow for the fact that the margin of error in the John Hopkins study establishes a low-end estimate of 426,369 deaths, then the invasion of Iraq actually saved almost 100,000 lives!
Who would have guessed? Apparently, Iraqis should be grateful western powers have at least found a more cost-effective way to kill them.
Goldblatt's musings on life, death, and statistics serve only to reveal the twists along the road one pro-war apologist is willing to take in search of his personal comfort zone with mass killing. It's typical of the disconnect between the human tragedy of the war and the cold, pompous blather that characterizes so much media debate. Safely ensconced in their studios and offices, America's regiment of pro-war pundits barely pause to ponder the human sorrow of the war as they play their rhetorical games of one-upmanship with the hated liberals.
The cheap insults, moralistic pretentiousness, and near cultish defense of the President can leave the more sensitive among us weary with just how precipitous a decline the media-political culture has undergone. The "good news" from Iraq has become the bad news that just won't go away, and may soon be extended to Iran. On the media front the latter possibility now translates into the opportunity to watch people like Lawrence Kudlow of CNBC's Kudlow & Company vent his "dream" of using a few "low-level" nukes against Iran. It's unclear whether Kudlow finds his comfort zone with war in the same manner as the President's mother, not bothering his "beautiful mind" with non-tranquil thoughts about such matters as what heat and pressure do to human flesh. But there's no doubt the topic of the war's innocent victims has little appeal for the right-wing media. Some can't even stand the humanitarians who work on their behalf, such as New York Post contributor Debbie Schlussel, who found "poetic justice" in the 2005 death of activist Marla Ruzicka by suicide bomber.
"The swath of sorrow left by BushCo is deeply cutting and immeasurable," declares Cindy Sheehan. Is there any simpler truth? No wonder the media warriors, so unfeeling in their blowhard patriotism, despise her so. There are rivers of sorrow coursing now through this war and this world. In my lifetime, this river flows back to the era of another immoral war, and to the memory of a man on a rural highway who one spring morning revealed his quiet grief to a stranger. I don't know what the future brought that man and his wife, but hopefully they found a way, like Cindy Sheehan, to channel the grief of losing a son to war into something redemptive.
As for the right-wing media, redemption is not likely. With the war now in its fourth year, the media's pro-war voices have devolved into not much more than death's public relations handlers. But even as they clamor for more bloodshed, they continue to revise their raison d'être for the Iraq war, from the WMD threat to "bringing democracy" to the now decidedly less lofty goal of establishing stability and governability. Ironically, the aspirations of the war propagandists now aim not much higher than achieving what Saddam Hussein once imposed upon the country.
And for this so many are dying.
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