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Graybeard recently posted this editorial from the Waterbury, CT Republican-American:

Virulent vigils

Monday, September 5, 2005

Once a week, members of Code Pink Women for Peace stand at the entrance of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., to demonstrate against the war in Iraq. As the loved ones of soldiers wounded in battle enter the grounds, the Pinkos are in their faces with hateful anti-war signs and chants.

Before there was Camp Casey, there were the Code Pink "vigils." But they're getting more attention from the news media now because of the spectacle outside of President Bush's ranch in Texas. But the vigils also are drawing the ire of some conservatives and veterans groups. They want the government to forbid protests outside military hospitals. We would rather see more protests because these are self-discrediting.

We don't dispute that the Code Pink vigils are distasteful and shameless. At Walter Reed, hundreds of American heroes are recuperating from wounds suffered in the defense of freedom and in retribution for 9/11. They've lost limbs and eyes; some will never walk again; all will carry the emotional scars of war to their graves. Instead of the admiration and adulation they deserve, however, the wounded are rebuked by the hate-America crowd gathered at the gate.

Unquestionably, the news media are giving the protesters more attention than is warranted, only because they're soul mates. Each shares the fleeting wish that Iraq still might be America's next Vietnam, with the attending political and military consequences. Each believes the way to bring freedom to Iraq is for the coalition to withdraw immediately, thereby plunging the nation into a savage civil war and ultimately into the tyranny of Islamic fundamentalism. Each believes it should be left to diplomats to appease Islamic terrorists, but in trying to turn the clock back to 1968, they would overshoot to 1938.

Camp Casey, however, wouldn't be a pimple on the backside of a typical 1960s sit-in at Berkeley; it doesn't even rise to the level of John Kerry throwing someone else's military medals over the White House fence. More people attend a typical youth soccer game than Code Pink's vigils. This month, with Mrs. Sheehan in their rearview mirror, the media will latch onto Hanoi Jane Fonda's cross-country, Crisco-powered bus tour against the war and do their best to ignore the sparse crowds it will attract.

Rather than outlawing these demonstrations, Americans should encourage the Pinkos and their ilk to stage all the protests they can in as many inappropriate venues as possible. Because with every sound bite and video clip they spawn, they discredit themselves and their causes, and expose the disdain with which they hold their country. And in tormenting the wounded and their families, the Pinkos reveal the depth of their heartlessness and cruelty, and the mindlessness of their crusade.

The founders wrote the First Amendment to guarantee Americans would benefit from a free exchange of opinions. They thought it the best way for future generations to weed out the bad actors and ideas, to distinguish the visionaries from the sloganeers. In the case of the Pinkos, the more they shoot their mouths off, the more they shoot themselves in the foot.