“So your answer to quiet the screaming child is to ignore it?”
Ummm, no. It was an analogy, deb.Easy to follow and it wasn’t necessary to take it so literally.
“Keep in mind this “child” plans a city to city tour of wailing.”
As is her right. I don’t have to agree with it, nor do I have to care about it. In case you have forgotten, I, the members of my family, and your late husband all served to ensure that she has the right to be an idiot, if that’s what she chooses to be. It’s what we volunteered for and it’s what we swore to do.
“To me, as a parent, you teach your child not to wail by telling them it’s wrong to begin with.”
No, children wail in any case. They only learn the subtleties of when it is appropriate and when it’s not with the passage of time, guidance and experience. People screaming at each other do not “guide” each other — they just make a lot of useless noise.
“Also, let us keep in mind that this “child” has many people encouraging her to wail.”
Actually, she has been abandoned by the very people who gave her her 15 minutes because she is no longer politically useful to them. I would bet the vast majority of the people who do join her in the park this weekend will have nothing to do with the “anti-war” movement; they will instead be gay-rights activists, PETA, and the usual crowd of hanger’s-on and coattail riders who use her event to bring themselves a higher profile. Sort of like Takoma and Buford will be doing. Sycophancy sometimes makes for strange bedfellows that way.
My answer to the Cindy Sheehan “problem” is to just let it fade away. People like her, i.e. people willing to be duped and manipulated by other, sharper-minded people with an unterior motive, usually do.
At some point, the wailing and the crying, the gnashing of teeth and the hurling of invective over the war will end, but it will not end because a bunch of folks congregated in the park. The Woodstock Generation who believed they stopped the War in Vietnam did no such thing; their congregating in public speeches, their infantile chanting and their ridiculously inane worldview did not save the life of a single American, Vietnamese or Laotian, and the present yelling and screaming will be just as effective.
That war ended because even the people who had a vested interest in seeing it continue simply got sick and tired of it.
What could have stopped this mess was someone in the Pentagon and White House remembering that wars are fought and won by making the other guy suffer until he realizes his system is not viable in any meaningful way. And since we missed our opportunity to do that by playing patty-cake with the Iraqis, we are suffering the consequences.
If someone wishes to protest anything, go protest that. Somehow, the military that “learned the lessons of Vietnam” managed to forget them all over again, and if that wasn’t bad enough, followed a Commander-in-Chief (and his hanger’s-on), who, despite what sort of decent men they might be, figured they could finesse, smile and cheap their way into an easy victory, while allowing the Iraqi army to escape, armed militias led by religious bigots and zealots to form, created a government of Saddams-in-waiting which they defend with American troops (and not enough of them, btw), and made a hero (and minister of the government!) out people like of Al Sadr.
That’s what’s wrong with this rally and counter-protest; boths sides have missed the bigger picture and both sides are aiming at the wrong target.
The best way for you to get your message across to all of us idiots is to ignore us, Wombat. Head upstate to the “Gripe Festival” and eat some cheese with that whine.