by hilzoy
I don’t know Cindy Sheehan. I have no idea what kind of person she is. She could be wonderful; she could be awful; I have no idea. Nothing I have seen to date seems to me inconsistent with her being a normal, angry, grieving mother, but for all I know, appearances could be deceiving.
I do know that I hate seeing people slimed. That’s why I decided to look more closely at this story from the New York Sun:
“But as sad as Ms. Sheehan’s loss is – and we don’t belittle it – she has put herself in league with some extreme groups and individuals.
For starters, Ms. Sheehan has been posting on Michael Moore’s Web site, writing, “We have such a strong coalition of groups. GSFP, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and the Crawford Peace House. I talked with John Conyers today and he wrote a letter to George signed by about 18 other Congress members to request that he meet with me. I also talked to Maxine Waters tonight and she is probably going to be here tomorrow.”
It turns out that the Crawford Peace House Web site includes a photo depicting the entire state of Israel as “Palestine,” and it carries a link to a report that when Prime Minister Sharon visited Crawford, the “peace house” greeted him with an “800-foot-long banner containing all of the United Nations resolutions that Israel is in violation of.” The Crawford Peace House site also features a photo of Eugene Bird, who has suggested that Israeli intelligence was responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out all have representatives on the steering committee of United for Peace and Justice, an anti-war umbrella group. They share that distinction with the Communist Party USA. UPJ organized the march during the 2004 Republican Convention in New York, at which a New York Sun poll of 253 of the protesters found that fully 67% of those surveyed said they agreed with the statement “Iraqi attacks on American troops occupying Iraq are legitimate resistance.” In other words, Ms. Sheehan’s “coalition” includes a lot of people who think the persons who killed her son were justified.”
This story has been cited on a bunch of right-wing blogs — notably, this post by Mark in Mexico, entitled “Communists, traitors, mentally ill flock to Cindy Sheehan.” (“Her grief and desire for retribution have caused her to allow herself to be exploited by some of the worst that America has to offer.”) Even the (fortunately) inimitable Jeff Gannon has cited it. So let’s deconstruct it.
First off: yes, Cindy Sheehan has been posting on Michael Moore’s website. Also on dKos and other blogs. She is against the war, and she is publicizing what she’s doing. Whoop de do. And here, on that very site, is where she says: “Right now, what we are doing right here in Crawford is the anti-war movement. We have such a strong coalition of groups. GSFP, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and the Crawford Peace House.”
Here is the web page for the Crawford Peace House. If you scroll down a bit, you get to the only photo on the page that could possibly be the one referred to by the Sun as “a photo depicting the entire state of Israel as Palestine'”. Here it is:
It has no caption, so interpretation is left to the reader. And if the reader knows anything at all about the history of Israel and Palestine, what this photo shows is obviously a sequence of maps, showing, in order: (a) Palestine before partition; (b) the 1948 partition plan; (c) the pre-1967 borders of Israel; and (d) one of the proposals floated around the time of Camp David in 2000. That is: it’s a series of maps showing actual and proposed boundaries of Palestine over time; and the map showing Palestine covering all of Israel is not a proposal for the present, but an accurate depiction of those borders before 1948.
This is not rocket science. If you go to the Crawford Peace House web site, this is the only photo the Sun could possibly be talking about. It is pretty clearly not just “a photo depicting the entire state of Israel as “Palestine” “. Does anyone want to hazard a guess as to how many of the bloggers who linked uncritically to the Sun piece actually bothered to look at this web page? And if they didn’t, what conclusions can we draw about the amount of thought that went into posts with titles like: “Communists, traitors, mentally ill flock to Cindy Sheehan” and “Cindy Sheehan’s Puppet Masters”, and the care their authors took to check out their sources before using them to criticize someone?
Moving right along: the Sun article also informs us that “Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out all have representatives on the steering committee of United for Peace and Justice, an anti-war umbrella group. They share that distinction with the Communist Party USA.” What it doesn’t tell you is that United for Peace and Justice seems to be a fairly open group — any group can affiliate with it as long as they are willing to pay a small fee and sign onto the UPJ Unity Statement. The statement itself is pretty obviously to the left, but while its interpretations of facts are contentious, I can’t see that the facts themselves are way off.
Now: the members of the steering committee are elected by the membership. Apparently, the CPUSA’s representative was elected, as was the representative of the American Friends Service Committee. What does this tell us about Code Pink, Military Families Speak Out, and Veterans for Peace? Not a lot, I think. And what does it tell us about Cindy Sheehan? Even less.
But the little it tells us is a lot more than the next Sun factoid: that when the Sun polled the marchers at a rally organized by UPJ, 67% of them agreed with the statement: “Iraqi attacks on American troops occupying Iraq are legitimate resistance.” Let’s get clear on what’s being claimed here: members of some groups have shown up in support of Cindy Sheehan, and those groups are members of a much bigger coalition, and that coalition once held a rally, and 2/3 of 253 people at that rally thought that “Iraqi attacks on American troops occupying Iraq are legitimate resistance.” Is that a stretch or what?
Let’s try playing the ‘guilt by association’ game in reverse. I bet that if I were to check all the coalitions of conservative groups, I might be able to find one that had held a rally at which a majority of people held some seriously loathsome views: say, that open discrimination against gays is OK. Would that mean that if, say, von held a protest somewhere, and some people showed up to support him, and those people were members of some group that was itself a member of the coalition that held the rally whose participants held the repellent views, that would say something about von? I don’t think so: there are just too many links between von and the hypothetical rally members for it to mean anything at all.
Here’s another example which is, unfortunately, not hypothetical at all. Grover Norquist is an extremely influential Republican. Lots and lots of Republicans sit on boards with him, attend his weekly strategy meetings, and have various other institutional connections to him. The connection between most influential DC Republicans and Norquist is a lot closer than that between your average Code Pink member and the CPUSA. Moreover, the NYT writes that “his Wednesday meetings, weekly beat-the-drum sessions attended by lobbyists, think tank employees and politicians (…) command such influence that the Bush administration routinely sends an envoy.” I’d say that means that the Bush administration is at least as tightly linked to Norquist as Code Pink is to the CPUSA. And unlike the CPUSA, a shell of an organization that poses no danger to anyone other than possibly boring them to death, Norquist actually hangs out with people who pose serious threats.
Norquist has lobbied for UNITA, an organization that was Maoist until the apartheid government in South Africa started financing it in order to prolong Angola’s civil war. He supported RENAMO in Mozambique, another South Africa-backed movement that boiled parents alive in front of their children and nailed people to trees. And then there are his intriguing ties to radical Islamists. From Salon (see also here):
“The policy director for the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence division was briefly removed from his job in March when the Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered he had failed to disclose his association with Abdurahman Alamoudi, a jailed American Muslim leader. Alamoudi was indicted last year on terrorism-related money-laundering charges and now claims to have been part of a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah.
After a flurry of interagency meetings, however, Homeland Security decided to leave the policy director, Faisal Gill, in place, according to two government officials with knowledge of the Alamoudi investigation. A White House political appointee with close ties to Republican power broker Grover Norquist and no apparent background in intelligence, Gill has access to top-secret information on the vulnerability of America’s seaports, aviation facilities and nuclear power plants to terrorist attacks. (…)
A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman would not comment on Gill or when he was hired, except to say that a “thorough investigation” by the department’s Office of Security found no basis to deny the 32-year-old lawyer a security clearance. Among Gill’s political patrons is Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and a key ally of the White House. Gill listed Norquist as a reference on employment documents, the government officials said. Gill also worked in 2001 for a Muslim political outreach organization that Norquist co-founded with a former top aide to Alamoudi. Norquist did not respond to phone calls, a fax and an e-mail seeking comment.”
More:
“Once the leader of a cranky cabal of out-of-power Republicans, Norquist after 1994 became a political gatekeeper. Candidates sought his advice, and dark-suited lobbyists clamored to attend weekly strategy meetings Norquist held for Capitol Hill aides and GOP activists in his offices each Wednesday. Those in Norquist’s favor sit at the conference table in the middle of the room. The others stand, packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Among those with a regular seat at the table, participants say, is the Islamic Institute’s Saffuri.
Norquist and Saffuri founded the Islamic Institute in 1999 with seed money from Qatar, Kuwait and other Middle Eastern sources. Among the contributors, records show, was Saffuri’s former boss, a Muslim charity director and founder of the American Muslim Council, Abdurahman Alamoudi. The records show Alamoudi gave at least $35,000 to the institute, although Alamoudi said in a written statement he did “not recollect having been quite that generous.” Also funding the institute were two Virginia-based nonprofit organizations. The Safa Trust donated at least $35,000, and the International Institute of Islamic Thought gave $11,000, the records show.
Last March, federal authorities raided those groups and others in Operation Greenquest, a major assault on suspected terrorist financial networks. Among the more than 50 targets of the raid were people and organizations connected to Norquist and the Islamic Institute. They included Sami Al-Arian, a charity associated with Alamoudi, Safa Trust and the International Institute for Islamic Thought, or IIIT. In addition to financially supporting Norquist’s institute, the IIIT also had funded Al-Arian’s think tank at USF, which the FBI shut down in a 1995 raid, and the school Al-Arian founded, the Islamic Academy of Florida.
The American Muslim Council had long been viewed with suspicion by federal investigators, terrorism experts and Jewish groups. Although it preached tolerance, its co-founder, Alamoudi, had been videotaped at a pro-Palestinian rally outside the White House in 2000 exhorting the crowd: “We are all supporters of Hamas … I am also a supporter of Hezbollah.” In his written response, Alamoudi said: “I regret that I made an emotional statement in the heat of the moment and I retract it.”
Still, a few months after the rally in Washington, Alamoudi was photographed in Beirut at a conference attended by representatives of the terror groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and al-Qaida. Today, Alamoudi is under investigation for his role in another Virginia charity, the International Relief Organization, suspected of being part of a Saudi-connected terror money laundering operation.”
And that Alamoudi guy who gave $35,000 to Norquist’s institute, and whose former deputy helped Norquist found it? Here’s more about him:
“A prominent Muslim activist who admitted participating in a Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s crown prince was sentenced Friday to the maximum 23 years in prison for illegal business dealings with Libya.
Abdurahman Alamoudi, 52, pleaded guilty in July to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from high-ranking Libyan officials while serving as a go-between for them and Saudi dissidents.”
So: Norquist served as a reference for someone who (successfully) applied for a job with the Department of Homeland Security without telling them that he had worked with a group under investigation for financing terrorism. He founded an institute with the ex-deputy of someone who later confessed to being a Libyan agent and to conspiring to kill the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and accepted money from that person. He hangs out with suspected operatives of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and gets money from organizations under investigation for laundering money for terrorists.
So here’s my question for the New York Sun, and anyone who quotes its article favorably: how close do the ties between one person and another have to be before you can use an association between them to smear the first? And what possible answer to that would license claims like “Her grief and desire for retribution have caused her to allow herself to be exploited by some of the worst that America has to offer”, but not “George W. Bush’s ambition and desire for power have caused him to allow himself to be exploited by some of the worst that radical Islam has to offer”?
And here are some more questions for the bloggers who quoted this piece without objection: do you think that you have an obligation to think, and to try to check the facts, before you quote something? Do you stand by the Sun’s story? And if your answer to the first question is ‘yes’, but your answer to the second question is ‘no’, how do you square these two?
Just asking.
I couldn’t agree more.
“I do know that I hate seeing people slimed.”
I think she is sliming Bush and not taking into account that it is his job to protect the people of this country. She shouldn’t be sliming him. Maybe we could spend some time acknowledging the background of the war in Iraq and shed some light on why Bush thinks it is important to wage that war. I think this would do alot to prevent people from sliming our President.
Good post, Hilzoy. To answer your question at the end, which isn’t really meant for me, we’re talking about the same set of folks who still believe there’s a connection between Osama and Saddam because they were once at the same cocktail party.
It’s all-too-obvious why they’re going after Sheehan. They want to discourage other family members of the military victims to speak out.
eeeck. from speaking out.
Maybe we could spend some time acknowledging the background of the war in Iraq and shed some light on why Bush thinks it is important to wage that war.
go for it. tell us why our fellow Americans need to die for Iraqis ?
(i hope it’s not an eye-for-an-eye thing, cause we’d be tens of thousands in the red on that one.)
“I think this would do alot to prevent people from sliming our President.”
Too much self-accreted material already, of slime and other less savory varieties, for aything additional to stick.
An utterly admirable post, hilzoy, I am not sure it doesn’t serve the enemy’s purpose to indulge in these mudfights, if even in defending the unjustly attacked. They seem to enjoy them so much. They were not damaged by Swift Boat or Schiavo, and might know what they doing. We are certainly here not talking about what Ms Sheehan wants talked about.
And, unless you are willing to make the kind of general judgement that I am known for and may not be spoken on this blog, you are ( I presume) addressing a minority not readily susceptible to shame and reform. Or you are addressing a respectable majority (in your opinion) that (IMO) has not shown any previous enthusiasm for actually disciplining their fringe.
PS:Rather than Norquist, It might have had more bite and been more fun to use a chain of associations involving Lott, Barbour, and the Citizen’s Council.
Bob M: true. I thought of that, but couldn’t remember the Citizen’s Council’s name, and since there were so many possibilities to choose from, I just grabbed another off the pile. (Poor von: so many different dreadful people I might have tied him to in this post…)
Maybe we could spend some time acknowledging the background of the war in Iraq and shed some light on why Bush thinks it is important to wage that war.
Maybe he could just tell us himself. Preferably in the process of explaining why he’s refusing to take an hour to talk to a woman bereaved by his quixotic war.
She shouldn’t be sliming him.
And that’s the best explanation you’ll get, I suspect. That’s Cindy Sheehan’s real crime: lèse-majesté.
Council of Conservative Citizens, I believe it is called.
“Council of Conservative Citizens, I believe it is called”
I am proud to have forgotten.
A grieving mother who dares to think she can speak truth to power–now there’s a serious threat to national security. And so what if others of the same opinion join her in her protest? The people camping out at Crawford look like Americans to me. Messy, chaotic groups of earnest people who are seriously upset by this fiasco in Iraq and not afraid to say so. Maybe we should take note of who is not at Crawford, namely representatives of the Democrat and Republican parties.
Please DNFTT.
Cleek,
“go for it. tell us why our fellow Americans need to die for Iraqis ?”
See 9/11.
See failed Arab states.
See Islamic extremists throughout the Middle East.
See a dictator who attacks his neighbors
See picture of Hussein smiling with a cigar in his hand in front of the WTC as planes fly into them.
Anarch,
“Preferably in the process of explaining why he’s refusing to take an hour to talk to a woman bereaved by his quixotic war.”
Been there and done that. Maybe you could give him some credit for it.
Laura,
“And so what if others of the same opinion join her in her protest?”
My mother always said, “You are your friends.”
Oh, I’m sure someone else will slip in with something similar while I write this, but…
>See 9/11.
And that has what relevance to Iraq?
>See failed Arab states.
>See Islamic extremists throughout the Middle East.
Both of which problems have been demonstrably exacerbated by the war.
>See a dictator who attacks his neighbors
See a dictator whose neighbors in Iran represent a much more substantive threat to the U.S. and who are now unchecked by his presence.
>See picture of Hussein smiling with a cigar in his hand in front of the WTC as planes fly into them.
See *what*? What in God’s name are you talking about? He was actually *there*?
Been there and done that. Maybe you could give him some credit for it.
Sure. You recall any details of that meeting?
“A grieving mother who dares to think she can speak truth to power–now there’s a serious threat to national security.”
She isn’t a threat to national security. She isn’t doing anything to help it either. She is a greiving mother who is angry that her son died. That makes perfect sense. Why we should listen to her policy ideas is completely beyond me. She had her encounter with Bush already, and now wants more. There is no reason to give her more. There is no reason to slime her, nor is there a reason to pay attention to her policy wishes. I don’t understand why the media is focusing on her–or rather I do and it has nothing to do with policy analysis.
“I don’t understand why the media is focusing on her–or rather I do and it has nothing to do with policy analysis.”
I agree that it doesn’t make her opinion any more valuable than anyone else’s, but it is also nice to actually hear from someone who has made a sacrifice for this war effort. Of course, we do hear from soliders and others on the ground in Iraq as well, which is also a good thing.
In particular, if you believe that the President was dismissive of her, it should be genuinely damaging to your assesment of his character, because by doing so (if indeed he did do so) he by doing so was dismissive of the sacrifices necessary to conduct a war, which is a poor quality in a leader.
Sebastian: She had her encounter with Bush already, and now wants more. There is no reason to give her more.
No reason, except generosity, kindness, and basic political savvy. Bush lacks all three, but we knew this already. And you support him in his lack of all three… why?
“No reason, except generosity, kindness, and basic political savvy. Bush lacks all three, but we knew this already. And you support him in his lack of all three… why?”
Why do you not support someone who is doing his utmost to fight terrorist around the world? Is there some motivation that you might have that would cause you not to lend support to those that oppose terrorism?
Ask a stupid question…
Seriously, folks, DNFTT. It’s really better for everyone.
In answer to question one: Because his “utmost” is pretty darn poor? Because the things that this administration are doing with that “utmost” effort are failing to improve the situation while dragging the good name of the country through the mud? I don’t care if it’s “hard work.” I care if the job gets done. And he ain’t doin it.
In answer to question 2: there are lots of people who oppose terrorism in this country. Bush doesn’t have a monopoly on the issue. I’m going to support the people whom I think will best oppose terrorism and uphold the moral standards by which we as a nation ought to act. That means I’m not going to support Bush.
Bush says a great many noble, pretty things. What I don’t understand, Wonder, is why we are obligated to take his words at their face value, on faith, without looking at the deeds that lie behind the words.
WonderWhy,
I for one, am interested in results. I want some accountablitity from the gov’t officials who planned and executed the war in Iraq. The plans and policies instituted in Iraq, where NOT implemented by Mrs. Sheehan. Also, the fact that she may appear to be a little off kilter, has nothing to do with the extraordinary incompetence exhibited by the Bush admin. in Iraq. For those of you who supported the invasion in Iraq, its time to face reality and start directing your invective at those responsible.
What the bush bottom-feeders are doing is practicing the tactic known as the “hyper-smear” which simply means that they are attempting to smear Cindy Shaheen by smearing Michael Moore or anyone else who has opposed the human stain and his criminal war and who is now lending assistance to Cindy Shaheen’s campaign to expose bush as a gutless fraud and treasonous criminal. This despicable tactic puts them in Rovian territory.
Phil: Seriously, folks, DNFTT. It’s really better for everyone.
You’re right, of course. *sits on hands*
This may not help people like Sebastian who profess not to get what all the fuss is about with Cindy Sheehan’s action, but it’s another in a long line of rewarding posts from Jeanne at Body&Soul for those who do, or are open to learning.
I hope that regulars here will remember, as they read the following, that I think the war in Iraq is a ghastly mistake, conceived and excuted both dishonestly and incompetently.
This “c’mon, tell us the noble cause” line is basically so much organic fertilizer.
Bush and his team have spent years telling us the noble cause. It’s the removal of one of the world’s most dangerous tyrants, eliminating his weapons of mass destruction and ensuring he can’t make more, and establishing a peaceful and democratic Iraq, to be used as an example and as a launching pad for the further improvement of the Middle East. It’s not like they’ve failed to tell us this.
Now, you may not believe them. I don’t myself. But acting as though there’s never been exposition about the reasons for the war or its aim is being disingenuous in ways that I think ultimately weaken the standing of the anti-this-war effort.
DNFTT–
especially when his last name is “…HeEvenBothers”.
But acting as though there’s never been exposition about the reasons for the war or its aim is being disingenuous in ways that I think ultimately weaken the standing of the anti-this-war effort.
That’s just it–we’ve never actually gotten an /honest/ accounting of that “noble cause”. What we get are mostly sound bites and jingoistic slogans. What justifications of substance there are have exhaustively shown to be demonstrably false (WMD snipe hunt), incredibly stupid, (remake the map of the ME), ignorant and evil (flypaper strategy), or contradicted by their own statements in the run-up to the war (depose Saddam to free the Iraqi people). We have half a dozen or so different rationalizations of why this war was a good idea, most of them in conflict with each other on some level, few of which were advanced in the beginning to sell this war to the American people, and none of which stand on their own anymore as a good reason for Casey Sheehan and thousands of others to be dead.
So no–the demands for an explanation about Bush’s “noble cause” are not hogwash. This country deserves an honest accounting of why we went to war and why we are still there, and we’ve never gotten one. Nor will we. So at worst, Cindy Sheehan’s demands are a tactic to demonstrate, by asking an unanswerable question, the bankruptcy of the pro-war arguments.
And you know what? The American people are starting to wake up and realize that the Bush Administration should’ve filed for Chapter 11 a long time ago.
Catsy, I agree with you that the president and his people are lying to us, when they’re being so detached from reality that they can’t realize they’re lying. But that’s a judgment separate from whether a rationale for the war has been offered – what we’ve gotten is the sort of thing one (at least this one) would expect for a war.
But that’s a judgment separate from whether a rationale for the war has been offered – what we’ve gotten is the sort of thing one (at least this one) would expect for a war.
No, it’s not. If I ask you why it was necessary to blow up my neighbor’s house, and you answer that this city has a growing crime problem and sometimes it’s necessary to take decisive action to protect the peace, you haven’t given me a real answer, you’ve given me platitudes and generalities. And I’m well within my rights to continue to demand an answer.
I think we’re talking at cross-purposes, Catsy, and that this confusion is just what I meant to be on about in the first place. 🙂 Let me see if I can pull them out.
1. The rationale. “Why are you doing this, and what do you hope to accomplish?”
2. The support. “What evidence warrants your actions?”
What we need here from the administration is not the rationale but the support. I have the impression that most people saying “What noble cause?” actually mean “What evidence supported your initial judgments, and what evidence makes you think you’re on the right course now, and what evidence makes you think you can get to your goal, sooner or later?” At least it seems to me it’s being used that way. But the problem is, that particular phrasing invites folks who don’t want to deal with the evidence to dismiss it all by saying (truthfully) that Bush et al have provided the rationale, lots of times.
I want to make it as hard as possible for the deniers of the evidence to do so, and for them to look as bad as possible to as many people as possible doing it. I see this as one small contribution to it.
Bruce: As this WaPo story shows, they’re not even holding out for the ‘noble cause’ anymore, just anything that will let us draw down some troops and leave bases behind.
And, yes, ‘what is the noble cause’ is shorthand for ‘tell us something besides empty platitudes’. So?
Clearly the reasons given for the war before the invasion were lies (not just mistakes), clearly we’re not stabilizing the middle east or making Iraq more democratic or free, so Sheehan is asking the President why we are still there. The goals being set in today’s Post article sure as hell wouldn’t have inspired anyone as a noble cause.
The next step is to force them to come clean about bases, because her question applies to that as well.