Please note: this post is by Dafydd ab Hugh, not by Captain Ed. I speak only for myself, as we all should; I don't know how the Captain feels about this. Just bear it in mind.

Whenever anyone has the temerity to object to anything Cindy Sheehan says, no matter how objectively bizarre, unAmerican, and repugnant it may be, the usual suspects jump on chairs, pull up their skirts, and howl that criticism of any kind against Mrs. Sheehan is forbidden unless you, too, have lost a child in the Iraq War. This is one of the weasel clauses (number four, in fact) noted by Tom Bevan over on Real Clear Politics that are used to stifle opposition to the Left's opposition.

(The actual permalink is here; but at the moment, you get a server error. It's the top item in the regular Commentary page, but eventually, you should use the permalink. When they get around to fixing it. Whenever that is.)

Get ready for a shock: it turns out there actually are other grieving parents whose children made the ultimate sacrifice for our country and were every bit as heroic as Casey Sheehan. And many of these other voices do not share Cindy Sheehan's hatred for the country her son loved so much. In a poignant and moving piece published in the Wall Street Journal, She Does Not Speak for Me, Ronald R. Griffin, himself just such a parent of an American hero of the Iraq War, speaks for himself; and he also allows other mothers, fathers, and wives to speak with their own voices, not Cindy Sheehan's, about their own sons and daughters -- what they believed in, and what they ultimately laid down their lives to defend.

I cannot fully understand Cindy Sheehan's pain, and I do not pretend to be able to do so. But these parents understand exactly, having suffered the same staggering blow. And their own courage under what must be the most horrible thing a parent could ever have to do, to bury his child, is as awe-inspiring as the sacrifice of the soldiers themselves.

I think the soldiers, sailors, aviators, and Marines would be the very first to point out that sometimes, dying is the easy part; it can be infinitely harder to have to go on living without someone you loved from long before he was born, one you expected to outlive you by decades.

But all of these surviving parents agree that the first thing, the very first thing they must do to make some peace with a grief that will be eternal is to honor the very ideals for which their children willingly risked death: honor, duty, justice, and above all else, freedom -- the freedom that America, more than any other nation, has represented for over two hundred years.

There really are things worth fighting for; and some ideas and ideals are even worth dying for. Anyone who does not understand this, whether through grief-induced amnesia or because he never knew it in the first place, has lost far more than a child.

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» Moonbat’s Honor Oppressed Freedom Fighters from Lump on a Blog
If I were like you, I could go so far as equate you with the murderous bastards that commited the pictured atrocity. After all, one could argue that in working overtime to weaken this country you are implicitly supporting them. If you think I would ... [Read More]

Tracked on August 19, 2005 11:01 PM

» Another Perspective from the Parent of a Fallen Soldier from Patterico's Pontifications
Here is a piece from the father of a soldier killed in Iraq who says: I lost a son in Iraq and Cindy Sheehan does not speak for me. The piece is by Ronald R. Griffin, who is “the father of Spc. Kyle Andrew Griffin, a recipient of the Army Comm... [Read More]

Tracked on August 19, 2005 11:37 PM

» Sheehan is one Mother but not all mothers.. from Macmind - Conservative Commentary and Common Sense
The MSM media is all a buzz with Cindy Sheehan who they would have you believe is the only mother who ever lost a son or daughter in war. But she isn't, and she isn't speaking for the majority of parents who wouldn't dream of making a mockery of thei... [Read More]

Tracked on August 20, 2005 8:22 AM

» Sheehan Clearly from Everyman
It's not because I've been busy this week that I've failed to write anything of significance about the Cindy Sheehan immorality play going on in Crawford, Texas, in the glare of publicity from the same folks who swarmed and informed us, interminably, a... [Read More]

Tracked on August 21, 2005 7:00 AM

» More Sheehan from Neo Warmonger
Indeed, it appears that it's very difficult to find any other parents of soldiers who died in the war who support Sheehan. [Read More]

Tracked on August 22, 2005 1:02 AM