Editorial: President not above protest

Thursday, Aug. 18, 2005 | 9:07 a.m.

The world didn't know anything about the private anguish of Cindy Sheehan before Aug. 6, the day she led a caravan of Iraq war protesters toward President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Her red, white and blue bus, proclaiming "Impeachment Tour" and trailed by about 20 cars, appeared to be nothing extraordinary, just another protest that would receive scant coverage. But she was the mother of Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, a Humvee mechanic who had been killed April 4, 2004, by enemy insurgents in the Sadr City section of Baghdad. And she had questions for President Bush.

Her questions, and her vow to camp out nearby for the remainder of the president's five-week vacation if he didn't personally speak with her, caught the attention of national reporters assigned to the ranch whenever the president is there. "I want to ask the president, 'Why did you kill my son? What did my son die for?' " Sheehan told CNN. "He said my son died in a noble cause, and I want to ask him what that noble cause is."

Sheehan has said that she fervently turned against the war when it became clear that no weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, and when she read of evidence that Bush, even before 9/11, had talked of invading Iraq. She became increasingly angry with Bush for using the image of our heroic troops to bolster the image of his war in Iraq. She became embittered by a meeting that she, and other parents who had lost children in Iraq, had with Bush two months after her son died. She says he lacked sincerity. It was for these reasons that she founded Gold Star Families for Peace last year, and began the journey that would lead her down that two-lane road in Crawford. "I want (President Bush) to honor my son by bringing the troops home immediately," she told reporters shortly after arriving. "I don't want him to use my son's name or my name to justify a ny more killing."

In the nearly two weeks that Sheehan has been camping out near the ranch, she has had dozens of people join her and hundreds stop by to show their support. Well-known anti-Bush groups have also shown up, sensing that Sheehan's vigil could add drama to their own messages. She has cooperated with some of these groups in an effort to publicize her views. But she remains, first and foremost, a woman who lost a son in Iraq, a woman still waiting for the man who sent him there to look her in the eye and explain his motives.

For this, the shouters on the right are trying to demonize her. They are calling her names and questioning her patriotism. It's part of the right-wing campaign our country has been witnessing since Bush was elected -- if you don't agree with the president, you must be un-American. Well, to remind those who push that philosophy, we do not live in a dictatorship or a monarchy. Cindy Sheehan is a citizen of our free country, a citizen who not only has questions for our commander-in-chief, but a citizen who has every right to ask him to personally answer them.