Bush's mad mess

The first crisis to rock America began with an act of anger and frustration. Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed outside Baghdad on 4 April, 2004. She travelled to Crawford, Texas, disrupting United States President George Bush's five- week vacation, to demand he explains what "noble cause" her son's death had served.

"I don't know where Crawford is," Sheehan told a meeting of Veterans for Peace the day she left for Bush's encampment. "But I don't care, I'm going. And I'm going to tell them, You get that evil maniac out here, because a Gold Star Mother, somebody whose son's blood is on his hands, has questions for him. And I'm going to say, okay, listen here, George. Number one: I demand, every time you get up and spew the filth that you're continuing the killing in Iraq to honour my son's sacrifice, honouring the fallen heroes, by continuing the mission, you say, 'except Casey Sheehan'. And you say 'except for all the members of Gold Star Families for Peace', because we think not one drop of blood should be spilled in our families' names. You quit doing that. You don't have my permission to use my son's name."

"And I'm going to say, And you tell me what the noble cause is that my son died for. And if he even starts to say 'freedom and democracy', I'm going to say, you tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died so you can spread the cancer of Pax Americana, imperialism in the Middle East. You tell me that. You don't tell me my son died for 'freedom and democracy', because we're not freer. You're taking away our freedoms. The Iraqi people aren't freer, they're much worse off than they were before you meddled in their country. You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine, and you'll stop the terrorism."

The effect of Sheehan's trip to Crawford was electric, galvanising the widespread anti-war sentiment that existed throughout the country but which had not been effectively organised by the anti-war movement. Thousands of people from across the country, including other military families emboldened to speak out by Sheehan's stand, came to Texas. Solidarity rallies were organised in dozens of cities. Suddenly the anti- war movement was headline news. Sheehan and other anti-war activists were invited onto television and radio programmes that had systematically ignored them.

Sheehan inspired an opposition outraged by the lies used to sell the war to the public ("Iraq has dangerous weapons of mass destruction," "we will be greeted as liberators," "the occupation will pay for itself," "the resistance will stop once we capture Saddam Hussein,") but unsure of what it could do to make a difference. As historian Howard Zinn observed, "often a protest movement that's already underway -- and the present anti-war movement was underway even before the Iraq war began -- gets a special impetus, a special spark, from one person's act of defiance. I think of Rosa Parks and that one act of hers and what it meant."

Until Sheehan set up Camp Casey in honour of her son, anti- war forces had been largely quiet and disorganised, despite the fact that a majority of those polled in the United States believe the invasion of Iraq was a "mistake". In a Gallup poll on 9 August, 33 per cent of respondents said they supported withdrawing all US troops "now", and 23 per cent supported bringing some of the troops home. These sentiments are remarkable in light of the failure of the anti-war movement to articulate a clear "out now" position, in large part because of its close ties to the pro-war Democratic Party.

The Democrats have been completely toothless, believing that, in the words of two Washington Post reporters, "success in Iraq at this point is too important for the country." "We need more troops in Iraq now," Senator Joseph Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, told the Hartford Courant editorial board recently. Meanwhile, Democratic leader Joseph R Biden Jr of Delaware asserts that the Democrats will use force "without asking anyone's permission".

Sheehan's stand briefly forced Bush out of his vacation compound, though he refused to meet her. Bush travelled to previously unscheduled pro-war rallies in the right-wing citadels in Utah and Idaho. In an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Salt Lake City, Bush for the first time referred to the deaths of 1,864 US soldiers in Iraq and the 223 soldiers in Afghanistan. "Those who advocate immediate withdrawal from not only Iraq but the Middle East," Bush declared, "are advocating a policy that would weaken the United States."

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