Cindy Sheehan (the mother of a US soldier who was killed in Iraq) adds an important voice to the American anti-war movement, writes Ramzy Baroud* Cindy Sheehan, a grieving mother of 24-year-old son Casey, killed only days after joining his army unit in Iraq, is an ordinary woman with extraordinary bearings. Two months after the untimely death of her son, she met United States President George W Bush in June 2004, hoping to find closure and answers to many daunting questions. After a disappointing meeting, she insisted on meeting him again to pose her simple, yet poignant and utterly consequential question: "Why did my son die?" Expectedly, this question has been asked by thousands of grieving American families and, in fact, millions of Americans, many of whom have finally realised the dishonesty and absurdity of Bush's aimless war. According to a nationwide CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll carried out on 7 August 2005, 54 per cent of the American public feel the US administration has "made a mistake" in sending troops to Iraq. But unlike the disapproving, yet largely hushed -- or perhaps overlooked -- millions, the 48- year-old mother, Sheehan, bearing unspeakable anguish, has opted to camp out near Bush's Texas ranch in protest. Initially, the White House completely ignored her pleas, simply devising alternative routes so that Bush wouldn't run into "Camp Casey". When Sheehan finally forced her story on to the media, Bush took notice, dispatching some of his officials to pacify the devastated mother with yet more empty rhetoric. She refused to leave. Her insistence ignited nationwide attention, quickly crossing the line dividing the alternative media from that of the mainstream. Right-wing apologists swiftly inundated the media, desperately trying to control a narrative so instinctively woven by an ordinary woman incessant on challenging the meaning, or lack thereof, in her son's death. While the cliché understanding of the media's role in the US is that it is an open, unhindered and evenly representative forum, the sad, albeit unsurprising truth is that the US mainstream media has always been a one-sided, drum- beating, chest-pounding, war-mongering medium where self-serving politicians and businessmen often come together in sinful matrimony. It has also, unfairly, tainted the image of the American people, as irrational minds, blindly "marching in support" behind the president, the troops, "American Ideals" and so forth, implying that the appalling values that moulded the thinking of Bush's ideologues have also influenced the aspirations of ordinary Americans everywhere. Nonetheless, the sudden, yet invigorating appearance of Sheehan has created a tidal wave that is not only challenging the utterly deceptive rhetoric of our media's pro-military intervention pundits, but in fact launched a rebirth of the anti- war movement, whose absence left the case for war unchallenged. But still; while some champions of the anti-war movement are incapable of articulating a decisive and uncompromising agenda on ending the war in Iraq, Sheehan, this ordinary woman with a small tent, a few sandwiches and a cell phone has proven more unshakable than anti-war groups who claim tens of thousands of members. "We're over there and we need to come home," she told reporters on 16 August. She contested the claim that "leaving Iraq in chaos" is a non-option. "We need to let the Iraqi people handle their own business," she said, arguing, according to www.salon.com that "the US presence is the source of all violence there." Bush is the one responsible for her son's death, she said. As for "the person who killed my son," she added, "I have no animosity for that person at all." What makes Sheehan's story utterly powerful is that it comes from a member of society that has been merely qualified as "ordinary", meaning a person of no bearing on the outcome of things, be it political or otherwise. But she is a woman, a mother and that too is a powerful message of revolutionary proportions. Women have erroneously been regarded as minor players in shaping what social scientists coined the "public sphere". The modern history of the US, moreover, the West in general, was devised by men, some argued, thus the narrative delineating that history finds it possible to exclude women. Women were only the subject of discussion within a particular role, within politics, religion or media, a supportive role that more or less was designated and narrated by men. Once again, ordinary people, and women in particular, found themselves irrelevant to the whole debate. They simply didn't matter. Sheehan's strong and uncompromising stand is changing that. Her solitary presence is giving vigour, reuniting and inspiring the anti-war movement (as it has been argued by many before me); but what I find even more important is that she has ascribed a different role to a cast of people that has historically been so marginalised, and unfairly so: ordinary women within ordinary surroundings. In the strict definition of the term however, I find nothing "ordinary" about Sheehan. She is not a member of the elite, nor does she aspire to be. She wants to preserve her ordinariness, but has -- willingly or not -- chosen to redefine that seemingly innocuous designation. But Sheehan is not the only ordinary American standing against the war. All across America and across the world, millions of people have defied the consensus to which such people are expected to subscribe. But in this age of typecast democracy, where only elitism -- money, politics and thus power -- determine the course, the cries of those millions have gone unanswered. And while the dominant few, along with their willing or brainwashed constituency dictate the cause and the cost of war, only the unimportant, and ordinary people like Sheehan's son pay the ultimate price and fall victim. The mother's challenge to President Bush to send his daughters to fight his ominous war in Iraq was not as extraneous as it may have seemed. Sheehan will eventually fold her tent and go home, notwithstanding the value of every hour spent in protest. The drums of war, through the mainstream media and their ever-detached analysts will go on for a while longer. But the hope is that the power of the ordinary which has been revived in the efforts of Cindy Sheehan will always inspire others like her, for it is the absence of that power that keeps the fate of humanity in the hands of a few, who seem utterly apathetic regarding the fate of ordinary people, of Sheehan, and of her irreplaceable loss. * The writer is an Arab-American journalist.
