A mother's Texas sojourn

You are, no doubt, familiar with Cindy Sheehan, whose story is beginning to garner national, and international attention:

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq last year, is camping out near President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, and says she won't leave until Bush agrees to meet with her to discuss the war. There are many reasons for the flood of news media attention she is attracting: She has a poignant personal story, and she is articulate - and, let's face it, August is a slow news month. But most of all, she is tapping into a growing popular feeling that the Bush administration is out of touch with the realities, and the costs, of the Iraq war. [Emphasis mine-CK]

Her story also illustrates a main failing of our Chickenhawk-in-Chief: sheer cowardice.

Throughout his life, the buck, for George W. Bush, has stopped elswhere. From his family pass into Yale, his cushy appointment into the Texas Air National Guard, to his numerous failed business ventures, W has contantly evaded the consequences of his inadequacies.

But by taking the US into the ill-advised venture in Iraq, W has finally painted himself into a corner no amount of money and family connections can bridge.

Now people who are inclined to think the best of the President for whatever reason, his likeability, his pandering to the Christian right, or merely because he is, after all, the President, have long been giving him the benefit of the doubt.

But how can you trust a man who can be cowed into hiding by a lone bereaved mother? How can a real man be so cowardly as to be unable to face a woman who has given more than her own life for the country, a woman who has given the life of her child?

A real man wouldn't hide. A real man would have the decency to a least hear the woman out, regardless of the merits of her demands. But then that's the problem isn't it, that her demands, her questions are not without merit.

And W doesn't have any answers.