As of right this minute, Cindy Sheehan, who’s 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed in Baghdad, is still in Crawford, three miles up the road from the president’s ranch. As you’ve probably heard, she has a few questions for Bush.
President Bush draws antiwar protesters just about wherever he goes, but few generate the kind of attention that Cindy Sheehan has since she drove down the winding road toward his ranch here this weekend and sought to tell him face to face that he must pull all Americans troops out of Iraq now.
Ms. Sheehan’s son, Casey, was killed last year in Iraq, after which she became an antiwar activist. She says she and her family met with the president two months later at Fort Lewis in Washington State.
But when she was blocked by the police a few miles from Mr. Bush’s 1,600-acre spread on Saturday, the 48-year-old Ms. Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., was transformed into a news media phenomenon, the new face of opposition to the Iraq conflict at a moment when public opinion is in flux and the politics of the war have grown more complicated for the president and the Republican Party.
Ms. Sheehan has vowed to camp out on the spot until Mr. Bush agrees to meet with her, even if it means spending all of August under a broiling sun by the dusty road.
That seems increasingly unlikely, not because Sheehan is unwilling to stick it out, but because authorities are reportedly prepared to arrest her today, apparently because her solitary protest is now considered a threat to national security. That, or Bush’s poll numbers, it’s not entirely clear.
Truth be told, Sheehan is actually requesting a second meeting with the president. The first one, which occurred over a year ago, didn’t go very well.
In Ms. Sheehan’s telling, though, Mr. Bush did not know her son’s name when she and her family met with him in June 2004 at Fort Lewis. Mr. Bush, she said, acted as if he were at a party and behaved disrespectfully toward her by referring to her as “Mom” throughout the meeting.
By Ms. Sheehan’s account, Mr. Bush said to her that he could not imagine losing a loved one like an aunt or uncle or cousin. Ms. Sheehan said she broke in and told Mr. Bush that Casey was her son, and that she thought he could imagine what it would be like since he has two daughters and that he should think about what it would be like sending them off to war.
“I said, ‘Trust me, you don’t want to go there’,” Ms. Sheehan said, recounting her exchange with the president. “He said, ‘You’re right, I don’t.’ I said, ‘Well, thanks for putting me there.’ “
Fortunately, a confluence of circumstances is generating media interest in Sheehan’s plight. There are a team of reporters near the ranch with nothing to do, in mid-August, when very little political news is being generated. All of a sudden, an articulate and sympathetic woman, with a powerful story to tell, shows up at Bush’s — and the reporters’ — doorstep. A boring assignment for hungry reporters isn’t quite so dreary anymore.
Media strategies aside, Sheehan wants what a lot of people want: some explanation for Bush’s costly failures in Iraq. In that sense, Sheehan may be a lone protestor in Crawford, but she has a lot of company.
If you wanted to hear more from Sheehan directly, C&L has feeds for a radio interview and CNN segment. For more updates, Sheehan has friends posting developments on a Kos diary.