Pat Buchanan does it again. having come full circle from his continued defense of the Vietnam campaign, to firmly and consistently oppose the nearly identical (in its flawed reasoning and execution) Iraq war (Buchanan would differ, saying the fight against communism was no neocon fantasy). This time he takes on the Cindy Sheehan phenomenon:
Cindy Sheehan: Antiwar Catalyst
When he flew off to San Clemente, Calif., in the summer of 1969 for his August vacation, Richard Nixon was riding a wave of popularity.
He had announced the first troop withdrawal from Vietnam. He had met the Apollo 11 crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on touchdown in the Pacific. He had become the first president to visit a captive nation with a triumphal tour of Bucharest. And he had just proposed a sweeping reform of welfare praised by both parties.
But when Nixon returned in September, a storm had broken. Wrote David Broder: “It is becoming more obvious with each passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon Johnson’s authority in 1968 are out to break Richard Nixon in 1969.“The likelihood is great that they will succeed again.”
They did not succeed in breaking Nixon’s presidency. He broke them. The crucial moment was his “Great Silent Majority” speech of Nov. 3, 1969, which rallied Middle America behind his war policy.
George W. Bush is approaching a similar moment of truth. And Cindy Sheehan may be the catalyst of crisis for the Bush presidency.
As a Gold Star mother of a soldier son slain in Iraq, Sheehan has authenticity and moral authority. Wedded to the passion of her protest, these make her a magnet for a bored White House press corps camped in Crawford for August. Cindy and the president are the only stories in town. And as a source of daily derogatory commentary on the president, Sheehan is using the media, and the media are using her, for the same end: to bedevil George W. Bush.
They are succeeding. When one considers the non-stop cable TV coverage given the mother of Natalie Holloway, the Alabama teen missing in Aruba, Cindy Sheehan will soon be a household name. The more media she attracts, the more people she draws to Crawford. The more people who join Cindy in Crawford, the more media coverage they will attract. It is hard to see what breaks this cycle before Labor Day and the president’s return.
The purity of Sheehan’s protest has lately been diluted by her association with the far Left, the extravagance of her language and the arrival of political operatives to manipulate and manage her. But in a slow news month, Cindy Sheehan has helped turn the focus of national debate back to the war, at a moment of special vulnerability for the president.
According to Newsweek, support for Bush’s handling of the war has fallen for the first time below 40 percent—to 34 percent, with 61 percent now disapproving of his war leadership. Compare these numbers to the 68 percent support Nixon commanded on Vietnam after that November 3 address, and the gravity of Bush’s condition becomes evident.
Put bluntly, the bottom is falling out of support for the commander in chief. What is remarkable is that no Democrat has stepped forward, as Gene McCarthy did, to lead an antiwar crusade and call for a date certain for withdrawal of U.S. troops. Cindy Sheehan is filling that vacuum.
... Americans do not want an endless no-win war, but they also do not want to cut and run, or walk away and leave a debacle, when they believe that 1,850 Americans have died and 13,000 have been wounded in a noble cause If President Bush cannot describe “victory” in terms convincing enough to Americans willing to spend blood indefinitely, he will have to persuade them to stay the course by describing what a disaster defeat will mean for Iraq and for the America’s position in the world.
But to do that would raise a question: Why, then, in heaven’s name, did America take such a risk, when Iraq was never a threat?
Read the whole thing. It's worth it. Buchanan never favored the war and has been a consistent bedeviler of the neocons. In the case of Ms. Sheehan, who has become a politicized figure thanks to the left and the right, he has nailed it. She is a sympathetic figure no matter where you stand on the war, simply on the basis of her loss. If she becomes less sympathetic when she talks to the media, she regains stature every time another parent of a son or daughter killed in Iraq steps forward to join her.
Buchanan begins his column with a story about Richard Nixon. Here's another, courtesy of Truthout:
In May of 1970, right after the Kent State shootings, when civil unrest across the nation had reached a fever pitch and opposition to the war had roared again to the forefront, Nixon woke his personal valet in the middle of the night. He grabbed a few Secret Service agents and set off for the Lincoln Memorial. There, he spent an hour talking with a large gathering of war protesters encamped around the monument.
The Time Magazine article from May 18, 1970, recalls the scene this way: "When the conversation turned to the war, Nixon told the students: 'I know you think we are a bunch of so and so's.'" Before he left, Nixon said: 'I know you want to get the war over. Sure you came here to demonstrate and shout your slogans on the ellipse. That's all right. Just keep it peaceful. Have a good time in Washington, and don't go away bitter.' The singular odyssey went on. Nixon and his small contingent wandered through the capital, then drove to the Mayflower Hotel for a breakfast of corned beef hash and eggs - his first restaurant meal in Washington since he assumed power. Then he withdrew to his study in the Executive Office Building to sit out the day of protest."
In this sense, at least, George W. Bush is no Richard Nixon.
Interesting links: a brief history of the anti-Vietnam war movement.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
