Our Adult Hero’s

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Another good one from Mark Steyn:

…This year?s performer in residence is Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq last year. Mrs Sheehan is now very anti-war and has pledged to stay camped out in Crawford all August until the President has the guts to come out and see her for a face-to-face meeting. So far he?s sent his national security adviser and deputy chief of staff out to see her, but that?s like Clinton sending Janet Reno and Sidney Blumenthal to Carly Simon?s party. These no-name stand-ins were trying to ?bullshit us into submission,? complained Mrs Sheehan.

Her son?s loss ? like Max Cleland?s wounds ? is supposed to put her beyond reproach. For as the New York Times?s Maureen Dowd informed us, ?The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.?

Really? Well, what about those other parents who?ve buried children killed in Iraq? Linda Ryan lost her son, Marine Corporal Marc Ryan, to ?insurgents? in Ramadi: ?George Bush didn?t kill her son,? says Mrs Ryan. ?Her son made a decision to join the Armed Forces and defend our country…. George Bush was my son?s commander-in-chief. My son, Marc, totally believed in what he was doing.?

There are, sadly, hundreds of Linda Ryans across American: parents who buried children killed in Iraq and who honour their service to the nation. They don?t make the news. There?s one Cindy Sheehan and she?s on TV round the clock. She may not be emblematic of bereaved military families, but she?s certainly symbolic of media-Left desperation.

Still, she?s a mother. And, if you?re as heavily invested as Ms Dowd in the notion that those ?killed in Iraq? are ?children?, then Mrs Sheehan?s status as grieving matriarch is a bonanza. I agree with Mrs Ryan: they?re not children in Iraq; they?re thinking adults who ?made a decision to join the Armed Forces and defend our country?. Whenever I?m on a radio show these days, someone calls in and demands to know whether my children are in Iraq. Well, not right now. They range in age from five to nine, and though that?s plenty old enough to sign up for the jihad and toddle into an Israeli pizza parlour wearing a suicide-bomb, in most advanced societies? armed forces they prefer to use grown-ups.

That seems to be difficult for the Left to grasp. Ever since America?s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ?children?. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that?s her decision and her parents shouldn?t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she?s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he?s a wee ?child? who isn?t really old enough to know what he?s doing.

I get many emails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes as if she?s auditioning for a minor supporting role in Sex and the City. The infantilisation of the military promoted by the Left is deeply insulting to America?s warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd?s purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that ?of course? they ?support our troops?, because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.

The second to last paragraph pretty much sum’s up the left’s anti-war movement, and quite well. These young ADULTS are volunteering to serve our country and the left’s attempt to turn them into victims is just plain disgusting. No big surprise tho that the left can be a disgusting bunch of people huh?