BigShinyThing

Cindy Sheehan’s son Casey was killed in Iraq, after which she became an anti-war activist. She says that she and her family met with the president two months later at Fort Lewis in Washington. It was only when she was blocked by police a few miles from Mr Bush’s 1,600 acre launch on Saturday that Ms Sheehan’s story really took off.

She has vowed to camp out on the spot until Bush agrees to meet with her, even if it means spending all of August in the boiling heat on a dirt track. 25 hours after she was turned back as she approached the ranch, she had already been interviewed by The Associated Press, CBS was taping a segment on her, and she had been on CNN. An appearance live on ABC had been booked for Monday. Ms Sheehan tells the New York Times, “It has just snowballed. We have opened up debate in this country.” The newspaper believes that her success in garnering such publicity has been down to the confluence of several forces.

The deaths of 20 marines last week from a single battalion has re-focused public attention on what is going on in Iraq and providing Sheehan with an opening for her message that no more lives should be given to the war. At the same time, polls show falling support for Bush’s handling of the war, leaving him open to challenge in a way that he was not when the nation appeared to be more strongly behind him. She also managed to stage her protest at the doorstep of the White House press corps, which spends each August in Crawford with very little to do, minimal access to Bush and a desperate need for stories.

Sheehan is also articulate and aggressive in delivering her message. She has the righteous anger of a mother that has lost her child. She also has information that many White House reporters are not privy to: how Bush handles himself when he meets behind closed doors with the families of soldiers killed in Iraq.

The White House offers scant details of such meetings, but tends to portray them as emotional and an opportunity for the president to share in the grief of the families. According to Ms Sheehan though, Bush did not even know her son’s name when she and her family met with him in June 2004. Bush acted, she says, as if he were at a party and behaved disrespectfully towards her by referring to her as ‘Mom’ throughout the meeting. Her account also has Bush saying to her that he could not imagine losing a loved one like an aunt or an uncle or cousin. Ms Sheehan says she broke in and reminded the president that it was her son she had lost. 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’ … He said, ‘You’re right, I don’t.’ I said, ‘Well, thanks for putting me there.’”

Sheehan’s story mirrors that of another personal protest but this one in London. Brian Haw has been protesting outside the Houses of Parliament since the beginning of the war despite legislation attempting to remove him. He recently won a case to stay exactly where he is, to the continued embarrassment of the UK goverment. He says, “I am gutted because people are still dying. Politicians have gone on holiday. The noble lady and gentlemen who delivered this good verdict today are going off for a well-deserved break, but the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine are still dying in these war-torn countries. It has got to stop. I can’t stop until that stops.”

Peaceful, lone protests such as these are surely the ones that hurt the politicians the most. They are certainly the most human.