Mother To Mother - Why?

by pessimist

One of the recent polling categories of support for George Woozy Bu$h is the so-called Security Mom, the one who worries that Al Qaeda has planned an assault on her kid's grade school for their next attack. I haven't yet seen any polls indicating the Dumbya's poor showing at the debate has affected this support any, but it should. What's the point of raising a kid to be an adult, "safe" from Al Qaeda if he or she is only going to be thrown away in a war to control the world's diminishing supplies of crude?

I'm sure these mothers - if they had it all to do over again - would agree:

Sons killed in Iraq; mothers turn political

"All of the things that were promised before going to Iraq - it was a lie," Nadia McCaffrey said. "A complete lie."

"We have been so betrayed by this president," Cindy Sheehan said Wednesday. "He has lied to us. He has betrayed my family. He betrayed my son."

Who will be the last mother to lose a child for a lie?

Nadia McCaffrey lost a son and gained a cause, a woefully uneven trade that nonetheless thrust the Tracy resident into the 2004 presidential campaign. Her only son, Patrick, was a soldier, killed in Iraq. Her new cause is defeating President Bush. Her allies are other bereaved relatives who launched a nationwide ad campaign this week challenging the Republican president.

Army Sgt. Patrick Ryan McCaffrey died June 22. He was shot in the chest multiple times, ambushed while patrolling in the city of Balad, 85 miles north of Baghdad.

"The day my son died, my life totally changed - totally changed," McCaffrey said at a National Press Club news conference Wednesday. "That day, I had to do something about what is going on in the world today."

McCaffrey has joined Vacaville resident Cindy Sheehan, whose son, Casey, was killed in April, and others in the ad campaign organized by a new political action committee called RealVoices.org.

Sheehan is 47. She still can laugh, but she looks tired. She was given a script to read for her ad when the camera crew showed up at her home. She set it aside. Instead, tearful then as she was Wednesday, she spoke to the camera, describing her son's last mission. "And the sergeant said, 'Sheehan, you don't have to go,' because my son was a mechanic," his mother says in the ad. "And Casey said, 'Where my chief goes, I go.' "

Army Spc. Casey Sheehan died in a Baghdad slum on April 4. The 24-year-old former Eagle Scout had been in Iraq about two weeks, serving with the 5th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division.

Both mothers hooked up this year with Deane Little, a politically active molecular biologist. He formed a liberal group called Speak Up America in the 1990s, running ads attacking Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, and he formed RealVoices.org in July. The Los Altos-based PAC claims to have raised $200,000 and wants to buy a combination of national cable television time and targeted time in battleground states.

Each 30-second advertisement by RealVoices.org features a family member, starkly filmed in black and white, speaking with unvarnished pain and anger about the family's loss. The ads don't explicitly call for Bush's defeat or Kerry's election, but there is no mistaking the sentiment:

Nadia McCaffrey is 59, a native of France and a naturalized U.S. citizen. The former Sunnyvale resident has lived in Tracy since her son's death, helping care for her daughter-in-law and 2-year-old granddaughter. It's what she promised her son she would do when he shipped out for Iraq in January.

Patrick McCaffrey was 34 years old when he died, a decade or so older than most of the other 1,054 U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. He had enlisted in the National Guard in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the East Coast. He did not, his mother says, envision the Iraq war as a way to fight the terrorists who attacked his own country.

"Can somebody tell me," she said Wednesday, "why my son had to die?"

For oil. For the right of rich people to burn copious amounts of distilled dead dinosaur juice as they ferry themselves around in military-style vehicles so they can pretend they are tough and to be feared.

For greed.

This is what other mothers should understand as they send Johnny and Susie off to school Monday morning. They are being trained only to defend with their lives the rights of the greedy, and with no thought of benefit for themselves. They are being trained to obey the commands of their self-appointed superiors to cater to the whims of those same.

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for the country club set."

Ask yourselves, mothers. Did you go through nine months of pregnancy and hours of labor just so the likes of Dick Cheney and Halliburton can reap munificent profits soaked with the blood of your baby? The one they wouldn't let you abort even to save your own life should that have been necessary? The one they will abandon once s/he can no longer tote an M 16 and make the world safe for multinational corporatism?

And they claim that every life is precious!

It is - a precious resource for profit.

And what will you get for all of your hard work and sacrifice, mother? They won't even let you be at the air base when the coffin arrives.

If none of this convinces you that you should vote against the War Profiteers led by George Warmonger Bu$h, then may God have mercy on the soul of your child who has to pay the price they ask - because you sure don't.

Have a Happy Mother's Day.

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