Illegal Parking in Crawford

Cindy Sheehan returned to Crawford, Texas this week to hang out near the president’s ranch.  Two years ago, the President made a surprise visit to the green zone in Baghdad to serve fake turkey.  It should have said something about the state of the war had to be whisked in and out secretly.  We’ve never been so much in control there that we can assure anyone’s safety even the president’s.  Since Sheehan’s twenty six day vigil in August attracted worldwide media attention, the locals have made it illegal to camp on the roadside.  A few other things happened as well.  The president’s approval ratings dropped precipitously into the low thirties, just around the freezing temperature if we were measuring in fahrenheit instead of Gallup.  Hurricane Katrina pushed Michael Browne into the private sector as a private disaster consultant (some stuff you just can’t make up).  Some five hundred more Americans died in Iraq.  Scooter Libby got indicted.  John Murtha spoke out against the war.  There have been more explicit accusations of US use of torture, white phosphorous, and the president talking about blowing up Al Jazeera.  I’ve seen some of the right wing blogs try to claim that Cindy Sheehan is no longer news.  She’s no longer news for an interesting reason though: the rest of America is beginning to see it her way.

Last week, the president attended a Thuvan throat singing concert in Mongolia where he paid tribute to one of his historical role models, Genghis Khan.  It was, after all, the Mongols who sacked Baghdad in 1258 AD after they claimed that the enemy had weapons of Mesopotamian destruction or some similar reason for conquest.  Now that he’s back in the United States, where he’s much less likely to walk into locked doors while trying to escape the press as he did in China, I imagine he’s getting some well-deserved rest riding his mountain bike in his yellow jersey from the Tour de Crawford.  A few days earlier, Cindy Sheehan’s sister, Dede Miller, was arrested in Crawford for breaking the new roadside camping/parking ordinances near Crawford. In the meantime, there’s talk of another one of those pro-war protests in Crawford to let the president know that he shouldn’t feel obligated to meet with the mothers of just any dead soldiers or explain his war to them or anyone else.

The next couple days should be interesting.  Someone’s going to have to decide to arrest Cindy Sheehan again and someone’s going to have to explain why what was legal in August is no longer legal in November.  It should be mentioned that she was also recently convicted for protesting in front of the White House in DC a couple months ago.  Political speech in front of the White House apparently is a form of obstructing traffic.  I assume the President won’t be coming by to ask her if she wants some of the White House entourage’s leftover turkey.  Maybe they call it “Freedom Bird” in Crawford since Turkey refused to be a staging zone for the US invasion of Iraq three Thanksgivings ago.  Perhaps, the Bush daughters could come out and tell Cindy that they are almost exactly the same age as Casey was and how much they appreciate his family’s sacrifice.  Where have the twins been this last year?  

When Rosa Parks died last month, very few people seemed to notice that this heroine of the south died in Detroit.  After her heroic act, she left Montgomery because she couldn’t find work.  I don’t know what happens to Cindy Sheehan two days from now or forty years from now.  All I know is that she has a lot more guts than our president.  Am I the only one who sees what’s seriously wrong with that picture?