Now That's One Angry Texan

Our blogfriend Amanda Marcotte, because she is both liberal and Texan, is often angry, but over the weekend she got really angry:

"Casey Sheehan died because he's not a fortunate son. And Bush and his apologists are irritated that Cindy is refusing to simply understand that ordinary people are nothing but profit-generators for the rich. Out of all the pathetic attempts to discredit Cindy Sheehan, my absolute favorite is the people who whine that Bush met her once before, on the famous occasion where he didn't know her name or the name of her son and acted put out about having to pretend to care about the people he gets killed with his overseas adventuring. After all, if you believe that the not-fortunate exist for the disposal of the fortunate, then the not-fortunate asking for answers and respect makes as much sense as my trash can holding a strike to demand answers for why I toss used coffee grounds in it. This of course is known as "supporting the troops"."

This is some righteous vitriol. It's amazing how the simple fact of a mother's grief puts the lie to excuses for war. It's amazing how obvious the truth is: there would be no wars if rich men were the first to die in them.

The point of all this is not that the President should send his daughters off to die. How horrible would that be? How sad would we be if it happened? They seem to be generally nice, regular girls. We know about them, sort of, from having seen them on TV and if they were killed in war, it would be a tragedy, like when any famous person's kid dies.

The point of all this is that no one's sons or daughters should be sent off to die. That's what we're all talking about when we say, Mr. President, why aren't your daughters in the army? We're trying to make him imagine that grief, and realize that nothing is worth its cost.

He doesn't see it and he won't. He's heard all the arguments, and believes it is worth the cost. We know that.

The point is, having made the decision to go to war, he'll never again have to question whether it was worth the cost, because it costs him nothing now. No one he knows is likely to die over there; no one he cares about is going to die over there. He'll never have to think about the cost.

That's the point.