Old Cindy is back in the news again. Now she thinks she can run for public office, like anybody cares. This is a good sugue though for me to begin sharing my Toastmasters speaches with you guys again. My first of ten on the road to the Advanced Communicator Bronze designation is from the Speaking On Television manual.
The objective was to give a T.V. editorial. I taped it with my camcorder and everything. My question back on Tuesday, March 26, 2007 was, “What is the deal with Cindy Sheehan?”. Here are my thoughts. What do you think?
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Who is this lady getting all the undue media attention over something that doesn’t even concern her? You know, the one who has been camping out near the president’s ranch and pulling other publicity stunts because her son got killed in Iraq? She claims the president is responsible for her son’s death and she is mad at Bush. Of course the media is all over it and people are nodding their heads in agreement. Are you kidding me? Excuse me but don’t people get it, that she’s actually upset with her dead son and not the president? I don’t think she even realizes it.
Just stop and think about it. Sheehan is your typical peace at all costs pacifists. No war is a good war and World War II may be the only one in recent memory that had any merit. Sheehan’s problem isn’t with the president. Her real problem is that her son didn’t share her pacifist views. Instead he was a duty bound, nation loving young man who signed up to kill and die for his country, just like thousands of young men and women have done through out the history of the nation. He wasn’t drafted; no one put a gun to his head and made him sign up. He did so simply for love of country and he went the total self-sacrificing distance.
No, Cindy isn’t mad at George. Cindy is mad at her son Casey, a decorated war hero mind you, and she’s taking it out on George. Why? Because she knows people will follow any crazy old thing without thinking about it. And as much as I sympathize with her loss she isn’t using a lot of common sense herself.
Hey, instead of encouraging this woman to constantly make herself look ridiculous in public, why don’t the people closest to her help her to realize that her son was a grown man who made a grown man’s decision like responsible adults do every day. The fact that her son’s choice didn’t reflect her political views is her problem to deal with, not everybody else’s, least of all the President’s.
O.K. Look, I’d like to give her my own little history lesson to help her get over it. Cindy, listen to Martin. Nations are built on war, nations are preserved by war. It has never happened any other way and it never will happen any other way. Do not be naïve. Diplomacy is not always the answer to all the world’s ills. In fact history gives us many examples where too much talking and maneuvering has actually lead to the outbreak of war. Too much deliberation and too little action has often allowed the wrong side get the jump. Hello Pearl Harbor.
Through out history, from time to time, nations simply have to duke it out old fashioned style and the winner has their way. It’s not nice, it’s not neat but that is the way of the world. And like it or not your son has followed the heroic ideal to the end. He has done his part to ensure that we continue to live in the same free and sovereign republic that the founding fathers fought and died for to create in the first place. So stop embarrassing your son’s memory. Instead honor his duty and his service by getting on with your life and doing something more constructive with it.
