Demagogue

When Cindy Sheehan first arrived on the scene, I welcomed her efforts to draw greater attention to the debacle in Iraq -- a war we didn't need to start and a war whose major enduring consequence could be to give Iran a Shiite fundamentalist ally right next door.

Like most people, I felt for Sheehan, and I was sad to know that she'd lost a son over there. But, as far as this blogger's concerned, she is acting more and more strangely every day. Recently, Sheehan traveled to Louisiana to observe Katrina damage. Yet even on this issue (where the administration is quite vulnerable), Sheehan manages to look almost as silly and uninformed as the president she's lambasting.

In this post Friday on Arianna Huffington's blog, Sheehan writes:

... I guess one can never really fully prepare for such devastation and tragedy. After living in a country your entire life it is so difficult to see such callous indifference on an immense scale.

... I wonder why the government made [Louisianans] leave at great expense and uproot families who have been living in their communities for generations.

Yes, there was a mandatory evacuation order issued, but this was issued long after most families voluntarily evacuated New Orleans and the adjoining parishes.

Another sign of Sheehan's "speak first, think later" approach:

One thing that truly troubled me about my visit to Louisiana was the level of the military presence there .... what I saw was a city that is occupied. I saw soldiers walking around in patrols of 7 with their weapons slung on their backs. I wanted to ask one of them what it would take for one of them to shoot me.

... George Bush needs to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq, and excuse his [sic] self from power.

These troops are assigned the tough task of maintaining order, and here's Sheehan just aching to toy with them, treating their assignment with condescension.

The mayor of New Orleans welcomed the presence of troops. Other than the Michigan Militia, Sheehan is just about the only one who could find fault with temporary troop deployments in New Orleans and other hurricane-ravaged areas.

Cindy Sheehan is not a effective anti-Bush spokesperson, and, when it comes to offering her observations of post-Katrina relief efforts, she has no more credibility than Michael Brown does. She needs to go get a life.