"The daily image of a grieving mother protesting the death of her soldier son by standing in the withering sun outside President Bush's Texas ranch is a poignant symbol. Bush would do well to pay attention to the image and the woman behind it.
Cindy Sheehan is not a foreign-policy expert. She does not hold the key to an Iraq war exit strategy. Sheehan is a mother driven to act by the death last year of her son, Casey, who was stationed in Iraq. What Sheehan has done is use her grief to fuel a passionate, visible anti-war movement.
Until this one mother's protest, the public lobby against the war was displayed largely through yard signs and bumper stickers. People dared not outwardly disdain the war for fear of being accused of not supporting the troops.
But Sheehan has served as a catalyst for various groups with their disparate views of the war and of the military. At least for now, these groups are largely under one umbrella. Wednesday night, thousands across the country and abroad held candlelight vigils — including 3,000 people in the Puget Sound region — to support Sheehan.
Presumably, those Americans had many choices for activities as the sun set on Wednesday. But they chose to go outside and light candles to bolster Sheehan's two-week-old Texas vigil.
Advisers and supporters of the president have tried to ignore Sheehan or downplay her protest as a mother's unseemly grief. This is both wrong and a mistake."-from the editorial in Friday's Seattle Times.
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