Cindy Sheehan’s Protests, Strikingly Reminiscent of John Kerry’s

Last year the Lonestar Iconoclast shocked tiny little Crawford, Texas and America by endorsing John Kerry. The Iconclast drew the rath of local residents, but that has not stopped them from continuing to speak out against Crawford resident, George W. Bush.

In their latest OP/ED, Battleground Iraq: George Bush vs. Cindy Sheehan And The Rest Of The World, freelance writer Kapil Komireddi, points out that Cindy Sheehan’s protests in Crawford last month, are strikingly reminiscent of John Kerry’s protests of the Vietnam War.

Ms. Sheehan’s protests, in substance, are strikingly reminiscent of John Kerry’s. Disillusioned by the war in Vietnam, especially by the suffering of the Vietnamese people, Kerry set up a bivouac outside the Nixon White House. When Nixon tried to use the law to get Kerry out of his sight, the young protester hit back: “This is a government that cares more about the legality of where men sleep than the legality of where we drop bombs and why men die!” Although much denied in conservative circles, it was Kerry who, knowingly or unknowingly, initiated the political death of Richard Nixon. The moment Kerry stepped in Washington, Nixon’s days were numbered. It remains to be seen if nature will let Ms. Sheehan re-enact that aspect of Kerry’s antiwar campaign.

Kapil Komireddi also suggests that the solution to the Iraq war lies not with withdrawl, but "a multilateral force, under the watchful eye of the U.N." While he applauds the anti-war movement, he expresses his concerns for the complexities of the situation in Iraq and the difficulties in getting that multilateral force together under the Bush administration.

The antiwar movement is right because it is against the war. But the solution doesn’t, as they suggest, lie in withdrawal. The only solution for America — not Iraq, for its problems will go on long after Americans have left — is a multilateral force, under the watchful eye of the U.N. This will reduce the burden on American lives and treasure, while maintaining reasonable stability in Iraq. A reduction in American numbers may help weaken the appeal of the insurgency, which is based on anti-American sentiment. All this is not without constraints. For starters, why would any nation want to clear up, at its own peril, the mess created by America, now that Americans feel like going home? Forget that constraint for a moment. Why should the U.N. take responsibility for running a war it opposed from the beginning and even condemned as “illegal”? Why should nations which voiced their opposition to the war and emphasised its illegality heed the UN’s request to partake in it? Why would anyone wish to support a nation whose envoy to the U.N., John Bolton, openly bullies its members and makes at least 750 amendments to its global strategy in just three weeks of assuming office, without caring how they might affect other members? America desperately needs the support of other U.N. members, and the way Mr. Bush tries to secure it is by sending a self-proclaimed hater of the U.N. as his country’s ambassador to it. If this isn’t imprudent, I fail to understand what is.

Read the entire OP/ED here.

Kapil Komireddi is a freelance writer who has contributed to various publications; he is presently working on a compendious biography of Sen. John Kerry, to be published in 2007.