The Cindy Sheehan's of the World

Tonight on the Mansel Report let’s all take a moment and send the best of wishes to Cindy Sheehan. Her son that died was 24 yrs old. I read somewhere recently that the average age of the troops that are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan are 19 yrs old. Cindy Sheehan is doing what very few people could do, she is standing up for her son who is dead now, she is standing up to the ridicule of the media, to the changing law, the daily changing laws in Crawford, Texas and she is being made a pawn by both right and left wing causes when all she wants is answers.
I was born in 1968, the year this country erupted in assassination and the year also that the war in Vietnam escalated. There were demonstrations on college campuses, in the streets, there were racial injustices all of this while I was living my first year of life. I look at where my life is now and I truly don’t see that there is that much of a difference.
In 1968 there were thousands dying, yet in 2005 there are millions. From war to poverty, to starvation to the AIDS epidemic millions are dying. There are protests but they are more subdued now because of the ferocity of the governments arm and its reach that extends beyond illegal search and seizure. A few men took the right to privacy away from a country upon which we depend. A country we will not investigate. A country we know is implicit and a country that is considered family to a president who will not be dissuaded from his mission of perfectly orchestrated and premeditated anarchy.
The Cindy Sheehan’s of the world are the ones next to the tyrants who are remembered in history. The young man who stood in front of the tank in China, no one knows his name but we remember the image. We remember Gandhi but do we know the face or name of the thousands that he inspired? So now millions are dying and one woman would like to ask a few questions about the death of her son, what is the harm? What the harm may be is that the president just doesn’t care.


- Chris Mansel