Godless: The Church of Liberalism

by Ann Coulter

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  ABOUT the time Wilson was becoming an embarrassment even by the standards of the Democrats—which is a high bar—the Democratic Party’s new spokesman became Cindy Sheehan, loon. To expiate the pain of losing her firstborn son, who died bravely fighting in Iraq, Sheehan decided to cheer herself up by engaging in Stalinist agitprop outside President Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch. It’s the strangest method of grieving I’ve seen outside of Paul Wellstone’s memorial. Someone needs to teach these liberals how to mourn. It must be very difficult for people to comprehend the death of a loved one based on abstract ideas like “Islamic fanaticism,” “retaliation,” and “freedom.” Because liberalism is a primitive religion, it tells people like Cindy Sheehan that her loss was the result of some intentionally evil force, like witches, evil spirits, or George W. Bush.

  Call me old-fashioned, but a grief-stricken war mother shouldn’t have her own full-time PR flack. After your third profile on Entertainment Tonight, you’re no longer a grieving mom; you’re a C-list celebrity trolling for a book deal or a reality show. At that point you’re no longer mourning, you’re “branding.”

  Sheehan was joined in her cause by Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. Edwards sent out a public letter asking people to “Support Cindy Sheehan’s Right to Be Heard,” which the media almost missed because they were all in Crawford interviewing Cindy Sheehan. Joining the school of thought that says “having a loved one killed violently makes you an expert advocate for liberal policies,” Mrs. Edwards noted that she, too, had a son who died. What is this, some kind of weird club or something?

  We’re sorry about Ms. Sheehan’s son, but the entire nation was attacked on 9/11. This isn’t a “teachable moment,” it’s a war. The Left’s campaign to turn war into a matter of individuals’ personal grief cheapens what we’re fighting against. America has been under relentless attack from Islamic terrorists for twenty years, culminating in a devastating attack on U.S. soil on 9/11. It’s not going to stop unless we fight back, annihilate Muslim fanatics, destroy their bases, eliminate their sponsors, and end all their hope. A lot more American mothers will be grieving if our military policy is: No one gets hurt!

  By the time Sheehan joined the “Surrender Now, Great Satan” bandwagon, there had already been two free elections in Iraq. The Iraqis were busily at work on a constitution. Iraqi women were freely protesting on the street against Sharia law, and crafty Iraqi politicians were preparing to woo the “Burka Mom vote.”

  Fortunately, the Constitution vests authority to make foreign policy with the president of the United States, not with this week’s special guest on the Oxygen television network. But liberals think that as long as they can produce a grieving mother, the commander in chief should step aside and let Cindy Sheehan dictate the nation’s foreign policy. As New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said, it’s “inhumane” for Bush not “to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.”

  I’m not sure what “moral authority” is supposed to mean in that sentence, but if it has anything to do with Cindy Sheehan dictating America’s foreign policy, then no, it is not “absolute.” It’s not even conditional, provisional, fleeting, theoretical, or ephemeral. The only sort of authority Cindy Sheehan has is the uncanny ability to demonstrate, by example, what body types should avoid wearing shorts in public. Dowd’s “absolute” moral authority column demonstrates, once again, what can happen when liberals start tossing around terms they don’t understand, like absolute and moral. As someone once said of Norman Mailer, I do not know for a fact that Maureen Dowd was drunk when she wrote that, but for her sake I certainly hope she was. The logical shortcomings of such a statement are staggering. What if the person arguing with you is a mother who also lost a son in Iraq and she’s pro-war? Do we decide the winner with a coin toss? Or do we look for a woman out there who lost two children in Iraq and see what she thinks about the war? Ladies, I know logic isn’t your strong suit, but come on!

  Liberals demanded that we listen to Sheehan with rapt attention—and silence—but she had nothing new to say about the war. At least nothing we hadn’t heard from Michael Moore since approximately 11 A.M., September 11, 2001. It’s a neocon war; we’re fighting for Israel; it’s a war for oil; Bush lied, kids died; there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Turn on MSNBC’s Hardball and you can hear it right now. Cindy Sheehan was like a touring company of Air America Radio: same old script and it’s not even the original cast. The only thing Cindy added was frequent references to her son, Casey. As she wrote in an August 31, 2005, column on her Truthout.org webpage, “So it is official, Casey had his blood shed in Iraq for OIL. He died so we could pay over 3.00/gallon for gas.” It’s hard to construct an argument that the war was about stealing the Iraqis’ oil when gas was at $3 a gallon. I guess Bush is both evil and yet too inept to steal their oil. It’s a very subtle plan for the long horizon.

  In any event, back in October 2002, these same anti-war arguments didn’t persuade Hillary Clinton or John Edwards to vote against the war. In fact, they didn’t persuade any of the liberal senators who want to be president to vote against the war. Democrats in Congress kept voting to give President Bush carte blanche, but then would turn around and deliver angry indignant speeches opposing the war whenever there was no congressional stenographer around to memorialize their positions.

  The liberal shock troops didn’t even persuade Democratic primary voters, who unceremoniously dumped anti-war candidate (and one-man RNC fundraising machine) Howard Dean in favor of John Kerry, who voted for the war before he voted against it. They certainly didn’t persuade a majority of American voters, who re-upped George Bush’s tenure as the nation’s commander in chief.

  But liberals demanded that we listen to the same old arguments all over again, not because Sheehan had any new insights but because she had the ability to repel dissent by citing her grief. She was the angry Left’s human shield.

  On the bright side, Sheehan shows us what Democrats would say if they were immunized from counterarguments. Sheehan has called President Bush “that filth-spewer and warmonger.” She says Bush is “the biggest terrorist in the world”—and that was just on her Christmas card to the Bush family. She says, “America has been killing people on this continent since it was started” and “the killing has gone on unabated for over 200 years.” (Is it my imagination, or is somebody angling for Ward Churchill’s soon-to-be-available job at the University of Colorado?) She calls the U.S. government a “morally repugnant system” and says “this country is not worth dying for.”

  Evidently, however, there are some things worth killing for. Speaking at an anti-war rally held by Veterans for Peace, Sheehan said, “So anyway that filth-spewer and warmonger, George Bush, was speaking after the tragedy of the marines in Ohio, he said a couple things that outraged me…. And I know I don’t look like I’m outraged, I’m always so calm and everything. That’s because if I started hitting something, I wouldn’t stop till it was dead. So I can’t even start, ‘cause I know how dangerous that would be, but George Bush was talking …” It’s a wonder Bush wouldn’t meet with her.

  We must listen to Sheehan, but we may not respond to her. As Joe Trippi said to Bill O’Reilly on Fox News, she’s “had a loss, a painful loss”—so no one is allowed to criticize her. (And believe me, if any-one knows about painful losses, it’s Howard Dean’s former campaign manager.) He said Sheehan is “willing to stand up to the most powerful man in the world”—at least as long as no one is allowed to respond.

  O’Reilly pointed out that, contrary to Sheehan’s claim that Bush was flippant and rude to her during their meeting in June 2004, immediately after that meeting, she said, “I now know President Bush is sincere about wanting to help the Iraqis. I know he’s sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he’s a man of faith.” Finally, someone with the moral authority to contradict Cindy Sheehan
: Cindy Sheehan!

  Trippi ruled this observation out of order, informing O’Reilly that Sheehan was the “first citizen in the country ever to be charged with flip-flopping.” (She had had a “painful loss.”) As the Left’s Nazi block watcher that week, Trippi informed O’Reilly that only politicians can be charged with flip-flopping. “We as citizens,” he decreed, “are allowed to flip-flop any day we want.”

  When O’Reilly again raised the subject of Sheehan’s about-face on her meeting with Bush, saying, “she either lied then or she’s lying now,” Trippi said it was talk like that that led to the “hate that’s spewing around the Net.” So that’s the way it is with liberals.

  They can call Bush a “lying bastard,” a “filth-spewer and warmonger,” but if anyone points out that the bastard used to be “sincere,” and a “man of faith,” it’s “hate.”

  The story that was lost in the media lovefest over Cindy Sheehan was that her son was a great American. After serving one tour in Iraq, Casey Sheehan reenlisted. He was not an infantryman and consequently was not required to go into combat, but when members of his unit came under attack by Islamic savages in Sadr City, Casey insisted on joining the battle to rescue his comrades. It was during that rescue mission that Casey was killed. Despite having a screwball for a mother, Casey Sheehan was a great American who fought and died nobly for his friends and for his country.

  It is supremely ironic that the brave men who died for their country would almost certainly be appalled at the reaction of Moms Against Anyone Dying. Perhaps this note I received by e-mail should be clipped and posted by all brave Americans in Iraq:

  Know this. If I am taken captive or killed by these Arab savages, I shall never disgrace myself or my nation by groveling in the fashion of many hostages and their families. There shall be no special entreaties on my behalf. I shall condone no disgusting and disloyal attempt by weepy relatives to “distinguish” me from my nation or its brave president, as in “Actually, our whole family opposed the war.” If I am taken, and the animales will not let me talk on camera, tell the world I renounced any disloyal relatives and that my last words were: “God Bless America, God Bless President Bush.”

  We’re winning this war and we are winning it because of brave men like Casey Sheehan who do not decide to throw in the towel every time an American dies. More than a hundred Americans died at Lexington Green and Concord. Should we have quit then? The Civil War dragged on for three long years before the Union started making serious inroads against the Confederacy. You want a quagmire? That was a quagmire.

  In the Battle of Tarawa, one of the first major engagements of World War II, we lost more than 1,000 men in three days. On this small island, far away from home, our Marines faced savagery of epic proportions and took quite a licking. Iwo Jima was yet to happen (7,000 Americans killed). Okinawa was yet to happen (18,000 Americans killed). FDR hadn’t “planned” properly and the Marines were required to hastily improvise mine sweeping. Should we have walked away from that war, too? Liberals keep talking up World War II, why not this war?

  Liberals simultaneously demean our current war heroes and beatify (Democratic) war veterans from wars past. While turning D-Day into a religion, similar sacrifice and bravery in the War on Terrorism appalls them. They disparage real religion as pagan worship of ancestral power, but they have turned military service (by Democrats) into a secular religion, mostly honored in the breach. At the mere mention of one of the seven or eight veterans in the entire liberal community, we are required to fall on our knees, mouths agape. Any other reaction is deemed an attack on their patriotism.

  It was cruel and unfair to respond to Democratic senator Max Cleland of Georgia about anything he ever said or any votes he ever cast—because he dropped a grenade on himself in Vietnam. Cleland took full advantage of his status as another Democrat Unanswerable by viciously attacking Republicans who criticized Democrats for their repeated proposals that we surrender in the War on Terrorism.

  From a stage on which another Democratic senator, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, called Bush and Cheney “chicken hawks,” Cleland said, “Dick Cheney got five [draft] deferments. John Kerry volunteered for Vietnam, as did I. President Bush spent that time guarding the shores of Texas and didn’t even show up for his final physical in the Guard and got out eight months early.”

  After Tom DeLay joked to a Republican audience, “I certainly don’t want to see Teddy Kennedy in a Navy flight suit,” Cleland fired off a nasty letter—a letter, no less!—to DeLay saying, “This country deserves more patriots like Senator Kennedy, not more chicken hawks like you who never served.”

  Most Democrats shy away from citing Kennedy’s “military service” with such bravado. The “military service” at issue consisted of Kennedy’s spending two years in NATO’s Paris office after he was expelled from Harvard for paying another student to take his Spanish exam. This was during the Korean War. While Kennedy faced down nasty paper cuts in Paris, other American boys his age were freezing and being shot at by the Chicoms at the Yalu River.

  Accusing anyone he disagreed with of being a “chicken hawk” be-came so natural for Cleland that he even said it about military heroes and former POWs. After six Republicans called on John Kerry to apologize for what he said about American troops in Vietnam on the thirty-third anniversary of Kerry’s Senate testimony, Cleland called the Republicans “a bunch of chicken hawks who never went to war, never felt a wound, but are so quick to criticize a man who went to war and got wounded doing it.”

  The Republicans’ military service may not have been as awe-inspiring as a desk job in Paris after being thrown out of Harvard for cheating, but it was still pretty impressive. Five of the six Republicans Cleland attacked were combat veterans, and the one who was not had spent thirty years in the Army Reserves. Among the five was Representative Sam Johnson (R-TX), who flew sixty-two combat missions in Korea and twenty-five over North Vietnam, was shot down in combat over North Vietnam, and was tortured as a POW for six and a half years. Another was Representative Randy Cunningham (R-CA), one of only two American Navy aces that the Vietnam War produced. But apparently none of these men had the dauntless courage to drop a grenade on his own foot.

  In November 2005, Democratic representative John Murtha called for—as the New York Times put it—the “immediate withdrawal of American troops” in the middle of the war. At that point in the war, the U.S. military had deposed a dictator who had already used weapons of mass destruction and would have used them again. We had found evidence proving that Saddam Hussein was working with al Qaeda and was trying to acquire long-range missiles from North Korea and enriched uranium from Niger. Saddam was on trial and his psychopath sons were dead. The American military had captured or killed scores of foreign terrorists in Baghdad. The Iraqi people had voted in two free democratic elections already and were one month away from a third vote for a National Assembly. The long-suffering Kurds were free and no longer required 24/7 protection by U.S. fighter jets. Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi had voluntarily dismantled his weapons of mass destruction, and Syria had withdrawn from Lebanon. Last but certainly not least, the Marsh Arabs’ wetlands ecosystem in central Iraq that Saddam drained was being restored, so even the Democrats’ war goals in Iraq were being met.

  The American military had done all this with just over 2,000 deaths. These deaths are especially painful because they fall on our greatest Americans. Still, we were a lot farther along in the Iraq War than we were after the first 2,000 deaths in any other war. There were about 600,000 deaths in the Civil War, 400,000 deaths in World War II, and 60,000 deaths in Vietnam—before Walter Cronkite finally threw in the towel and declared victory for North Vietnam. No one wants to think about the deaths of Americans in any war, but that’s the operative word: war. We’re in a war.

  John Murtha, or what is known as a “hawk” in today’s Democratic Party, looked at what our military had accomplished and said, “Many say that the Army is broken.” He complained, “This war
is not going as advertised; this is a flawed policy wrapped in an illusion.” While our allegedly “broken” military was in harm’s way, Murtha then demanded that we withdraw our troops, claiming Americans had turned against the war: “The American public is way ahead of us.”

  Fed up with being endlessly told “the American people” had turned against the war in Iraq, Republicans asked the Democrats to show what they had in their hand. Republicans introduced a resolution that would do exactly what the Democrats claimed the “American people” were clamoring for: withdraw the troops. By a vote of 403–3, the House of Representatives wasn’t willing to bet that “the American people” wanted to pull out of Iraq. (This vote also marked the first time in recent history that the Democrats did not respond to getting their butts kicked by demanding a recount.) The vote was all the more shocking because of what it said about the Democrats’ motives in attacking the war—as well as alerting us to three members of Congress we really need to keep an eye on: Cynthia A. McKinney (D-GA), Robert Wexler (D-FL), and Jose E. Serrano (D-NY). All Democrats—go figure.

  It is simply a fact that Democrats like Murtha were encouraging the Iraqi insurgents when they said the war was going badly and it was time to bring the troops home. Whether or not there was any merit to the idea, calling for a troop withdrawal—or “redeployment,” as liberals pointlessly distinguished—would delay our victory and cost more American lives.

  Democrats fondly remember the Vietnam War because their anti-war hysteria at home helped lose that war for us. Anti-war protests in America were a major source of moral support to the enemy. We know that not only from plain common sense but also from the statements of former North Vietnamese military leaders who evidently didn’t get the memo telling them to lie. In an August 3, 1995, interview in the Wall Street Journal, Bui Tin, a former colonel in the North Vietnamese army, called the American peace movement “essential” to the North Vietnamese victory.