Ms. Sheehan:
By your actions, it is clear that you missed an important aspect of Civics 101: With rights come responsibilities. You certainly have the right to voice your opinion against the war in Iraq and the President�s policies.
You even have the right to camp outside the President�s home in Crawford and demand he meet with you. Your status as a mother who has lost a child in the war also gives your words and actions credibility, and a larger audience than otherwise would be the case.
Now that your supporters have given you a broad forum from which to be heard, making you a national figure, it�s time you considered your responsibilities to all of us. I have a daughter deployed to Fallujah and I have a serious concern with how your irresponsible and short sighted actions might impact on her. She is, after all, a volunteer, like your son, and she is going in harm�s way because she believes it is her responsibility to protect your rights and freedoms.
Well-meaning people like you always seem to forget the law of unintended consequences and in your vanity and arrogant self-righteousness, you never bother to think through what it is you are trying to do versus what you may actually accomplish. I am here to inform you, Ma�am, that you will not change the policy of our government by sitting outside Crawford and making a spectacle of yourself in the name of your rights to free speech. What you will do is provide more propaganda for our enemies and cost the lives of even more brave and selfless American warriors. How long do you think it will be before you become a star on Al Jazeera?
For all I know, it may have already happened. One thing is certain, though, and that is that your actions and words will further embolden a ruthless and evil enemy and more American blood will be shed and some of it will be on your hands. I pray that my daughter will not be one of them. If she is, then I will hold you and those like you partly responsible.
Yes, my daughter�s fate will depend mostly on her own courageous decision to serve, but only the most naive among us can deny the impact our own words and actions here in America have in a world grown smaller by the revolution in communications technology.
I am sure you believe that you are serving some great cause by putting our servicemen and women in more danger and that you can, by your irresponsible exercise of free speech, help end a policy you disagree with. Your emotion may be compelling, but the reality is that you will not set in motion any process that will change or undo what has been done. The war will go on because to end it now would dishonor the sacrifice of all of our fellow countrymen who have died in the cause of fighting terrorism. Rational Americans will not allow that. Too much is at stake.
Unfortunately, shallow and irrational ones, such as yourself, will continue to put the lives of our sons and daughters in danger by aiding and abetting an enemy who sees propagandizing in the mass media as its main weapon in a war it could otherwise not win standing on its own wretched and evil justification of radical Islam, or by force of arms.
You, Ma�am, have joined forces with an evil you neither understand nor apparently have tried to comprehend. You direct your anger toward our country while the enemy plots to kill and maim the innocent. You make a mockery of responsible free speech while thousands of young men and women fight desperately to preserve your safety.
Instead of honoring your son�s sacrifice, you are inspired to comfort an evil enemy.
You clearly do not understand the challenge we face as a nation and have not tried to put it in historical perspective. It is a sad fact, that it is those of your thinking that have led us to where we are today. Decades of appeasement to these haters of everything we hold dear has cost thousands of American lives from Beirut to New York and in dozens of other forgotten places. Remember Lockerbie? The Achille Lauro? The USS Cole?
We as a people were dragged into this war, much like Dec. 7, 1941, and we must fight and win wherever the enemy hides and against whomever would support him. Make no mistake about Iraq. It is both a legitimate and crucial campaign in this much larger, global war of radical Islam�s making. These people hate us for who we are, not what we have done. We did not bring this on ourselves, as many would have us believe, by our policies and actions abroad. We brought this on ourselves in 1775 when the Founding Fathers embarked on a course of freedom, tolerance, and liberal democratic and social ideals.
These haters of all we hold dear strive to destroy forever a government �of the people, by the people, and for the people� that Abraham Lincoln hoped would never �perish from the earth.� They would replace it with an oppressive world theocracy unlike anything modern history has ever seen for its ruthless disregard for personal freedom and liberty. If more appeasement is your answer for an alternative policy, spare us. We have suffered enough from cowardice and inaction.
A historical analogy screams to be let out here. It is one of two men, both named Chamberlain. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a school teacher turned soldier in the American Civil War, found himself in the crosshairs of history on a warm July day in 1863 on a small hill in Pennsylvania. Commanding the 20th Maine Regiment on the extreme Union left at Gettysburg, he was in a most perilous position. Should he fail to hold against a strong Confederate attack, the Union could be lost. You see, he was serving in an increasingly unpopular war at home against a resurgent enemy, and for a President fighting for his political life. Colonel Chamberlain, stoic but determined, refused to yield. His small regiment held against an onslaught of Confederate attacks, an action many historians believe turned the tide of the war. He was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
The other half of this analogy focuses on Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain in the years preceding World War II. His story is widely known. Through his policy of appeasement and a lack of moral courage, he handed Adolf Hitler much of Europe.
Which side of history have you chosen, Ma�am?
Your son died in the service of freedom and my daughter will go in harm�s way to protect and preserve it. Honor their sacrifice, Ma�am, by exercising your freedom responsibly.
I will pray with you and I will grieve with you, but I will not stand by silently while you needlessly and arrogantly endanger the life of my daughter and her comrades in arms. Please bless us with your silence and go home.
BRANTLEY SMITH
Tullahoma, Tenn.
1 comment:
An open letter to Brantley Smith
7 September 2005
Mr. Smith:
I have read what you posted in a format similar to this one as a letter to Cindy Sheehan. Your open letter reveals that you desperately need schooling in what it means to be an American. Allow me.
With respect to my bona fides, my father retired from the Regular Army, I served 8 years of active duty in the US Air Force, and both my son and his wife served four year tours in the US Marine Corps. My son would still be in, but the Marine Corps chose to discharge him due to an injury (not combat related) he incurred while performing his duties.
To start, I'll point out the fallacy of assuming that because one has an audience, one has a cultural or political responsibility to them. Quite the contrary; this is America, where the 'audience' of Americans is expected (dare I say required?) to evaluate other's opinions for themselves, judging the impact those opinions will have. Of course, we also have a responsibility to our minor children, and often a *desire* to make these evaluations for them when they are no longer minors.
Like your daughter, Ms. Sheehan's son, and my own children, I enlisted in the US Armed Forces for many reasons, not the least of which is a belief in my responsibility to protect my rights and freedoms, and by extension those of all Americans.
Despite the depth and breadth of your self-righteous arrogance, I am here to inform you, Mr. Smith, that while there are no guarantees, Ms. Sheehan may very well change the policy of our government. This may happen as a direct result of Mr. Bush considering what she has to say, but you and I clearly agree that such is not likely. It may result from the attention garnered through the media, focused on the problem from the perspective of a parent of a soldier. It may very well not happen at all, of course, but it is surely possible.
What clearly will *not* happen is anything remotely related to what you seem to fear. You imply that these twisted, mind-numbed fools feel some need to hew to the truth - that without Ms. Sheehan's opinions, they would have one less weapon. In fact, if Ms. Sheehan says something which they can twist and use, they will do so. If not, they will make it up. Conversely, allowing the heartfelt grief and righteous anger she feels to be denigrated and marginalized is one step toward exactly what these people want for all of us: less freedom. You obviously have no inkling of what motivates the people we face. I suggest to you that if you have actual civic concern, you take the time to do some pertinent research. Briefly, you will find that when there is any actual information available to the average fundamentalist fanatic, it is twisted; that what the educated leaders among these people resent is the freedom possessed by every American to make life choices, and the personal and national prosperity that is a direct result of those freedoms. Unless and until those freedoms are destroyed, they will not be satisfied.
There are few things I have seen or read lately as laughable as the notion that anything Cindy Sheehan can say on behalf of her dead son could 'embolden' these pathetic, ignorant savages beyond the lies and deceptions that are already heaped upon them. Your self-serving notions are simplistic at best, and potentially dangerous at worst. Not everyone will be able to see through your ignorance and discern your failure to understand our culture or to analyze the situation; some decent and honest citizens may find themselves deceived by your misrepresentations. I hope to help others avoid that. You have the freedom to disseminate your views, and wrong as they are, I would not see that freedom abrogated.
It would behoove you, and the rest of us, sir, if you took the time to attempt to understand what is happening on the world stage - and why. Your example of the Civil War is instructive.
I for one am glad that the United States has remained a single country; I believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Nonetheless, what Abraham Lincoln and the Union forces did was not just illegal; it was wrong. There is simply no reason extant which can ever justify using force to keep those states which wished to be out of the Union, in. Likewise, I am glad Saddam Hussein is out of power; he was clearly a despot, and potentially dangerous. Again similarly, the government of the United States had no justification for removing him.
You need merely place yourself in either of the two positions to see the problem; for example, thinking as an American, how could you possibly believe that your nation could or should be forced to remain in the United Nations organization? Note that I am not asking whether our nation should remain in the United Nations organization - but whether the rest of the members would be justified in using force to keep us there if we chose to withdraw.
Likewise, how can any American who understands the freedoms we have and the responsibilities that go with them seriously believe that *any* nation can be justified in replacing the government of another nation because we don't like them, or because they *may* do us harm? Unlike the invasion of Afghanistan, this is beyond foolishness. In America, we learn that if we are justified in doing it to them - absent aggression like the invasion of Kuwait or the invasion of Poland - then they are justified in doing it to us. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others."
Yet another similarity between the two conflicts is my support for those American troops who fought, or fight, for what they believe is right. In the case of the Civil War, the American boys who fought for the Confederacy truly believed that what they were doing was the right thing, from Robert E. Lee down. Likewise the American boys who fought for the Union. I cannot say what I would have done in that time; breaking the union would have been a terrific mistake, yet I believe that the citizens of the Confederacy had the right, as Americans, to make that mistake.
Likewise, I believe the people of Iraq have the right to determine their form of government, and what we have done there is wrong; nonetheless I support the members of our Armed Forces in their endeavors. The place to redress this mistake is not in Iraq; it is in America.
As Cindy Sheehan is trying to do.
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