Reply #241: This is like Hoover and the Bonus Expeditionary Force all over again

[despairing optimist]

Hoover's approach: call in the cavalry to fire on WWI vets down on their luck who wanted only to collect the war bonus promised them. A young officer named Patton had the dubious honor of executing that order. I'm not sure how many of the BEF vets were killed or injured, but Hoover's popularity, already weakened by his hands-off approach to the ravages of the Great Depression, really plummeted after that, and FDR won the next presidential election by the biggest landslide in history.

The BEF marched on Washington a second time after FDR was sworn in, and on that occasion Eleanor Roosevelt greeted the vets: with flowers. They got the war bonus they had to fight and die for--twice.

Cindy Sheehan is the right person at the right time. She is in the vanguard of a new movement seeking justice and re-empowerment of the people just as the BEF vets did before her. As such she is in the great tradition of Americans who stood up to their government and its leaders when they were wrong and fought for change. She is a true leader and a patriot, so it is no wonder that our sorry excuse for a president cannot summon the courage to engage her. What she has inside her, he never had inside him, and so he cowers behind his sycophants and thugs like the pathetic tyrant that he is. If Cindy is arrested and martyred for the cause of truth and peace, George W. Bush will be known for all time as the embodiment of the corruption, deceit, shame, and disgrace that he not only allowed but encouraged during his time as president.

This week in Crawford may be more important than next month's demo in DC because it paints Bush the man and his administration in all the lurid colors they deserve, and keeps on painting him right into a corner. I would say that it's a pleasure to donate money to someone who isn't a politician and whose agenda is out there for all to see, but it isn't a game when the country's soul and future are at stake. I will say, though, that it's a pleasure to help someone who makes me proud to be an American--without any party affiliation, label, or other qualification attached to it.