Cindy Sheehan Strays into the Politics of Hatred

"By sitting on our duffs and allowing the torturing to continue: we are the torturers. We are the subhuman beings who put the black masks on our victims, water board them, or do other inhumane and despicable acts on fellow human beings."

This blog entry by Cindy Sheehan is disappointing and frustrating, because it reveals the mire of hatred that undermines her attempts to organize the U.S. population to end the war.

Subhuman beings? Ms. Sheehan, did you really just say that anyone who wasn't in your camp in the effort to end the use of aggressive war is one of the Untermenschen? Shame on you.

This isn't a contest, and I don't feel the need to recite my pedigree of opposition to this war, but I have been against it since the U.S. Congress abdicated its Constitutional duty in August 2002 and illegally gave the Executive Branch warmaking powers. Ground zero was barely cold, and I saw that the terrorists were winning. By inducing us to divorce ourselves from the principles of natural law that make our civilization great, they have fooled us.

My motivation was a conscious refusal to willingly abandon the principles of natural law of which I was just beginning to become aware. Natural law, in which aggressive warfare is unequivocally wrong. Natural law, in which centralization of power leads to societal disintegration and social collapse. Natural law, where every life adds perspective and depth to the tapestry of human difference, thereby inspiring creative and rational mental action and growth toward the realization of each individual human's potential. Natural law, in which every life taken contributes to a spiral of societal collapse. Natural, not human law. Perfectly just, written by the author of perfect justice. Perfectly rational, written by the author of perfect reason. Perfectly loving, written by the author of perfect love. And everlasting, written by the author of being.

Sheehan's motivations, by contrast, prominently feature remorse, rage, shame, and hatred. Hatred is not a value around which a movement toward peace can be built. Right Action cannot be driven by shame, by fear, by sadness, or by outrage. This is unacceptable, and Sheehan isn't worthy of the "leader" sobriquet the media has conferred on her. The same media that whipped this nation into a fear-induced war frenzy in 2002 and 2003 is now trying to whip it into an anger-induced anti-war frenzy.

Kennedy said we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Perhaps "we've nothing to fear but fear and its fruit" would have been a more fitting statement. We also have nothing to hate but hate and its fruit, and nothing to love but love and its fruit.

Subhuman, Ms. Sheehan? Uncharitable perhaps. Aneleutheric certainly. Unloving, selfish, unworthy of the infinite potential I see in my country. Inhumane, but all too human.

It is a tragic irony that Martin Luther King fought so long and hard to remind people of the innate dignity of every human being, of the unblemished potential of every's person's nature, of the grace and divinity which remain everyone's birthright, and yet those who would lead in his absence do the precise opposite.

Scott Ritter is absolutely right. We need a focused and rational anti-war force in this country to complement our nation's military, to ensure that we never fall to the lie of aggressive warfare ever again. We need a civilian leadership as devoted to principle and peace as our soldiers are. Long after passion fades we need steadfast devotion to and reverence for those principles. I would enthusiastically contribute to such an effort. Ms. Sheehan needs to redirect her efforts toward healing her anguish and hatred instead of trying to organize people around them.

Peace might follow in the wake of her passion, but not her hatred, and I wish her the grace she needs to win this struggle.