Preaching to the Choir

Abstract

Williams continuedfrom previous page CD possess interesting—while not direct—parallels with the stories. Further, the music, like the stories, makes it all the more confounding why I can't say "Richard Bürgin" at the local Barnes and Noble and watch all the employees and customers light up. In sum, The Identity Club—book and CD—is the work of an incredibly talented artist. Let's just hope that those with enough money to buy the book will find themselves so enamored ofthe work within that they'll want to enter Richard Burgin's world over and over again. Tom Williams edits Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies. Preaching to the Choir Fred Shochet Dear President Bush Cindy Sheehan Introduction by Howard Zinn City Lights http://www.citylights.com 164 pages; paper, $9.95 Cindy Sheehan's life ended and began anew on April 4, 2004, when her son, Casey, died five days into his Iraqi-War deployment. It ended because his death created an emotional and irreplaceable chasm in Sheehan's soul. It began because it drove Sheehan to new activism: to fight America's involvement in the Iraqi War. Since her rebirth, Sheehan has traveled nationally and internationally to gain support. She has met with congressional representatives and senators, she has led demonstrations and sit-ins, and she has established Gold Star Families for Peace, an organization offamily members who have lost loved ones in Iraq. Now, through Dear President Bush, Sheehan expands her efforts to print. She hopes to convert neutrals and opponents to her point ofview: to make them anti Iraqi-War activists. "Someone has to make George [Bush] face his failures and change his ways," she says. Sheehan's book is a collection of arguments presented in an assortment of chapter settings. The first and longest chapter is editor Greg Ruggiero's interview of Sheehan, where she barges in with pointed daggers. Bush and his administration are "[w]arprofiteers [and] are our true enemies." Bush's "preemptive strikes" are misguided and pad the pockets ofthe president and his administration pals. Bush promised to find weapons ofmass destruction in Iraq, but "there are none, and were none. The Downing Street memos have proven that he knew months before the invasion that Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction." The Downing Street memos purport to be minutes of a July 2002 high-level meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other high-ranking British officials. Sheehan's endnotes direct readers to a web site offering the memos and annotated analyses. More, Sheehan adds, "we need to be more fair with policies that way too heavily favor Israel," and she asks and then answers her own questions: '"What noble cause did Casey die for? Was it freedom and democracy?' Bullshit. He died for oil. He died to make Bush's friends richer." Finally, near the end of the interview, Sheehan argues for diplomacy and other "peaceful means" to solve grievances and spare the lives of American soldiers and innocent Iraqi citizens. Sheehan's arguments are well intended, but she hampers her purpose with unsubstantiated assertions and contradictory conclusions. Her allegations that Bush and his "cronies" profit financially from the Iraqi War lack both evidence and logic. Are we to believe that America's congressional representatives and senators are so gullible as to continue funding a war fought to fill the pockets of Bush and his pals? It is a doubtful proposition that challenges Sheehan's credibility. And, does US policy really tilt unfairly to Israel? Sheehan says we are in this war because of oil, but why, then, would we adopt a policy that favors Israel and agitates Arab oil producing countries? The logic contradicts itself, and Sheehan presents no evidence to support her allegations. Moreover, Sheehan reminds us that Bush said Iraq was pursuing a program to develop weapons ofmass destruction, an agenda that was the underpinning of Bush's decision to invade. The United Nations includes chemical and biological weapons along with nuclear weapons in its definition ofweapons ofmass destruction, and there is no doubt that Iraq possessed and used chemical weapons against its Kurdish citizens and in its war against...