The most important point is in that final paragraph: Cindy Sheehan took Bush and his propagandists at their word. They said: “9/11 made all of this personal. The terrorists are a threat to you, just as they were to those who died on 9/11. If you want to protect yourself, you must join us and support our policies. We’re the only ones genuinely dedicated to defeating our enemies.”
In essence, Cindy Sheehan has replied: “My son did what you asked. He voluntarily fought for you, and for all of us. But Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, or with our actual enemies. Following your policies got my son killed. Now it turns out that all your policies are wrong, and people are still dying. What are you going to do about it?”
The second one comes from a link by TLOR to this Salon Blog entry. Again, here is a brief excerpt:
Cindy Sheehan is a conscious political actor, as Cole himself is able to acknowledge (and does, several times in the course of his rant, in an injured tone) when it suits him polemically. Able to acknowledge, but painfully unable to comprehend. The "cynical exploiters" frame Cole recurs to—regardless that it would refute his argument that Cindy Sheehan has made herself a public figure who "gets no free pass" (at least Cole knows enough to stay away from the phrase "fair game")—is an index of what I take to be in ingrained, almost unconscious elitism. (A word that's supposed to be reserved solely for winger usage, I know, but it's too apt here to pass up.) Cole mutters darkly about how Atrios and the rest of the anti-war scum "know what they are doing": and their knowing is the obverse of what Cole assumes is Cindy Sheehan's unknowing. In this little drama of left-wing perfidy, Sheehan is a strayed and endangered naif, a woman addled by grieving; nothing in Cole's imagination allows him to credit an ordinary American citizen, a housewife and mother no less, with having taken real political agency for herself.
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