What Casey Died For

[Joeve]

This is a transcript of Joe Vecchio's daily "Cup O' Joe Report" podcast, availaible via "screaming audio" here and posted with the permission of the author.

As activist Cindy Sheehan was handcuffed and arrested for wearing a T-Shirt at last night's State Of The Union address, she wanted to know one simple thing...what did her son Casey die for? It's a fair question she has never gotten an answer to from the people who sent him to his death, he and the over two thousand other American soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to mention the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis we've killed.

I'm pretty sure Mr. Bush and his followers have an answer for Ms. Sheehan. They won't say it outright of course, that would be too obvious. But it's pretty clear to this observer that they think Casey died for them, so they can have more money and more power. Casey doesn't matter to them, neither does his mother, or the mothers and families of all the others who died over there. Casey lived and died to serve their interests.

That's the answer they would give, but if I can be so bold, I'd like to answer Ms. Sheehan's question, at least how I see it. I think, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, that Casey's death serves as a reminder of the unfinished work we all have before us, and that it's up to us to be sure that he and others didn't die in vain. Lincoln understood that it was about more than just freedom for Americans, it was about freedom for people all over the world. And if Casey's death spurs us to greater action towards that, then he will have served a purpose far greater than any imperial vision Mr. Bush and is followers can imagine.

Addendum: The Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

President Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863

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[NanceGreggs]

1. New GOP bumper-sticker?

"Support the Troops - and once they're dead, arrest their Mothers!"