NYC Letter: The Ugly Business Of Peace On Earth

Bringing the world to heel is not pretty work.

ANTI-WAR PROTESTS TARGET WOUNDED AT ARMY HOSPITAL

WASHINGTON August 25, 2005 (CNSNews.com) - The Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the current home of hundreds of wounded veterans from the war in Iraq, has been the target of weekly anti-war demonstrations since March. The protesters hold signs that read "Maimed for Lies" and "Enlist here and die for Halliburton."

The anti-war demonstrators, who obtain their protest permits from the Washington, D.C., police department, position themselves directly in front of the main entrance to the Army Medical Center, which is located in northwest D.C., about five miles from the White House. Among the props used by the protesters are mock caskets, lined up on the sidewalk to represent the death toll in Iraq.

But the anti-war activists were unapologetic when asked whether they considered such signs as "Maimed for Lies" offensive to wounded war veterans and their families.

"I am more offended by the fact that many were maimed for life. I am more offended by the fact that they (wounded veterans) have been kept out of the news," said Kevin McCarron, a member of the anti-war group Veterans for Peace.

To Mr. McCarron we say, Huh? We suspect Mr. McCarron is not much offended by these things at all. Then again, perhaps Mr. McCarron & co. are the most feckless and ass-backwards of well-intentioned sympathizers, mistakenly showing their compassion with taunts and mocks. Doing harm to the very people they assume to speak for, dishonoring the very souls they had hoped to lift up. Or perhaps they are just self-important and reckless and cruel. And very pleased about it.

Kevin Pannell, who was recently treated at Walter Reed and had both legs amputated after an ambush grenade attack near Baghdad in 2004, considers the presence of the anti-war protesters in front of the hospital "distasteful."

"You know that 95 percent of the guys in the hospital bed lost guys whenever they got hurt and survivors' guilt is the worst thing you can deal with," Pannell said, adding that other veterans recovering from wounds at Walter Reed share his resentment for the anti-war protesters.

"We don't like them and we don't like the fact that they can hang their signs and stuff on the fence at Walter Reed," he said.

But what does Mr. Parnell know? Apparently not his own mind according to mono-monikered protester "Luke":

But Luke and the other anti-war protesters dismissed the message of the counter demonstrators. "We know most of the George Bush supporters have never spent a day in uniform, have never been closer to a battlefield than seeing it through the television screen," Luke said.

"If I went to war and lost a leg and then found out from my hospital bed that I had been lied to, that the weapons I was sent to search for never existed, that the person who sent me to war had no plan but to exploit me, exploit the country I was sent to, I would be pretty angry," Luke told Cybercast News Service.

"I would want people to do something about it and if I couldn't get out of my bed and protest myself, I would want someone else to do it in my name," he added.

Only in the world of the "Lukes" can one arrogate onto oneself an empathetic license from those one despises.

In the world of the "Lukes" it's all about protesting, so, of course, theirs is a public service. Except if "Luke" is doing so on behalf of disabled veterans why has he brought his protest to Walter Reed Hospital? We think a fair reading of "Luke" & co.'s actions is they protest for the glamour of being self-important and to show their disapproval of the hospital veterans, who were participants in the Iraq war, a war "Luke" & co. greatly disapprove of.

And who are "Luke" & co.?

Code Pink Women for Peace, one of the groups backing anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan's vigil outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford Texas, organizes the protests at Walter Reed as well. ...Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin has expressed support for the Communist Viet Cong in Vietnam and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas.

In 2001, Benjamin was asked about anti-war protesters sympathizing with nations considered to be enemies of U.S. foreign policy, including the Viet Cong and the Sandinistas. "There's no one who will talk about how the other side is good," she reportedly told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Benjamin has also reportedly praised the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro. Benjamin told the San Francisco Chronicle that her visit to Cuba in the 1980s revealed to her a great country. "It seem[ed] like I died and went to heaven," she reportedly said.

We imagine Ms. Benjamin destined for someplace very much like Mr. Castro's Cuba in the afterlife.