A Gathering of Idiots

AP: Sheehan Urge Supporters to Take Action

Wow, what an excellent headline.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Activist Cindy Sheehan told supporters at a peace forum Saturday that troops would get out of Iraq if millions of U.S. citizens took the simple step that she did outside President Bush's vacation home last summer.

"Anybody could do what we did in Crawford, Texas. We just went down and sat down," Sheehan told the crowd of several hundred people, with Academy Award-winning actor Sean Penn in the front row.

She urged them to loose their apathy and do something. "We have to get so freakin' fed up with what's going on that we all go and sit down," Sheehan said.

Sheehan, a Berekley resident whose 24-year-old soldier son died in Iraq, attracted hundreds of anti-war protesters to her makeshift camp near Bush's ranch in August.

"These people, they're not going to change unless they see us out in the streets," she said at the forum that organizers said was among dozens of town hall-style events held across the nation.

Penn, an early opponent of the war who drew criticism for his visit to Iraq, said he is buoyed by recent efforts in Congress to rein in the president's powers and bring troops home, and by the outraged response to disclosures that the government had wiretapped without obtaining warrants.

"When we said, 'Listen to us' — they're doing it through covert surveillance," Penn joked. He read his brief remarks from a single crumpled piece of paper and said it "probably looks like the administration's war plan."

Such intelligence.

Aren't you just "so freakin' fed up with" insane people like Cindy Sheehan and Sean Penn?

When will they realize that freedom requires sacrifices, on all our parts?

How can we live in freedom while our brothers and sisters around the world remain under tyranny? How do these people, who would deny liberty to millions of people, sleep at night? How does Cindy Sheehan rest after so dishonoring her heroic son, who re-enlisted in Summer 2003, after the fall of Baghdad?

Perhaps Cindy and Sean and friends ought to remember what Thomas Jefferson wrote so long ago:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.