Casey Sheehan’s Law
August 15, 2005
©Mary Geddry

Ear­lier this year, late March, my Marine son returned home from his sec­ond tour in Iraq. See­ing him for the first time upon his return I found myself sur­vey­ing him care­fully, hold­ing him close in my arms I assessed him like a mother would a new­born, ten fin­gers, yes, ten toes, good. My relief and grat­i­tude suf­fered no bound­aries and I poured forth my soul in rev­er­ence and appre­ci­a­tion to our ances­tors for watch­ing over him; I praised Bud­dha, Allah and God and thanked my lucky stars and wept pro­fuse tears of release.

My joy was marred, of course, by the cer­tain knowl­edge that other moth­ers had not been so for­tu­nate so it is that I watch with awe and admi­ra­tion the mis­sion of the very pur­posed, Cindy Shee­han. Almost daily the news con­tains tes­ta­ments of the loved ones of fallen sol­diers con­tin­u­ing to sup­port the war and the present admin­is­tra­tion. None want their sac­ri­fice to have been in vain. For those of us who believe as Cindy Shee­han does, this war hav­ing been wrought of lies, then that has already hap­pened, their supreme sac­ri­fice was for naught and noth­ing will make it oth­er­wise. Yet, Cindy has cor­ralled her grief and anger and resolved to make her son’s death stand for some­thing real, some­thing tan­gi­ble, some­thing not built on lies and bad intel; she wants Casey’s death to mark the begin­ning of the end of the war in Iraq.

The goal Shee­han has set is almost impos­si­bly high but the con­cept of con­vert­ing tragedy into change is not. Our laws are filled with such exam­ples, Megan’s Law, Amber Alerts the Jes­sica Lunsford Act all reac­tions to the sense­less, mean­ing­less, vain deaths of our chil­dren at the hands of con­science­less souls. Amer­ica was lied to with­out con­science, cajoled and ter­ri­fied into com­pli­ance with such phrases as ‘smok­ing guns’ and ‘mush­room clouds’, so that we proudly pledged our great­est resource to the cause, our own chil­dren. Was that con­science­less act any less insid­i­ous than lur­ing a child into a car with candy? Was it any less of a betrayal? Do not our sons and daugh­ters dying and risk­ing their lives in Iraq deserve a Casey Sheehan’s Law?

My own son returned home, barely, sur­viv­ing seven IED’s, mul­ti­ple mor­tar attacks, numer­ous fire­fights and the mem­o­ries of pick­ing up the body parts of his fel­low war­riors. Dur­ing his tour he acquired that fatal­is­tic man­ner of speech so typ­i­cal of sol­diers in con­stant com­bat, ‘…I guess it wasn’t my day to die, Mom’. Those words still tor­ture me today and it is cer­tain that being deployed to Iraq is a sure death sen­tence; if they are there long enough, our troops will not die from old age, but they will die. Casey Shee­han only lived five days.

If our pres­i­dent could take the time to dress up in camis and travel to an air­craft car­rier, an exec­u­tive ver­sion of a super­bowl touch­down dance, why will he not take the time to answer Cindy Sheehan?