Since an unprecedented 25 million people from all over the world flooded into the streets to protest the United States' impending war with Iraq in February 2003, anti-war sentiment in this country has struggled to find a rallying point.
Unlike the 1960s, the current hodgepodge of dissent just hasn't seemed to gel.
College students remain fairly apathetic and aging baby-boomers seem to be running out of steam, trying to pass on the passion that propelled one of our country's most tumultuous decades.
Enter Cindy Sheehan, a middle-aged Catholic youth minister and mother of a fallen soldier. Her month-long vigil outside of President Bush's Crawford vacation home created a potent and lasting symbol that might be just what Americans who disagree with this war needed.
Standing beyond the moat and yelling up at the drawbridge she knew wouldn't come down, she has captivated an entire nation. We take for granted that our leaders are always available to address the concerns of groups of motivated citizens, and Mrs. Sheehan has tested that assumption and found it wanting.
Bush didn't give Mrs. Sheehan an audience. Yet in refusing to do so, he afforded her a much larger audience with the American public.
The questions that she had for Bush regarding our true motives for invading Iraq would have remained unanswered in a one-on-one meeting, as the president is quite adept at explaining away the thorn in his paw.
Those questions may be answered, however, with growing pressure from an increasingly skeptical public.
Bush's approval rating has sagged to 40 percent, his lowest since taking office, and a majority of Americans disapprove of his handling of Iraq. Coupled with Republican apprehension about the approaching mid-term elections in 2006, the pressure has grown to do away with his determined platitudes and make substantive strides towards ending the Iraq debacle.
Her power as a historically significant symbol aside, Cindy Sheehan's asserted solutions to the Iraq problem are completely wrongheaded.
Bringing the troops home immediately would almost certainly plunge Iraq into civil war and create power vacuums to be filled by groups of insurgents and ideologically polarized Islamists. Her grief over her son's death and anger at Bush are well founded, and she and the rest of us deserve some clear answers, but not at the expense of international stability.
In addition, Sheehan does a great disservice to the anti-war movement when she spouts anti-Zionist conspiracy theory regarding the Bush agenda in the Middle East.
Whether or not she is correct, her raving turns moderate Americans away from the movement and ultimately hurts her cause. For the roughly one-third of Americans who consider themselves politically independent, it would be much better to simply maintain her movement and do away with angry, incoherent rhetoric.
Regardless of your party affiliation or political beliefs, we all want the best for our troops. If it takes an angry mother to get a president to stop coddling us and be truly frank about the rough days ahead, then so be it. Americans need a clear picture of the sacrifices that are necessary in a time of war, something we haven't received yet. We need accountability and action if we're going to clean up his mess.
The sooner we finish the job, the sooner they get home safely. That's what's best for our troops.
Huck is an anthropology junior.
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