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Sheehan is Bush’s fate

Dear Editor:Re: Andy Stone, “On the road to Crawford,” Aug. 18.Bill O’Reilly finds Cindy Sheehan’s behavior bordering on treason; Michelle Malkin thinks she is making her dead son ashamed of her; and Ronald Reagan’s hagiographer, Edmund Morris, opines that compassionate conservatives like President Bush simply don’t have time for “emotional predators” like her.Can anyone blame them? No one likes to see their favorite myths being challenged. After all, that’s why we create myths in the first place – to shield us from a reality that has become just too painful. The same holds true for the president’s latest rationale for continuing the war: i.e., that these 1,800-plus American soldiers cannot have died in vain.What is the all-too-painful reality that this latest myth keeps him from facing? “I made a foolish mistake, and these soldiers have had to pay for my mistake with their lives.” Such an admission would require something more than the senseless bravado we have come to expect from this president; it would take the courage of someone willing to pay the ultimate price himself – ego death – which, at times, can be harder than physical death.As the Roman philosopher Staten put it, those who accept their fate are led gently by the hand; those who resist it end up being dragged by the hair. Like it or not, Cindy Sheehan and her home-grown Insurgency have become George W. Bush’s fate.Joel Brence, M.D.Aspen