Open letter to Cindy Sheehan

I empathize with your pain in the loss of your son and yet I offer you no sympathy. You do not honor his memory. Every word you speak and every action you perform makes his life -- and death -- a triviality. He doesn't deserve that. My sympathy goes to him.

I understand your pain because my son died, too. My son didn't have the choice yours did. Your son knew he was putting his life in jeopardy to fight for a just cause. My son's death was a freak of nature, a sudden aneurysm in his brain. My son, at age 16, had no chance to try to change the course of history to bring freedom to a foreign land and safety to his own home. My son's death was random, senseless and painful beyond imagination.

If he had not wanted to go to war, your son could have gone to Canada. Others have. He made his choice. There is no draft for this war. Anyone can leave; most choose to serve. My own cousin has just "re-upped" and is in Iraq for his third tour of duty. My son-in-law, working with the United States Joint Forces Command, helps train both American and Iraqi troops both in the US and in Iraq. They know far more than we homebound citizens do about what is really happening. And they are convinced that we are doing the right thing.

You dishonor your son and all of those who have died and who now serve. You present your argument in the most destructive ways. giving the enemies who destroyed him hope that you will undermine the determination of this nation to rid the world of their tyranny. You demand that the President listen to you but offer no ear to listen to him. You are, and rightly so, ignorant of the facts and know only what has been presented by the media and yet you dare to set yourself up as a foreign policy expert. You play on the sympathies of the ignorant and parade your "grief" as though it has given you some sort of divine insight into truth. And those who fear we cannot win against a new and present enemy, who would allow the destruction of our way of life because of their cowardice and discontent, use you shamelessly for their own political ends.

I pity you, Cindy Sheehan. I know from my own experience that grief numbs the senses and destroys reason for a very long period of time. For me it was more than three years. If you are an intelligent and fair person, when you emerge from the worst of your pain you will look back on these days with shame. You will realize that you turned the normal anger of grief against the only hope this nation has for peace. If you succeed, you will cause the deaths of many more innocents and endanger your own way of life for at least another generation. More young men have died because of the encouragement you've given to the Muslim fanatics and many more will continue to die as your opposition to the war helps it to drag on.

Your son deserves the honor and respect of his countrymen, Cindy Sheehan. He chose military service; that means he chose to defend his country. He is a hero in spite of you, not because of all you do to trivialize his death.