Not One More Mother's Child

Cindy Sheehan

It's a sad assessment of our critical thinking skills in this country that so few people could see Cindy Sheehan objectively as an attention-seeker. The left embraced her as their darling for what she had to say, and no matter how she said it; the right castigated her for what she had to say, and no matter how she said it.

I hold to the ideology of neither side; I see them both as the same side with cosmetic differences. I read Cindy Sheehan's first book not caring about the message therein, as, obviously, so many millions of people do, whether they agree with it or not.

But, since I'm sure it will eventually come up: I am normally pro-war. It's hard to find someone more pro-war than me, and I get more pro-war every day the world's population increases, since war is the most effective method we have, or have ever had, of population control. In a world where the population is exploding, war is not just a nicety, it's a necessity. That said, the war in Iraq has failed-- spectacularly-- as a form of population control; besides being so localized, it's dragged on for years without having yet even reached the same number of casualties as the Wilderness Campaign in America's Civil War. So, yeah, I'm against the War in Iraq. And I have to say, I would prefer anyone, even a mute, to Cindy Sheehan as a spokesman for my position.

The first alarm bell that should go off in your head is that Not One More Mother's Child covers events that happen all the way up till November, 2005. Which isn't a big deal, until you remember the book was released on November 9, 2005. How did they get those pictures in there, you ask? Simple-- the book was the rush job of all rush jobs. It looks it-- the proofreading is sloppy at best and the editing is nonexistent. No press that actually cared about the medium, rather than the message, would have allowed this book to go to print without extensive editing and proofreading sessions. This is a bad first draft, and it was allowed to be released because Cindy Sheehan is, it would seem, far more concerned with all the attention she gets than she is with the message she's trying to spread. It would not be fair to call this bad first draft "illiterate," but there are a few times it straddles the border. It's, quite simply, awful writing. It's repetitive, unwieldy, and shows very little grasp of grammar and punctuation (I assume most of the spelling was taken care of with a computer's spellchecker).

The second alarm bell that should go off in your head is this. Ask yourself: what is Cindy Sheehan known for? One thing comes to mind immediately, doesn't it? She lost a child in Iraq. And as awful as that may be, when the day ends, Cindy Sheehan is still a one-trick pony. Is that one trick enough to fill two hundred four pages? Not in the least. Sheehan knows this, or the book wouldn't be so chock full of repetition, repetition, repetition. (Of course, it could have also been edited down in subsequent drafts, but obviously, no one ever got the chance.)

Do you need a third alarm bell? Why? This is a horrid book. It doesn't deserve your time, and it certainly doesn't deserve your money. I'm sure there are more literate antiwar activists out there; I strongly suggest one of them starts working on a book that could counteract the damage that, when the smoke clears, this rush-job will do to the antiwar movement.