Cindy Sheehan and Ben Boothe, in Crawford, Texas

Today I went to Crawford, to stand beside Cindy Sheehan. Her son, Casey lost his life in Iraq, and she has camped next to George W. Bush’s Texas ranch. Her request is simple. She would like to speak with the President personally, about her loss, and the reasons her son died for this President. For what seems like eternity in the hot, Texas, August heat, she has been here every day. And every day the President of the U.S.A. has refused to meet with this grieving mother.

She does grieve. Today I touched her, and spoke to her. I saw the tears in her eyes. She is not a radical, not a politician. She is a mother.

On the way, I stopped at Crawford to ask directions. A man, waving a huge American flag, in front of a “Ten Commandments” monument said: “You will find ‘Them’ down that road. They don’t wave flags because they are just a bunch of hippies. They are not patriots. We don’t have time for ‘opinions’ about the war, we only have time for ‘truth’. Truth is that we are right, they are not true Americans, we are.”

I drove down the country lane looking for a bunch of hippies. What I found was hundreds of American flags, hundreds of flags, and white crosses, each with the name of an American boy lost in Iraq and not a hippy in sight. What I found was mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers, of our American soldiers, placing roses, reverently, by each cross as they said quiet prayers.

One Hispanic man stood beside me, and seemed very focused on what was going on. He stood straight and tall. His name was, Sergio Torres. I asked him: “Why are you here? Are you into politics?” He said: “No, I’m here because my son, Sergeant Daniel Torres, died in Iraq 2/4/05. He had lived with us in Fort Worth for 23 years, then he went to Iraq to find “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. He was killed, for a lie.

Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War, noted that parents for both the North and the South were praying to the same God, as their children went to war. He said: “We should not pray that God is on our side. But that we are on God’s side in this endeavor.”

As reports show over 100,000 civilians, women, children, and non combatants, killed in Iraq by American forces we should consider whether or not we are on “God’s side”. As we see patriotic American’s, weeping over their dead children, and placing American flags and flowers by white grave markers, we should wonder “Are they traitors? Or are they on God’s side?”. When we see Americans driving by in cars with “I support W”, and opening their windows to shoot their fingers and yell out obscenities at grieving mothers and fathers of sons and daughters who have died in this war. Perhaps we should ask “Are they on God’s side?”.

Today I stood beside Cindy Sheehan in a grassy ditch near the Bush Ranch in Crawford. It was a moving experience. We were told by authorities, that the President has decided to helicopter into his ranch now, so he won’t have to look at these faces and crosses anymore. We saw a helicopter go over. I hope he bothered to look down from his perch. There were a lot of good people there today, who just wanted an honest word from him.