Frank Gaffney: "Poster Child for Surrender"

Gaffney draws an interesting connection between Cindy Sheehan and the Gaza withdrawal:

The media circus that has surrounded and amplified all of Ms. Sheehan's increasingly strident rhetorical outbursts (she says she won't pay taxes until she gets her son back and wants the president impeached for war crimes) may, by so doing, have filled a void in their August doldrums programming. Their 24 hour per day, seven days a week coverage of Casey Sheehan's mom has done something else, however: Together with polls showing flagging support for the president, it has further encouraged the conviction of our Islamofascist enemies that, as they expected, an indolent and self-indulgent United States cannot stand up to determined, ruthless foes.

That perception can have but one effect: It puts an even bigger premium on the lives of every one of Casey's comrades in Iraq and elsewhere, and to foreclose the outcomes for which he and the other fallen gave their lives. Even before his mom became a spectacle, the Islamists hoped -- as in Beirut in 1983 and Somalia in 1994 -- killing enough American troops would make the rest withdraw ignominiously. Handing the U.S. such defeats enhances the claims to leadership and power of those responsible for driving them out, effectively eliminating alternatives that may have been more sympathetic to Western values and interests.

A test case is under way at this writing. Israel is forcibly removing settlers from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank that will be turned over to Palestinian control. Already, the Islamofascists of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and factions of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement are claiming their terrorism forced the Israelis to "disengage."