The editor doesn't know if she agrees with Sayre Sheldon on this one -- whether the ad was smart in any way (strategic, moral, political) -- but the editor respects Sayre enormously and knows that Sayre is in fact smart in all ways. So she is more than happy to post this intelligent and considered letter...
Confessions of a MoveOn Democrat, by Sayre Sheldon
Although I might have chosen a different approach than the now celebrated or should we say vituperated MoveOn ad, I have to confess a sneaking support for it. I had, for at least a week before the general arrived, been going around the house muttering the “Betray Us” pun so I was somewhat flattered to see a joke I had only made to my husband in a full-page Times ad. I agree with my peace movement colleagues that the ad may have set our cause back…but I did somewhat guiltily send in my contribution telling myself I had been meaning to send one for a long time.
Now I’m not so sure I should feel guilty: an awful lot of citizens sent their money in too, many of them undoubtedly respectable, even elderly people like myself. What has really changed my mind though is what the opposition has done. It is one thing to get a vote of censure in Congress—their poll ratings are low enough to make any attempt to recapture some approval understandable—but to be criticized by the president is cause for a certain amount of pride. Doesn’t he have weightier matters to deal with? Then it was the media response: I don’t watch Fox and the right talk shows but can imagine their joyous blasts of self-congratulation at seeing MoveOn adopt some of their own tactics.
It was when the Wall St. Journal accused MoveOn of McCarythism that I began to come out in open support. And a few days later when the Times said MoveOn was just looking for money and members like the National Rifle Association, I realized I had to speak up in self defense. I have spent most of my life fighting the effects of people like Joseph McCarthy and for sane gun laws.
Then David Brooks in the Times accused me of something new—of being a “liberal netroots” person—and worse, our influence on the Democratic Party “is waning.” According to Brooks I am in the company of “bloggers, billionaires, and activists” and I am “self-righteous and bullying.” We netroots people are the result of rebelling against Clintonian centrism and now we have to get over it—centrism is the only way to go or at least, to get elected. And I thought I was trying to end a war that we netroots people had tried to stop long before the wretched thing began!
From my point of view, MoveOn is working to carry out what a majority of Americans voted for in 2006: a change of policy on the war in Iraq. General Petraeus was brought back to support the president’s plan to keep the war going exactly as it is until Bush is out of office. The General didn’t intend to betray us—he is an honorable man--but he gave his boss what he asked for.
There’s a big peace movement out there, with many different objectives and strategies in spite of what the media does to make us all into one angry and misguided mob. When our activities are badly presented, or underrepresented in most cases, we occasionally get a bit desperate. Hundreds of our soldiers and thousands of Iraqis keep dying while the war drags on. Maybe some flamboyance in opposing the war is not only excusable but necessary. Thank you, MoveOn.
---Sayre Sheldon
They've asked artists (and others) to create art objects out of chairs; each one tells a story about a great woman. 
