"What is the 'noble cause' for which you sent our country to war?"
About this Quote
The intent is confrontation with constraints. She is not offering an alternate foreign policy white paper; she is demanding an accounting in moral terms that can survive contact with the facts. "Our country" widens the blast radius, implicating citizens who accepted the story, the media that amplified it, the legislators who signed off. "You" narrows it again, aimed at the decision-makers who hide behind institutions and abstractions.
The subtext is grief weaponized into civic pressure. Sheehan became emblematic of the Iraq War-era backlash, especially the sense that lofty justifications (weapons of mass destruction, spreading democracy, fighting terror) were elastic enough to stretch over any contradiction. Her question exposes the asymmetry: ordinary families pay in irreversible losses; leaders pay in press conferences. It's effective because it forces the war's sales pitch to answer to the war's receipts, and because it reframes dissent as patriotism's most basic task: refusing to let "noble" become a substitute for true.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sheehan, Cindy. (2026, January 17). What is the 'noble cause' for which you sent our country to war? FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-is-the-noble-cause-for-which-you-sent-our-44698/
Chicago Style
Sheehan, Cindy. "What is the 'noble cause' for which you sent our country to war?" FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-is-the-noble-cause-for-which-you-sent-our-44698/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"What is the 'noble cause' for which you sent our country to war?" FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-is-the-noble-cause-for-which-you-sent-our-44698/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.







