Cindy Sheehan resigns from anti-war movement

Bill Weinberg

Cindy Sheehan writes in her public diary on Daily Kos, May 28:

I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called “Face” of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such “liberal blogs” as the Democratic Underground. Being called an “attention whore” and being told “good riddance” are some of the more milder rebukes.

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an “attention whore” then I really need to be committed. I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither. If an individual wants both, then normally he/she is not willing to do more than walk in a protest march or sit behind his/her computer criticizing others. I have spent every available cent I got from the money a “grateful” country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey’s brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings. I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.

Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people. However, in five, ten, or fifteen years, our troops will come limping home in another abject defeat and ten or twenty years from then, our children’s children will be seeing their loved ones die for no reason, because their grandparents also bought into this corrupt system. George Bush will never be impeached because if the Democrats dig too deeply, they may unearth a few skeletons in their own graves and the system will perpetuate itself in perpetuity.

I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble.

Camp Casey has served its purpose. It’s for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford , Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer. I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too…which makes the property even more valuable.

This is my resignation letter as the “face” of the American anti-war movement. This is not my “Checkers” moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.

Good-bye America …you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

It’s up to you now.

See our last posts on Cindy Sheehan and the anti-war movement.

  1. In the days of the Roman
    In the days of the Roman Empire, she set the people free, and made a proclamation: You are absolutely free from all garrisons, imposts, or taxes whatsoever, governed by your own respective laws and usages. We have simply fought your battles for your good; we have simply given you our armies, and navies, and poured out our wealth, to set you free; to set to the world the blessed example of liberty and republicanism. That is all the reward we ask, that virtue is its own reward.
    The Greeks were charmed. They fairly worshiped Rome. The spirit of liberty and “the blessed peace and prosperity and liberty” that Rome had brought to them captivated them. They said that they themselves had had kings, armies, and navies that had fought for liberty, but it was their own liberty: but here was a nation from afar off, speaking a strange language, and utterly foreign to them, that had sent out navies and armies; and poured out its treasure, to fight other people’s batthew, to set other people free. They said, “Has there ever such a thing been seen in the world?” Rome sent her armies, not for conquest, but to give peace. The Greeks in their gratitude spread the glory of Rome, and the result was that all the nations that were oppressed by their kings hastened to put themselves under the protecting wings of Rome. And thus, through this policy, in a little time Rome secured the world’s dominion.
    But what was the result of the policy? Never was there such a despotism on the earth as Rome; never a power that destroyed so many people; never one that so oppressed people who were subject to them. The peace of Rome is destruction to him who has it.
    The Grecians fondly imagined that they were really free because the Romans declared them so. Nothing could be more gentle and equitable than the conduct of the Romans in the beginning. They acted with the utmost moderation toward such states and nations as addressed them for protection. They helped them against their enemies, took the utmost pains in terminating their differences, and in suppressing all commotions which arose amongst them; and did not demand the least recompense from their allies for all these services. By this means their authority gained strength daily, and prepared the nations for entire subjection. Under pretense of offering them their good offices, of entering into their interests, and of reconciling them, the Romans rendered themselves the soverign arbiters of those whom they had restored to liberty, and whom they now considered in some measure as their freedmen. They used to depute commissioners to them, to inquire into their complaints, to weigh and examine the reasons on both sides, and to decide their quarrels; but when the articles were of such a nature that there was no possibility of reconciling them on the spot, the invited them to send their deputies to Rome.
    In other words: You are all free now: we don’t ask a single cent – you must pay for it. We have done all this for the good of humanity – but you must pay for it. When we freed you, will you say that we have no voice in your plans? We set you free, and now we have the right to have a voice in your plans and your work. If your do not recognize it, you are rebels.
    “Afterwards they used, with plenary authority, to summon those who refused to come to an agreement, obliged them to plead their cause before the Senate, and even to appear in person there. From arbiters and mediators, being become supreme judges, they soon assumed a magisterial tone, looked upon their decrees as irrevocable decisions, were greatly offended when the most implicit obedience was not paid to them, and gave the name of rebellion to a second resistance. Thus there arose, in the Roman Senate, a tribunal which judged all nations and kings, and from which ther was no appeal.” (Great Empires of the Bible, p. 245)
    Sadly, we are still dealing with the Roman policy today, and Cindy Sheehan has felt the effects of trying to change the policy of Rome.

    1. it’s not working
      I guess you did say the song was resigned — nothing happens when I click it. Doubtless it was respectful, enlightened and a huge contribution to humanity.