[Sosfbay-discuss] Read This & Weep - CINDY SHEEHAN

Tue May 29 07:25:46 PDT 2007

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Posted on The Daily Kos, Monday, May 28, 2007.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/28/12530/1525

"Good
Riddance Attention Whore"

by Cindy Sheehan 

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.

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