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

[Duende]

Alex

I've been weeping for a decade. Most people who are on this, yourself  
included wept decades ago...yet they still keep stepping up and  
valiantly doing battle with windmills.ce

Duende


Pea
On May 29, 2007, at 7:25 AM, alexcathy at aol.com wrote:

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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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_______________________________________________
  "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from  
mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not  
thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and  
courageously uses his intelligence."

Albert Einstein




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