Cindy Sheehan Quits

Woah.

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.

She certainly crossed the line between political activism and mild lunacy, but it is still strange to see her go.

Night After Night My Heartbeat Shows the Fear

The Democrats, like Ann Coulter's boyfriends, want to pull out as fast as possible....

What?! You know, because all her boyfriends are Democrats. They're not? Oh...

The story:

Democrats in both the House and the Senate have rallied together to push for an complete troop withdrawal (that's what he said... nyuk nyuk nyuk - okay, I'll stop) by Fall of 2008.

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, March 8 — Democratic leaders in the House and Senate began a new legislative push on Thursday for the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq in 2008, coalescing behind a fixed timetable to end the war.

The plan to establish a specific date for removing troops intensifies the confrontation with the administration at a time when Congress is scrutinizing President Bush’s request for nearly $100 billion in additional spending toward military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Republicans vowed to block the new Democratic effort, which they said amounted to micromanaging the war, and the White House immediately signaled its opposition.

“It would unnecessarily handcuff our generals on the ground, and it’s safe to say it’s a nonstarter for the president,” said Dan Bartlett, a senior White House adviser, speaking to reporters as he traveled with Mr. Bush to Latin America.

Speaking of Bush's trip to Latin America, his welcoming was much like it is here:

It's great being a liberator.

Anyway, The Democrats plan to attach the pullout plan to a war spending bill that the Administration requested for the wars in Afghanistan (remember that place?) and Iraq. Bush and the White House quickly threatened to veto, prompting Democrats to not give a crap. The pullout will be sooner, according to the plan, if the Iraqi Government doesn't fulfill its end of the agreement, strengthening its soldiers and keeping American soldiers out of danger.

Nancy Pelosi said that her biggest worry was that the far left wouldn't be on board, because the measure calls for a withdrawal in late 2008 rather than right this second, as is the oft-repeated desire of the liberal crowd, without driving away moderate democrats that want the generals not to "have their hands tied."

I choose to form an opinion when it happens.

That's a Bad President. Bad! Get in your Cage.

Yesterday the Senate Republicans picked up where they left off as the majority: By doing absolutely nothing.

Republicans blocked debate on a non-binding resolution over the "President's" Iraq policy. For those who don't know, a non-binding resolution is the political equivalent to a harsh wagging of the finger and the phrase "you're in a serious time out mister" only to give the child candy because his face turns red and you feel bad. But still the debate could have opened doors towards a more binding resolution (like, say, one that binds) and eventually put enough pressure on the "President" to change the Iraq strategy to something that may, in fact, work.

Originally the resolution was drafted with bipartisanship by Senators John Warner (R-VA) and Carl Levin (D-MI), and although it was not necessarily expected to receive the 60 votes necessary to pass the resolution, it was at least opening the floor to a spirited debate that could set the tone for the country and possibly the war. But just as guests on Jerry Springer flip off the audience and scream bratty obscenities and the phrase "you don't know me, I'll do what I want," so did the Republicans, as even John Warner voted against the debate for the plan he himself helped create.

From the New York Times:

Republicans had laid a bit of a trap for Democrats, seeking a 60-vote threshold for competing resolutions on the war. They knew that the bipartisan plan by Senators John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, did not have 60 votes. But the plan calling for no reductions in spending, written by Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, was likely to get at least 60, meaning the only resolution that would have passed would have been one that essentially backed the president.

And since there will be no backing of the "President" with the Democratic congress, the debate on whether to have the debate about the/a resolution was killed.

So way to not do anything again Republicans. Way to not make headway and pretend everything is going to be okay. Way to waste yet another day while our soldiers die in Iraq. Way to be.

"It is understandable that neither the US nor the British governments should want a debate on the failing war. But there is something wrong with a democracy in which congressmen want to hold the debate, one the American public desperately want to hear, and yet are blocked for narrow political reasons.

...

There are few more important issues confronting the US today - citizens of another country being killed in large numbers as well as their own troops - and it is shameful that America is denied, and denies itself, this debate."

--Ewen Macaskill