Cindy Sheehan Resigns as Protest Leader

I'm taking the time to post this here because I know the Org has so very many Sheehan fans. :laugh4:

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Sheehan 'resigns' as protest leader By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer
47 minutes ago


FORT WORTH, Texas - Cindy Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized an anti-war movement with her monthlong protest outside President Bush's ranch, said Tuesday she's done being the public face of the movement.


"I've been wondering why I'm killing myself and wondering why the Democrats caved in to George Bush," Sheehan told The Associated Press while driving from her property in Crawford to the airport, where she planned to return to her native California.

"I'm going home for awhile to try and be normal," she said.

In what she described as a "resignation letter," Sheehan wrote in her online diary on the Daily Kos blog: "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."

Sheehan began a grass roots peace movement in August 2005 when she camped outside Bush's Crawford ranch for 26 days, demanding to talk with the president about her son's death. Army Spc. Casey Sheehan was 24 when he was killed in an ambush in Baghdad in 2004.

Cindy Sheehan's protest started small but swelled to thousands and quickly drew national attention. Over the next two years, she drew huge crowds as she spoke at protest events. But she also drew criticism for some actions, such as meeting with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's leftist president.

"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," Sheehan wrote in the diary.

Kristinn Taylor, spokesman for FreeRepublic.com, which has held pro-troop rallies and counter-protests of anti-war demonstrations, said dwindling crowds at Sheehan's Crawford protests since her initial vigil may have led to her decision. But he also said he hopes she will now be able to heal.

"Her politics have hurt a lot of people, including the troops and their families, but most of us who support the war on terror understand she is hurt very deeply," Taylor said Tuesday. "Those she got involved with in the anti-war movement realize it was to their benefit to keep her in that stage of anger."

When Sheehan first took on Bush, she was a darling of the liberal left. "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," she wrote in the diary.

She said she sacrificed a 29-year marriage and endured threats to put all her energy into stopping the war. What she found, she wrote, was a movement "that often puts personal egos above peace and human life."

She said the most devastating conclusion she had reached "was that Casey did indeed die for nothing ... killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think."

Sheehan told the AP that she had considered leaving the peace movement since last summer while recovering from surgery.

She decided on Memorial Day to step down and spend more time with her three other children. She said she was returning to California on Tuesday because it was Casey's birthday. He would have been 28.

"We've accomplished as much here as we're going to," Sheehan said, saying she was leaving to change course. "When we come back, it definitely won't be with the peace movement with marches, with rallies and with protests. It will be more humanitarian efforts."

Last year, with $52,500 in insurance money she received after her son's death, Sheehan bought 5 acres near downtown Crawford as a permanent site for protests.

"Camp Casey has served its purpose," she wrote in the diary. "It's for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas?"

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And apparently this link is to Sheehan's own "article" about this:

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

"Good Riddance Attention Whore"
by CindySheehan

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Mon May 28, 2007 at 09:57:01 AM PDT
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.

CindySheehan's diary :: ::
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.

its sad i suppose, she finally realized most people just don't care about soldiers the way a mother does.

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its sad i suppose, she finally realized most people just don't care about soldiers the way a mother does.

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Whats sad is your response.

Why don't you weigh in with your response to this too, Gawain? :2thumbsup:

what's sad about it? the majority of americans dont give a **** about this war because they're not fighting it. I am, my brothers are, and their our families. No one has to sacrifice anything except maybe reading a bit of unpleasant news in the paper if they happen to feel like it that day. Its pathetic, it really is.

Maybe you can think of not joining up as protest to the iraq war:laugh4:

My teacher at school says that when you go to iraq you'll die, your better off at collage than dead. He never said "God help those soldiers".

nah, im stuck in the military for another 3 years or so at least ;) maybe then i can get hired by the CIA and do some real damage. *groan*..

Definately. The fact is that any young man or woman who joins the military today is not serving his country nor defending it.

I'll be sure to post on here alot when Im in Baghdad this winter ;)

Zak, be sure right before you take down an insurgent, say a 1 liner you hear often from the movies like "hasta la vista". just a suggestion...


Also, not the America she loves? maybe she means the government.

we did that already in afghanistan, we had a firebase in the calakor valley and at least 150 or so taliban were attacking from the mountains on three sides for like 2 days.. the artillery dudes were straight-laying their guns and firing directly at the mountains and one guy said "hasta la vista, taliban" as he fired. that was pretty hairy though, i can tell ya.

No, I'm pretty sure she meant America - but, equated it with government (as most of us lazy americans do).

It has been frustrating for many how the Democrats in congress have handled their position on the occupation (war to the gopists). It is certainly understandable how someone that never asked to be the center of all protests against the Bushys' Iraq policy to feel betrayed, and quit in discust.

Never fear though. We will be out of Iraq before the 2007 elections. All the GOPists will blame its failure on the "cut and run" politics of the Dems, it'll give them something to howl about. Not that it'll do them much good outside their 22% faithful.
:2cents:

Cindy Sheehan (BBC)


Zak, take note of "The US will rapidly descend into "a fascist corporate wasteland," she said, if "alternatives to this corrupt 'two' party system" are not found."

I'll fight in the Great Patriotic War when they hand me a gun and the guy next to me a clip...

hah, i couldn't agree more with what she said.

Zaknafien said:

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what's sad about it? the majority of americans dont give a **** about this war because they're not fighting it. I am, my brothers are, and their our families. No one has to sacrifice anything except maybe reading a bit of unpleasant news in the paper if they happen to feel like it that day. Its pathetic, it really is.

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I never really agree with Zak's presentation because its far to absolute, but I agree with his sentiment. I have family over there, in the "war on terror" and for the most part the country isnt fighting the war, the military is.

I have always said that if we are going to war, we need to become a wartime state. Bush chose not to do that, he did it on the cheap, and the result is a mess.

Sheehan for her part increased the awareness of sacrafice, something that most of us dont deal with. For those of us who have I commend her spirit and will to act. To bad she gave up now, as the political climate in the u.S. is heating up with elections.

She might have been able to parlay her stance into a louder voice on the issue of sacrafice, or lack there of.

There's a lot to criticize in the way the administration has prosecuted the war in Iraq. For raising those issues, I think Cindy Sheehan should be commended.

However, she allowed her anger and pain (understandable) to blind her to reason and promptly lost credibility by making ridiculous statements publicly, with no effort to even attempt to validate them.

She then went on to fall in love with her celebrity status (who has it that doesn't) and this was when she really lost credibility. Her ranting over the hurricane victims in Galveston TX pre-empting a speech she wanted to make in September 2005 was the final straw in my book.

America needs people to dissent, now more than ever. However, we need intelligent dissenters that don't come off like mindless shrills.

I bet she got a big check from the Dems...

The only time I'll agree with DailyKos

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Originally Posted by DailyKos

"Good Riddance Attention Whore"

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