Cindy Sheehan ends her protest

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Bill Glasheen
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Cindy Sheehan ends her protest

Post by Bill Glasheen »

The last week of politics has been way more than fascinating with all the political posturing going on in Washington vis-a-vis Iraq. My personal opinion all along is that there was more posture than principle in word and deed.

By the end of the week, Congress sent The President the "no strings attached" funding bill he asked for. The only thing that seemed to matter was the individual votes from presidential wannabes.

I'm a bit of a cynic about a lot of things in life. But this article really captures a lot of the sadness in it all. Such strong feelings expressed; so little accomplished. So much heat; so little light.

I am not a Cindy Sheehan fan. But I have to say that I grieve for her loss, and agree with some of what she says. She was used by those who didn't have her best interests in mind.

A loss is a loss is a loss, however well or badly it is taken. While I disagree with her approach and many of her actions, I admire anyone who has the passion to act for things they believe in. Sadly in my opinion Cindy always came up a few cards short of a deck as she reached for a meaningful end to her son's demise.

- Bill

FORT WORTH, Texas - Cindy Sheehan, the soldier’s mother who galvanized an anti-war movement with her monthlong protest outside President Bush’s ranch, says 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 by phone Tuesday 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 grassroots peace movement in August 2005 when she set up camp outside the Bush ranch for 26 days, asking to talk with the president about the death of her son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan. Casey Sheehan was 24 when he was killed in an ambush in Baghdad.

Protests grew in size
Cindy Sheehan started her protest small, but it quickly drew national attention. Over the following two years, she drew huge crowds as she spoke at protest events, but she also drew a great deal of criticism.

“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."

‘Heartbreaking conclusions’
On Memorial Day, she came to some “heartbreaking conclusions,” she wrote.

When she had first taken on Bush, Sheehan 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.

“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,'” the diary says.

Sheehan criticized “blind party loyalty” as a danger, no matter which side it involved, and said the current two-party system is “corrupt” and “rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland.”

Harsh national assessment
Sheehan said she had 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.”

But 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.”

“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,” she wrote. “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 am going to take whatever I have left and go home,” Sheehan wrote. “Camp Casey has served its purpose. It’s for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas?”

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

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 told the AP. “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.”

© 2007 The Associated Press
- Sheehan resigns as Iraq war protest leader
MikeK
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Post by MikeK »

“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.”
Is that a messiah complex showing? What hubris.

Something she and others of her ilk don't understand is that it's always been up to us. It's up to us to hold our elected officials feet to the fire, to boot their asses out of office when they are more concerned with their power than their job, and not to whine when those we elected do what we asked them to do in our name.

Good riddance.
I was dreaming of the past...
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Bill Glasheen
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Post by Bill Glasheen »

She's not alone in this loathing, Mike, however twisted her perspective.

Just for grins, go to any article in USA Today about Bush or Iraq where they have a forum for reader comments. The same delusional thinking is alive and well out there. Cindy may not have had two feet on the ground, but she always had an audience.

More BDS I guess... ;)

At least now maybe she'll get on with the rest of her grieving process.

- Bill
MikeK
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Joined: Wed Oct 27, 2004 9:40 pm

Post by MikeK »

Image

Grieve she should, Casey was quite a man and a son a mom would be proud of. Sad that all of the silliness that surrounded his mom and those pushing her overshadowed one of those people who by their sacrifice make this country great.
From Wikipedia...
May 29, 1979–April 4, 2004) was a Specialist in the United States Army who was killed by enemy action while serving in the Iraq War. He is the son of Cindy Sheehan, who subsequently has become a prominent anti-war protester, and Patrick Sheehan, a sales representative.

Early years

He joined the Cub Scouts at the age of six. At eight he became an altar server at his church. In 1996, he attained the rank of Eagle Scout, the second one awarded by his Boy Scout Troop (180).[1] After his death, the Casey Austin Sheehan Memorial Award was created as an annual award to honor his memory.

He graduated from Vacaville High School in Vacaville, California with honors in 1997. In 2000 he graduated from Solano Community College with an associate's degree in Drama.[2]

Military service

In May 2000, Sheehan enlisted in the United States Army as a light-wheeled vehicle mechanic, MOS 63B. It has been reported that he had originally wanted to be a Chaplain's assistant MOS 56M. (Sheehan had acted as an altar server during the Palm Sunday mass on the morning of his death).[3]

Near the end of his tour of duty, the U.S. invasion of Iraq began. Sheehan re-enlisted, knowing that his unit would be sent to Iraq[4]. Sheehan's division, the First Cavalry Division, was sent to Iraq. On March 19, 2004, Sheehan's unit, C Battery, 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment arrived at FOB War Eagle in Sadr City. Just a few weeks later, on April 4, 2004, Sheehan was killed in action after volunteering as part of a Quick Reaction Force to rescue American troops.

Casey Sheehan was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal with V for Valor posthumously for actions in Iraq April 4, 2004.[1]

The chapel at Fort Hood started a new Knights of Columbus chapter that was named the Specialist Casey Austin Sheehan Council.[5]

Sheehan is buried in Vacaville-Elmira Cemetery in Vacaville, California. In May 2006, his mother provided a tombstone at his grave following criticism that Casey, who died in 2004, lacked a gravestone. Cindy Sheehan paid for the tombstone herself, stating "It is important for the rest of Casey's family to have one... I guess the pain of seeing it etched in marble that he is dead is another pain I will have to deal with." Cindy Sheehan maintains that the U.S. "government should have paid for it because of its responsibility for his death." The Department of Veterans Affairs does provide such monuments upon request.[6]


When I was at Borders today I noticed a little BDS in the form of a GWB voodoo doll.
I was dreaming of the past...
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mhosea
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Post by mhosea »

I just don't believe that he died for nothing. If for no other reason, he died for his comrades.
Mike
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