Cindy Sheehan Quits, Blames Democrats

[Moltar]

From MSN

Sheehan resigns as Iraq war protest leader
Mother of fallen soldier drained by biting criticism, partisan politics


Cindy Sheehan quits
May 29: Activist Cindy Sheehan ends her public campaign against the war in Iraq. Sheehan began protesting after her son, Casey, was killed in combat in 2004. MSNBC.com's Dara Brown reports.
MSNBC.com




Updated: 1 hour, 45 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, 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. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Posted without comment for the moment.

[Darth Raptor]

I can't argue with any of that. The Democratic Party is niether liberal nor is it anything resembling an opposition party. They're every bit as cynical, manipulative and corrupt as the Republicans, from which they're distinguished only by their abject cowardice and incoherence. Unfortunately, America has not just been hijacked by a few powerful, amoral politicians. This country's problems are so much deeper than that. Fundamental even, springing from the ground up and originating with the hordes of ignorant boobs who really don't care about anything beyond their own shallow, pointless lives.

Gotta love the faux magnanimity on the part of that Freeper, too.

[Spyder]

The US would do quite well if the Republicans were excised and a true left wing party was installed. The democrats would be better suited to the right.

[Sea Skimmer]

Good for her, maybe now she can put herself back together mentally, its kind of hard to take someone seriously who called for US troops to pull out of New Orleans

[Elfdart]

It's even harder to take someone seriously who brings up red herrings to change the subject from the war.



Anyway, the final straw wasn't just the Democrats taking it up the ass one more time from Dubya, it was Dem hacks sliming her with the same shit she was getting two years ago from the Freepers and Lying Green Fucktards -this time the humanoids over at DU.

Sheehan's full letter is here:

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

[Keevan_Colton]

Good for her, maybe now she can put herself back together mentally, its kind of hard to take someone seriously who called for US troops to pull out of New Orleans

Yeah, even harder to take folks that wouldnt let the red cross into New Orleans seriously though.

[Sea Skimmer]

It's even harder to take someone seriously who brings up red herrings to change the subject from the war.

Hey moron, in case you forgot she made that little idiotic statement in the same sentence as a call for a pullout from Iraq!

[Flagg]

Even though I agree with her general position and sympathize with her, at some point she became more of a liability than a benefit to the anti-Iraq War movement. It's sad, but it's political reality and I'm glad she won't be in the spotlight anymore.

[18-Till-I-Die]

I think she was very brave and handled herself well. She took a lot of shit from a lot of dickless wonders who, the cowards that they are, couldnt even bullshit her face to face and instead decided to do it over the media and various "blogs" and shit. Nerveless little pricks. I also sympathize with her and what she's been through. Unfortunately she found out the hard way that the American people seem to prefer taking it up the rear from the Republicans, and that the Dems are spineless retards who like it even more. Hopefully a newer, less pussified Democratic administration will take over soon enough...God willing, it'll be Obama, who at least has a pair...but lets be honest he's black, this is America, maybe in like 2098 but not 2008.

[Coyote]

When was she decided as the "leader of the anti-war protest movement"? Is that something you can "resign" from? Did it have full benefits, plus dental? Funny how she does that and complains about how they "... put personal egos above peace and human life.”

She thrust herself into a very public and controversial position and was apparantly stunned to discover that not only do a number of people disagree with her, but think she's a goofball. She wasn't prepared to handle that rejection-- on top of losing her son.

I feel bad for her loss, but her antics made her an object of ridicule, not moral authority. Now it looks like she's developed a martyr complex so large it dwarf's Shep's collection of military books.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Yeah sure. Whatever Coyote. If most Americans had the balls to call Bush on his actions more often we wouldnt NEED a fucking anti-war movement. It's aways easy for people to criticise from afar without actually putting any energy, money, time or even one's dignity up for it. The Republicans have so many partisans in the general public they dont need to attack most people who call them on their bullshit; it's easier to have blogs and morons on talk radio call them "nutjobs", "whackaloons", "nutbars" and other such made up phrases that have all the meaning of half the Newspeak Dictionary.

At least she was brave enough to stand up for what she believed. Thats more than i can say of most Americans, who are more than willing to accept the status quo as long as they're confortable, nevermind that peopel are dying by the thousands in Iraq because of what they did, who they voted for. That line from Hotel Rowanda still rings true: People look up from their paper and see people dying on the other side of the world, they say "Oh! How horrible!" then go back to reading the paper like nothing ever happened.

[Coyote]

You call her antics dignified?

What do you look for in an anti-war protester? Do you honestly think that a wild-eyed shrill like Rosie O'Donnell, for example, is really going to sway people's thoughts?

And as for name-calling, just wait. I haven't yet been called a "war whore" or "fasict urinal-cake eating death fetishest" yet for daring to disagree with Sheehan. But as soon as, say, Elfy or Keevan see what I wrote, you'll get an eyeful of how well the other side of things can comport themselves when I take a casual swing at their sacred cow pinata.

[Aaron]

I think it's truely unfortunate that she sacrificed her marriage to do this and I hope she can rebuild her life.

[18-Till-I-Die]

You call her antics dignified?

What do you look for in an anti-war protester? Do you honestly think that a wild-eyed shrill like Rosie O'Donnell, for example, is really going to sway people's thoughts?

And as for name-calling, just wait. I haven't yet been called a "war whore" or "fasict urinal-cake eating death fetishest" yet for daring to disagree with Sheehan. But as soon as, say, Elfy or Keevan see what I wrote, you'll get an eyeful of how well the other side of things can comport themselves when I take a casual swing at their sacred cow pinata.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same jive new suit.

She called the bullshitters on their bullshit and wasnt nice about it. Oh no, oh boohoo, boohoohoo. Quick someone call some nice white bread helmet-haired yuppie like Meradith Viera to come and kiss their booboos away!

You know what, yeah if thousands of people are dying because of ONE GUY then i expect people to be "shrill" and "wild eyed". Whatever the fuck that means. I guess you were trying to say "pissed" and "unappologetic about it". I dont give a fuck about the niceties of political discorse, or whatever. Bunch of PC nonsense that sounds like Newspeak only with less meaning and more ambiguity. No thanks. Someone needs to stand up to these people we have in power and show them that they cant do whatever they please and not suffer the consequences.

But the sad fact is, as most anti-war Americans found out, is that the people dont want their thoughts swayed. They dont want to admit they voted for that creep in office. They dont want to accept that, yeah, our system failed and it failed pretty hard and now a huge number of innocents are dead. If anyone gave a shit at all they'd drag Shrub out of his summer palace and ship him off to Iraq to see how his great plan for reconstruction is going. Only minus the bullet proof vest, army escort and chopper support that some shmuck like McCain gets.

[Coyote]

<blather>

Ah, I get it. Because I don't like Sheehan, I must be pro-Bush, huh?

Fuck, with a standing broad jump like that, you should be in the Olympics.

Bush is a moron and an asstard. Said it before, I'll say it again. But if I wanted a public spokesperson to stand up and call Bush on his bullshit, It wouldn't be Sheehan. Someone with class and delivery. Maybe Colbert, for example.

Sheehan's greatest tragedy is that she was a tool, and got played like a cheap violin by the folks that want to relive their own private Bildungsroman version of the '60's.

[Lonestar]

Don't you know Coyote? In 18's world, daring to say the woman went off the deepend means that you're a frothing Bushite.

Hope that cleared things up for you.

[18-Till-I-Die]

I never said you were pro-Bush, frankly i dont care who is pro-Bush or not, i'm not "anti-Bush" i'm antibullshit...the fact that Bush produces more bullshit every day than a fucking cattlefarm is not my fault. But to be honest you're one of those who seems to think we need to be nice to these people who are effectively mass murderers. I dont. What i want in a "spokesman" is someone who will call it like it is, who will attack them on their failures and stand up to them without being cowed like most Dems are. Class and delivery dont mean shit when, in the example of Colbert, the person is generally considered a literal joke. Unfortunately you can clone Martin Luther King and have him speak out against the war and they'd STILL make hima laughing stock.

In this country, if you dont agree with the government they label you a "nutbar" or "conspiracy theorist". Those smart enough to see the truth are too afraid to say it because they dont want to be branded a "crazy" or something. It's basically the entire purpose of the massive Neocon infrastructure in talk radio and on the internet. People look at someone who shows ZERO respect for these crooks, liars and murderers and they see some crazy woman who cant deal with her kid dying or some shit. Thats why Bush is in power now insted of laying outside of the White House witha bootmark on his ass after the second election.

Don't you know Coyote? In 18's world, daring to say the woman went off the deepend means that you're a frothing Bushite.

Hope that cleared things up for you.

Fuck you man. Try actually discussing the issue instead of sniping from long range like a pussy and me-tooing.

[Elfdart]

When was she decided as the "leader of the anti-war protest movement"?

By default.

Is that something you can "resign" from?

Yes.

Did it have full benefits, plus dental?

Apparently not. She's broke from being hospitalized last year.

Funny how she does that and complains about how they "... put personal egos above peace and human life.”

Why is that funny?

She thrust herself into a very public and controversial position and was apparantly stunned to discover that not only do a number of people disagree with her, but think she's a goofball. She wasn't prepared to handle that rejection-- on top of losing her son.

If she can handle losing a son for the war whores, being slimed is easy. On the other hand the death threats (a Republitard specialty) probably weren't much fun.

I feel bad for her loss,

No you don't.

but her antics made her an object of ridicule, not moral authority.

She was slimed and ridiculed because if there's one thing people can't stand it's those who have been wronged. People also tend to resent their betters.

Now it looks like she's developed a martyr complex so large it dwarf's Shep's collection of military books.

She sacrificed just about everything, fucktard. Calling her outrage a "martyr complex" is like calling Otto Frank's devotion to his daughter's memory a "victim complex". So fuck you.

[Lonestar]

Longrange? I'm right here. I am saying this to you, 18-til-I-die, you have a history of implying or insinuating "anything/anyone anti-Bush is a sacred cow, no matter how bughouse nuts they may be" and these posts in this thread have renforced

And that comment came from your kneejerk swipe at Coyote about how we were all cowards because we didn't go cuckoo for co-co puffs like she did. Obviously, I can't reach into the mind of her son, so I don't know what he would think. I do know that if I were overseas and I kicked it pretty much the last fucking thing I would want is my mother going down the road Ms. Seehan did.

Coyote is right. She has done nothing for the antiwar movement, but she has succeeded in destroying her marriage and any credibility she might have had.

I'm hitting the pit, I have a 0400 wake up so don't think I'm running off.

[Darth Raptor]

What did Cindy Sheehan ever do that was actually crazy in the non-imaginary, codeword-for-immoderate sort of way?

[Elfdart]

Don't you know Coyote? In 18's world, daring to say the woman went off the deepend means that you're a frothing Bushite.

Hope that cleared things up for you.

But in Lonestar's world it takes two weeks to set up an incredibly lame April Fool's joke.

Bush is a moron and an asstard. Said it before, I'll say it again. But if I wanted a public spokesperson to stand up and call Bush on his bullshit, It wouldn't be Sheehan. Someone with class and delivery. Maybe Colbert, for example.

A comedian. Funny thing is, I don't remember anyone else at the time opposing the war (NOT some chickenshit like whining about the price tag) as effectively as she did. She was so effective that Republitards threatened her life, acted like hoodlums in Crawford and slimed her eight ways from Sunday. Name someone who did a better job of opposing the war.

Sheehan's greatest tragedy is that she was a tool, and got played like a cheap violin by the folks that want to relive their own private Bildungsroman version of the '60's.

Oh no! Anything but that! I guess it would be better to lose another 3000 troops and another 700,000 Iraqis than to so much as consider anything those Damn Dirty Hippies might approve of as having merit. Maybe Casey Sheehan and others like him died for a noble cause after all: a delaying action to save us from Damn Dirty Hippies.

[Elfdart]

What did Cindy Sheehan ever do that was actually crazy in the non-imaginary, codeword-for-immoderate sort of way?

Nothing, which is why they really hate her.

[Starglider]

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.

Unfortunately this is an instant turn-off for everyone who sucked up the 'go Amerika woo! USA take it or leave it! you're either with us or against us!' Republican fake-patriotic propaganda - and that seems to be a good chunk of the US population right now.

[Anguirus]

I have a question. Why are criticisms of Cindy Sheehan either violent or patronizing?

Kristinn Taylor and Coyote both assumed that she was manipulated by leftists (as in, too stupid to make her own decisions). Sea Skimmer and Lonestar both simply said that she was crazy. Why can't anyone ever simply disagree with her?

Christ, I don't agree with everything she's ever said, and I don't think she's a saint. But, I have a hell of a lot of respect for anyone who puts everything on the line for a good cause. She's done a lot more good than any of us, and at the very least she's earned respect for the sheer amount of petty bullshit she's stood up to. The only "offensive" thing she ever said is what many of us have been saying to ourselves and to each other on this message board: the war is wrong and we should pull out. She just had the will to take it public and endure the slings and arrows of those who spin dissent as weakness and treason.

She wants a rest? She's earned it. I'm not criticizing her for that, considering that my only real dissent has been from the safety of my computer.

[Coyote]

Three.....two....one.....bing!


Right on cue.