Cindy Sheehan Quits The Anti-War Life
Two years ago, the national media anointed Cindy Sheehan as one of the leaders of the anti-war movement when the longtime Vacaville resident planted a lawn chair down the road from President Bush’s Texas vacation ranch and refused to leave until he explained what “noble cause” her soldier son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, died for in Iraq.
This week one of the anti-war movement’s most recognizable figures said she was “resigning” from the movement. Emotionally exhausted and politically frustrated at congressional Democrats for continuing to fund the Iraq war, Sheehan said she was leaving public life — albeit temporarily — to figure out her next step.
Anti-war leaders praised her bravery in putting a human face on the war’s toll, but said the movement will not be derailed by her departure. Analysts said Sheehan has become an increasingly polarizing figure since staging her impromptu “Camp Casey” in Crawford, Texas, in August 2005, especially after she appeared with Bush-bashing Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and announced that she would not pay federal income taxes to support the war.
“She did a tremendous thing in that she took her personal loss and made it public, so that people could understand the cost of the war,” said Nita Chaudhary, an anti-Iraq-war organizer for MoveOn.org. Sheehan had criticized MoveOn in March for not doing enough to oppose the war.
“The anti-war movement is now the person next door, it’s not just Cindy Sheehan,” Chaudhary said.
The mounting number of deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq — and the return of severely wounded soldiers speaking out about getting substandard treatment — has made Sheehan’s opposition to the war the predominant opinion.
When the mainstream press discovered Sheehan in Crawford, 55 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Bush was handling the war. Now, 72 percent of Americans oppose the war, according to a May CBS/New York Times poll.
Some of Sheehan’s opponents, like Roseville resident Deborah Johns, couldn’t be happier with the news of her departure.
One of Johns’ sons just returned from his third tour in Iraq, inspiring Deborah Johns to serve as a spokesperson for “You Don’t Speak for Me, Cindy,” a “counter-summer of 2005 Sheehan demonstration.”
“I was just like, ‘Hooray,’ when I heard the news,” Johns said. “I am glad she is going back under the rock she crawled out from under. Her negative attitude does a lot to harm the troops who are over there now. I do not know why the mainstream media was so enthralled with her.”
At first, the media wasn’t. And Sheehan’s critics like to point out that after Sheehan met Bush in June 2004, she said, “I know he’s sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he’s a man of faith.”
Any positive feelings Sheehan harbored for Bush soon dissipated. Soon she was calling him a “liar” a “filth-spewer” and worse.
One of Sheehan’s first major media appearances was in Sept. 2004, when The Chronicle brought together Northern California families who had a loved one killed in action in the Middle East.
Sheehan brought tears to many there when she held up a threadbare doll that belonged to her son.
“This is his teddy bear,” she said. “He ate all the fuzz off of it while he was a baby, but he wouldn’t go to bed without it. He would cry, ‘Bear, bear, mama, bear,’ ” she said.
Soon, other media outlets began to discover her story. She continued to make appearances across the country for various national anti-war organizations. In late 2004, she started her own organization, Gold Star Families for Peace, as a combination support group/activist organization.
During the summer of 2005, Sheehan was at a Veterans for Peace convention just outside of Dallas, when she announced she and a crew of other activists would camp near Bush’s vacation ranch until he addressed them.
Ordinarily, it was the sort of activist stunt that rarely gets covered by mainstream outlets. But the national press corps, which was sitting in Crawford during the president’s summer vacation and seeing precious little news coming out of the White House, pounced on the human interest story. Within days, Sheehan had done hundreds of interviews and supportive pilgrims — and celebrities like actor Viggo Mortensen — showed up on the triangular patch of grass a few miles down the road from Bush’s ranch to lend their support.
While she was still in Texas, MoveOn organized 1,625 supportive candlelight vigils across the country, as Sheehan’s story of a mother demanding answers from the president resonated in suburbs seemingly untouched by the war, like Pleasant Hill, the Contra Costa County suburb where 400 people attended a pro-Sheehan rally.
“She was a very good mix of the symbolic and the real. She was a real person who lost a real son and wanted real answers from a real president,” said Michael Nagler, a professor emeritus at UC-Berkeley and founder of its Peace and Conflict Studies program.
Anti-war leaders appreciated the media coverage she brought to the issue, but privately they worried. The peace movement had tried hard to be decentralized, and not push any of its leaders out front.
“There had been a conscious effort in the peace movement over the last 20 to 25 years to get away from having national leaders,” Nagler said. “That way if someone tried to pick off the leader, it would not end the movement.
“Now, the movement is deep enough and diverse enough. (Sheehan) served an important role,” Nagler said, “but her loss is not a crippling blow.”
Part of the reason is that as Sheehan’s story became iconic, she became a target for those who support the war, and a polarizing figure for others whom the peace movement desperately needed to reach. Some said she was exploiting her son’s death. In the January 2006 issue of Vanity Fair, Sheehan was photographed sitting on her son’s grave. National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg said it “may be the most shameless, exploitative stunt of the decade.”
On Memorial Day — on what would have been her son’s 28th birthday — Sheehan posted a long note on the liberal DailyKos.com blog titled “Good Riddance Attention Whore.”
“The most devastating conclusion I reached this morning,” she wrote, “was that Casey did indeed die for nothing.”
On a Tuesday appearance on the Ed Schultz radio show, Sheehan softened her stance a bit, saying that she would retool her organization into one focusing more on human rights and could be ready to announce a new venture within two months.
“Oh, no,” anti-Sheehan activist Johns said when told of the update. “I knew it was too good to be true.”
Regardless of how Sheehan resurfaces, Nancy Lessin, a founder of the anti-war organization Military Families Speak Out, noted that her influence will continue. There were only two families when Lessin’s organization started in the fall of 2002; now there are 3,500.
“Cindy Sheehan has provided a tremendous service,” Lessin said. “But the peace movement was around before Cindy Sheehan, and the peace movement will be around after her.”
E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.
© 2007 The San Francisco Chronicle
Hi Cindy,
my feelings on your withdrawal are twofold. I can understand your reasons, but you will be sorely missed among those who oppose this insane war. I, for one, was against this war from the very first, and sometimes don’t know if this war is as bad as Vietnam or worse. I was privileged to participate in one anti-war protest, and will take the very next opportunity to participate in another one if it occurs in New Orleans where I live. But I have also used the website of CODEPINK and United for Peace to send E-mails protesting this war. And I assure you I will not stop agitating until every American soldier is out of Iraq.
I also opposed this war from before it began. There were voices raised in opposition, there were voices questioning the “facts”, there were voices questioning the motives. Cindy Sheehan did the remarkable, almost the unthinkable, she got media attention. I can understand her frustration and sense of futility in pursuing her mission as she has for the last two years. There is a self-defeating compulsion amongst “progressive” with missions of stopping the war, saving the planet, immigration reform, saving whales, saving seals, saving the forests, stopping globalization, saving puppies and kittens, etc etc., which causes us to attack each other. We quibble about peoples’ commitment and their ethical purity as if we are all competing with each other. Instead of symbiotic support, we seem to be intent on cannibalism. I wonder why, when there is a rally against the Iraq War, for example, every Cause present in that time and that place whether globally concerned or locally concerned, feels they must get up on the stage and have their 15 - 30 minute rant. As a movement we are completely unfocused. Would it be rude or unreasonable to expect that an anti-war rally would be that? Not a fundraiser for the animal shelter, or stopping a local developer from putting up the latest strip mall?
So, I say to Cindy, “Great job! Thank you for putting yourself all out to end the stupidity of W’s War. And, I’m glad you didn’t let them kill you for your efforts.”
Cindy has proven herself to be a very sturdy and incorruptable leader. If we get Dennis Kucinich or someone else who is honest and good into the white house, they are sure to get lots of support by appointing Cindy as the secretary of state, Peace Czar or some other important post.
———————–
IIIMMMPPPEEEAAACCCHHH BUSH!
Ya’ll please don’t forget to call your politicians (ie: Pelosi) once a week telling them to impeach the war criminals in the white house!
Move on can move on and go kiss Bill and Hilary Klanton’s booties. Deborah can kiss my left wing booty. I wouldn’t cross the street to see Richard Gere sex her down for big time money paid for by the neo con dawgs, ya’ll!
Move on can move on and go kiss Bill and Hilary Klanton’s booties. Deborah Johns can kiss my left wing booty. I wouldn’t cross the street to see Richard Gere sex her down for big time money paid for by the neo con dawgs, ya’ll!
No I didn’t say this before, and that’s that.
Listen to Amy Goodman’s interview of Cindy, made this morning. Its worth it:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/30/1343243
Thank you, Cindy. Rest up. See you soon.
If Sheehan is the emotion and passion of the anti-war movement, then Andrew Bacevich is surely the intellect and reason.
It is ironic that both lost their sons to this imperial oil-war, and it is more than ironic that both reached the same ultimate conclusion, albeit from the differing paths of the heart and the mind —– that this war is an imperial war; launched and continued by an unaccountable ruling-elite Empire of money and power, which only poses as a democracy under the facade of its two-party “Vichy American” lie.
Sheehan’s heart and Bacevich’s mind reached the same correct conclusion that hopefully will not be lost on the feeling and thinking American population at large —- that this war is the unavoidable consequence of a government that has metastasized from democracy to Empire because of our inattention.
Hopefully, the American people will rise up against this murdering global corporate Empire that has stolen our government, stolen the lives of our children, and stolen the light of democracy from our country.
If all honest, average, ‘working class’ Americans reach the same ineluctable conclusion as Sheehan and Bacevich, and rise up against this guileful two-party lie of Empire, then perhaps the otherwise senseless deaths of our children will not have been entirely in vain.
Thanks to Cindy Sheehan for waking up so many sleeping ignorant Americans to the censored and silenced atrocities of war. Such efforts are not in vain, the numbers of those supporting peace grow everyday, and eventually we will prevail.
yet another saying Impeach Bush!
I was listening to the democracynow.org show. It doesn’t sound like Cindy Sheehan is ready to quit just yet. She’s suffering burn out, yes, but she ain’t leaving. Clearly, she was exaggerating out of understandable frustration. At one point, Amy even asked her, so are you really quitting? Cindy said something to the effect that no, she and her group, Gold Star Families, will just be retooling. It will be more humanitarian, less political. I don’t know what that means. I don’t think Cindy knows either. What I hope will happen is that her politics will now be independent of the Democrats, that she will orient toward the working class and socialism, but that she will remain political.
Listening to her voice is always rather thrilling. You can hear she has a really BIG heart.
Jessica Metcalf;I hope you never feel Cindy’s pain and how can you say she spit on her sons grave?Don’t you understand these people running this war are doing it for (MONEY) YOU STUPIT STUPID WOMEN. I fought in Nam,i went there after protesting it,because i protested it does that mean i spit on the USA?You promote more of our young people dying for oil and oil is power,I hope some of that power bleeds over on you.I hope your loved ones don’t come home draped in the red white and blue.I think in your writing you are some how glad that Cindy’s son came home draped in that flag.If she was protesting the war and she had no son in the war you would be saying she had no investment in the war and she should shutup.I think you are afraid for your own loved ones lives and this is the way you get around the fear,good for you,so you shit on a women that has lost her son. YOU MUST BE SO PROUD,AGAIN GOOD FOR YOU.
Hey Cindy,
I hope you will leave the USA for your health and happiness. This country is a cancer upon the earth. It can not be cured. Leave it while you still have some of your youth and vitality and sanity.
You are a saint for trying to fight the good fight, but your mission was impossible. You could show the world that you really have given up on this tragic fascist system by refusing to be part of it any longer.
Peace in your life,
Shannon
I think it’s great that Cindy pissed off so many Americans by making common cause with Chavez. The sooner Americans get over their sulk about Chavez — and Castro — the better. Neither of those two guys can hold a candle to that moron Bush when it comes to insulting other nation’s leaders. No wonder the US is #96 on the peacefulness index.
Dear American cousins from ‘across The Pond’,
[-this comment applies to a couple of different threads, so I hope I’m forgiven for posting it twice?]
___________________
I see many of you in anguish, anger, torment and deep frustration when you appraise your current leadership; and I feel a strong empathy with you, because we here in the UK suffer a similar situation.
Our UK (mis)-leaders are equally obsessed with helping to casually slaughter thousands of innocents abroad, - and to telling abhorrent lies, even as they live off the fat of the land, - all at our expense.
As with America, the UK leaders (such as the now quite insane megalomaniac Tony Blair) are blatantly ignoring the groundswell of public opinion which has zero interest in murdering innocent people in Iraq (-and elsewhere).
These are crimes against humanity based on shameless lies, just so that our purported leaders can continue to line their own pockets with the proceeds of their numerous follies and umpteen felonies.
UK leaders, -just as yours- are in league with all manner of malevolent devils, such as BAE Systems and other corrupt and evil weapons conglomerates.
Folks, I read your angry and plaintive comments here at Common Dreams: I see that many of you despair, and say that “…there is no hope for America…” etc.
But please forgive me if I disagree with that poignant conclusion?
I honestly believe that there *is* hope for America.
** You!!** … the millions of intelligent and progressive citizens of the USA are it’s Light, - and it’s hope!!
*You* are the flame held aloft in Liberty’s hand in New York!
And, I acknowledge and understand that at present many of you feel powerless and unheard.
And, I don’t underestimate the contemptible influence of your mass media to warp all truths, and to continue it’s hideously incestuous relationship with the rotting vegetables on Capitol Hill (et al).
But hey, … we are acknowledged to now being in the Aquarian Age, and I’m reminded of the British-born American, Thomas Paine, (-a fellow Aquarian) who wrote his ‘Common Sense’ pamphlet back in 1776:
In that stirring and visionary epistle he sought to inspire those who were flagging, - with these lines:
“…These are the times that try men’s souls.
The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
Thom Paine went on to call Napoleon, “…the completest charlatan that ever existed…”
But we all now know that in regard to sharks and murderous crooks, the (mis)-governments of Bush and Blair have far surpassed any peccadilloes committed by Bonaparte in Thomas Paine’s era.
**We, -the intelligent, perspicacious progressives of the world are, in truth, the light and hope for this world!!** -let us not be the ” summer soldier” or “sunshine patriot”? (-or the stoned out, drunk, depressed ones either?) - but instead commit our wonderful potency to winning out over the reprobates currently infesting the corridors of power?
*If we fully commit to winning, then they will not.*
Because it is we who have, in fact, the power and force of ‘right’ on our side.
Do any of us imagine that ‘the angels’ or ‘gods’ – the unseen powers of ‘Righteousness’, are for one millisecond backing or supporting those rotten and toxic toads at present in power?
~ Not a chance!
If we give up, -or give in, we are letting both ourselves, and our countries down.
We are also letting the world, - and all it’s downtrodden, impoverished and suffering people down.
__________________
Personally speaking, I have been ‘fighting the good fight’ since I was about 16 years old, (I’m over 50 now) and nothing any rotten-to-the-core government does, is going to stop me.
I have committed to carry on fighting till my very last breath, - and where I leave off, my children will follow in my footsteps…
_________________
I know it’s hard guys, -really damned hard!! -but whoever said ‘the revolution’ was gonna be a walk in the park?
It takes effort, and sacrifice, and it may even involve turning off our TV’s asinine twaddle occasionally, -or deciding to creatively act or protest in some way or another, -in place of going out shopping, or sporting, -or drinking!
[Oh no! ~ Heaven forefend!]
But hey, … every single ounce of energy put in, to following Thom Paine’s (or Cindy’s) great example is really worthwhile, is very important and very useful.
Even if we don’t see immediate results, it still always has a beneficial effect.
Patience is a real virtue when revamping the world!
And we will, ~ ABSOLUTELY~ and assuredly, eventually see the end of rule by greedy, murderous villains, and then the start of a whole new era of more enlightened governance.
So let’s not give in, but ‘give out’ a little more?
~~ And never, ever, give up…
_____________________
If you have been, -thanks for reading!
Yan, UK
nice work, Yan, UK. i love your positive spirit and agree with you whole-heartedly. i believe we are in the Age of Aquarius (loved the 5th Dimension!) and that some of us on this earth are evolving spiritually, while others - and we know who they are - are devolving. poor things…i don’t know how any of them sleep at night.
anyhoo, good on ya.
Cindy Sheehan has more courage, more true patriotism, and a greater commitment to democracy than all the hundreds of US congresspersons put together. History will show that she was right all along while Bush and the supine US Congress led America right into the mire. I used to enjoy reading Cindy’s pieces; they chronicled her growth as a person and expressed many of my own frustrations about myopic US international policy. But there comes a time when we all get exhausted and I understand Cindy Sheehan’s decision. The fire that she lit now must be stoked by others until a conflagaration of indignation and anger at the destruction of America by the Bush Gang becomes the crucible of a new beginning.
Cindy has done great work. I understand that burnout and disillusionment can occur. This new Congress is NOT what we had hoped for.
I would like to suggest that Cindy rest and recover and then work on behalf of Dennis kucinich’s Presidential campaign.
We need to keep putting pressure on Congress for HR 333, the Cheney impeachment. Pelosi’s number is 202-225-0100. John Conyers needs to be contacted regularly too.
Attention! Johns: It is self-evident that Johns from Deborah to Conyers aren’t Listening To THE MAJORITY then (55%) and AREN’T LISTENING now (72%)! Time for a new Declaration of Independence.
Cindy Sheehan needs to be seen for what she is: an intent, but frail, canary. She has been drawn down into the mines within America where new meanings are forged onto old visages, where compacts are shredded and values burned in sulpherous flames.
The atmosphere there is covert and toxic, but it is rising up around us more rapidly each day. Too many of our citizenry are either too complacent with their worldly goods, too enamored with the trappings of power - having it or knowing someone that has it - , or too burned out from having too little too long despite the too many words about how swell everything is to notice the increasing density of noxious fumes engulfing us.
We need to look scrupulously at the waning of Ms. Sheehan’s commitment and activism. She is collapsing, heart and soul, from something that has us all in harm’s way.
Hopefully she is demonstrating the good sense of flying away, saving herself from both a covertly reconstructed America and the indifference that let her stand alone until, at least, she recognised that continued passivity in the face of utterly corrupt leadership and representation will in all likelihood poison to death all that once made us proud to be Americans.
If we are serious about what we are to mean to one another as fellow citizens with a common, decent social contract, we’d better stop watching the canaries wane and die and forcefully bring government out into the light and make it ethical, representative, and fully accountable to a standard, agreed upon, set of common values, values that reinvest being American with genuine, hard-earned pride.
Thank you, Ms. Sheehan. If you find it pejorative to be called an “American,” then be proud of what you have done as a caring human being who has amply shown that you value “each” life and are willing to confront those who lamely justify war.
Peter M. Stocks
Riverside, CA
I have an idea to show solidarity for Cindy Sheehan.
I suggest the following:
From June 4th until July 4th, WE act in solidarity with Cindy Sheehan, so we quit. No more criticism of the War, no criticism of Bush, no criticism of the Dems, no one utters a peep of dissent (we aren’t being listened to, as she said, anyway). During this time of Deafening Silence, we can each utilize our full academic arsenal using our right to free speech to prepare the speech of our lifetimes, to be presented to whoever will listen to us on the 4th of July.
It will be very quiet when the forums go silent and people know that everyone is using the time to prepare their speech of a lifetime for a live audience.
Imagine on the Fourth of July when people leave their houses with speech in hand and go out into public to Read their speech to those who will listen. If you can you should even memorize your speech to give even greater effect.
The breaking of the silence will break like a wave of refreshing water, soothing the dryness that will surely come about in our absence.
“When the mainstream press discovered Sheehan in Crawford, 55 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Bush was handling the war. Now, 72 percent of Americans oppose the war, according to a May CBS/New York Times poll.”
And people say that the anti-war movement is a failure.
“If all honest, average, ‘working class’ Americans reach the same ineluctable conclusion as Sheehan and Bacevich, and rise up against this guileful two-party lie of Empire, then perhaps the otherwise senseless deaths of our children will not have been entirely in vain.”
I think they already have. Hopefully they’ll just get out and vote for the right people. Turning over cars, shouting, and tussling with cops won’t do it.
She’ll be back.
It’s funny because I remember all the names I got called and abuse I suffered when I spoke up against this war before it began. Now a strong majority see this whole home invasion for what it is. I’m almost hard-pressed to find people who are gung-ho about Iraq anymore. Even people I know who are right-wing see Bush at the very least as a buffoon. It’s just a shame that people didn’t see it from the beginning. So much death could have been avoided. But greed prevailed.
I get frustrated too. There are times I want to do what George Carlin has said, sit back and watch “the freakshow”. I even get mad at other people on the left. Sometimes we’re our own spoiler.
Thank you, Cindy, for your courage and commitment to truth, both publicly expressed and internally lived in your heart. Your voice has touched so many people; you will never know all the good effects your sacrifices have had. I cannot agree that your Casey died in vain, though I respect your feeling. It was through his sacrifice that your journey became that of tens of thousands of Americans. Your grief has watered the soil in which heartfelt qualities can sprout again. Now the time for rest and self-healing comes for you. As someone else has said, it’s part of the ebb and flow, and we need to preserve our own humanity in the midst of these ’slings and arrows’ in order to find our next place of truth.
The feeling of betrayal and deep disappointment can’t be overcome in an instant, yet didn’t most of us know the votes just weren’t there? Too many Dems fom “safe” seats paying back favors from how many years ago? Or making sure the pork keeps greasing their congressional districts?
Yan/UK,
I read your comments, and I thought they were great. I see lot’s of people on Common Dreams from other coutries contributing, and I’ve tried to find a UK one that was similar. Do you know on?
Thanks,