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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.
Forum posts
30 May 2007, 04:26
No Cindy, you didn’t fail your boy or America. America failed you and your boy...
30 May 2007, 15:45
Cindy, you have carried the water long enough and you have done a yeoman’s job in doing so. The "Peace Movement," such as it is in the US, is moribund, but you did what you could to give it life. Sorry to say, but it will take a draft to galvanize the masses against the imperial policies of the United States government. And, yes, the Democratic and Republican parties are two sides to the same coin. They both serve the corporate interests that profit from war and the maintenance of their global preeminence in the world economy.
2 June 2007, 07:44
Who BOTH parties serve is not ONLY corporate, military,industrial complex but NWO and AIPAC TOO! But certainly they do NOT serve us taxpayer’s or middle or poor classes but AIPAC and NWO and they serve Israel instead of America and majority are out and out traitors, and worse, period! Anyone who still believes people in BOTH parties are NOT in bed with each other is living in lala land! Hell, Both Bush’s and both Clinton’s go on vacation together! All the BOGUS so called "fighting" is for SHOW for sheeple and masses, when push comes to shove, THEY ALL VOTE THE WAY DICTATOR BUSH WANTS THEM TO! ALL OF THEM! WAKE UP SHEEPLE! NWO IS RUNNING AND RUINING NOT ONLY AMERICA BUT WORLD TOO! PURE EVIL, SATAN WORSHIPPER’S THEY ARE! Cindy, you put up with alot! America or most of it anyway, failed not only you but your son and thousands others! So glad you finally came on board for 9-11 truth movement! Told you they were both connected and that 9-11 truth movement did not take away from anti-war movement but added to it! Natural allies! Once people realize 9-11 was an inside job they are immediately anti-war!
31 May 2007, 13:43
It seems to me a lot of the pain you have endured was because you believed in a country. But you finally came to the realization that this belief causes more harm than good. You are free now.
3 June 2007, 01:32
http://BurningBush.blogspot.com
The Ghosts of America At Empire’s End
$€$€$€$€$€$€$€$€$€$€$€$€$€$€$€$€$
Drifting overhead through two centuries
on warm summer breezes like butterflies
wisps of cotton from the cracked fingers of
black African hands with faces reflecting
over the oil-slicked seas to Ms. Liberty
likewise a heartbeat of drums in the distance
chanting a magical reality through ages
above monuments & asphalt horizons
challenging: "what planet are you from?"
Driving by us the limousine of J.F.K.
replaying that day in Dallas for every child
upon the screen of public conscience
in the silence at the back of the theatre
now our main feature the Twin Towers of NYC
amidst swirling clouds of demolition dust
we cannot hear the ghostly screams & truth
no mention made of Building 7 blowing up
collapsing in an obvious planned event
An army of youth in uniform with missing limbs
minds askew burning with shame & pain
line the corridors of our wars for "freedom"
trying to tell us the truth about dying
while secrets are swept behind screens
until our story becomes an avoidance
a series of shadows pasted over the truth
in the silence filled with spies & aliens
where the Bush family hides its Nazi fortunes
Entire cultures exist in America’s ghostlands
Native nations Hawaiians veterans refugees
the war machine grows armed with secrecy
money changes accounts billions behind us
noone dares mention the outstanding crimes
or murderous tactics & nuclear warheads
the unanswered questions about 9-11 so
we continue to tumble through time
in a CIA-spy clown-show culture of lies
we’re Alice the American in blunderland
Now ghosts of Rome join our legion
whispering warnings about wickedness
truth denied justice delayed war above all
until we are surrounded by ghosts & shadows
terrorized by ourselves into silence
allowing the killing to continue on & on
our bombs to be deployed & children
charged the future cost of colonial rule
because our truth is not being told
our destiny is measured by ghosts
Irregular Unit 008
Perception Recovery Collective
http://CosmoCorps.org
PS: Our recent challenge to the Bush family: "Are you still colonizers?" posed,
as it was from the Reinstated Nation of Hawai’i, was answered with a resounding
"Royal decree" at Jamestown & the White House... at "Her Majesty’s" pleasure.
Let the wargames continue, faithful colonists! Loyal to Royal OIL...
Los fantasmas de América El mandilar por encima con dos siglos en verano caliente breezes como wisps de las mariposas del algodón de los dedos agrietados de las manos del africano negro con las caras que reflejan sobre los mares del aceite-slicked a ms Liberty además un latido del corazón de tambores en la distancia que canta una realidad mágica con edades sobre los monumentos y los horizontes del asfalto desafiadores: "qué planeta es usted?" Conduciendo por nosotros la limusina de J.F.K. ahora que juega de nuevo ese día en Dallas para cada niño sobre la pantalla de la conciencia pública en el silencio en la parte posteriora del teatro nuestra característica principal las torres gemelas de NYC en medio de las nubes que remolinan del polvo de la demolición que no podemos oír que los gritos y la verdad fantasmales ninguna mención hizo del edificio 7 que soplaba encima de derrumbarse en un acontecimiento previsto obvio Un ejército de la juventud en uniforme con los miembros que falta importa oblicuamente el quemarse con vergüenza y la línea del dolor los pasillos de nuestras guerras para la "libertad" que intentaba decirnos que la verdad sobre morir mientras que los secretos se barren detrás de las pantallas hasta que nuestra historia se convierte en una evitación a la serie de sombras pegó sobre la verdad en el silencio llenó de los espías y de los extranjeros donde la familia de Bush oculta sus fortunas nazis Las culturas enteras existen en los refugiados nativos de los veteranos de los hawaiians de las naciones de los ghostlands de América que la máquina de la guerra crece armada con mil millones de las cuentas de los cambios del dinero del secreto detrás de nosotros noone se atreve la mención los crímenes excepcionales o las cabezas nucleares murderous del táctica y nucleares las preguntas por contestar cerca de 9-11 así que continuamos cayendo con tiempo en una cultura de CIA-spy payaso-show de mentiras somos Alicia el americano en blunderland Ahora los fantasmas de Roma ensamblan nuestras advertencias susurrantes de la legión sobre verdad de la maldad negaron guerra retrasada justicia sobretodo hasta que los fantasmas nos rodeamos y las sombras terrorized por nosotros mismos en silencio permitiendo que la matanza continúe en y en nuestras bombas que se desplegarán y los niños cargó el coste futuro de la regla colonial porque nuestra verdad no se está diciendo nuestro destino es medida por los fantasmas Maternidad Colectiva De Mauna Kea De la Recuperación De la Opinión De Zee @ Bombshelter.org De la Abejahttp://CosmoCorps.org
colectivo de la opinión de la unidad 008 Picosegundo: Nuestro desafío reciente a la familia de Bush: "todavía está usted los colonizadores?" presentado, mientras que era de la nación reinstalada de Hawai’i, fue contestado con un "decreto real resounding" en Jamestown y la casa blanca... en el placer de "su majestad". ¡Deje los wargames continuar, los colonos fieles! Leal al ACEITE...
Bill Moyers Journal: "Buying the War" (online video)
"Buying the War," a documentary film from Bill Moyers, examines the media’s coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy. And four years after the invasion, Mr. Moyers wonders what has changed? Truthout provides the full documentary and a transcript of the program.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042707H.shtml
9 June 2007, 04:20
IN THE QUR’AN, THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD [PBUH] COMMENTS THAT THE MAJORITY OF THE INHABITANTS OF HELL WILL BE WOMEN.
11 June 2007, 05:39
Really? Cite the verse poster above-you can’t unless it was a lie written by a man. Hell will be inhabited by mostly men, for they are the creators of death, while women create life.
11 June 2007, 17:19
LOL woman kill just as much ....
24 June 2007, 04:30
And thats why he advised to get 40 women or more on this earth for muslims to get used to it afterwards !!
24 June 2007, 05:25
The true point which is alarming for the progressive people here, and applies to the left forces all over the world is that, in the present conditions, with an explosion of Fiduciary Credit Capitals and open criminals corrupting the whole world’s politicians and large pans of people, the middle classes and creating large stable labor aristocracy, by this Fiduciary Speculated money system, people are either too busy for getting a descent survival living conditions in USA or Europe or other industrial countries, or too much crushed under poverty-wars-genocide-disease-refugee problems to be able to resist the heavily armed and supported fascists and politicians ! The communist movement and other progressive forces have been betrayed from within and unable to form a world wide front against this colossal corruption mechanism ! I am crying in the desert since 1997, for conscious left people to come forward and begin to structure The Fifth International with a new revolutionary strategy of 2, 3, 4 Vietnams organized against this collossal corupted globalized mechanism, but I find not even one honest person to decide for it !!! Yes the left is to be blamed and more so the more conscious ones and even more so the organizations and parties having large social bases or means to do it, but they remain on dogmatic old ways and means with old theories that do not apply anymore ! Indeed the most honest people and thousands like cindy must be extreemly frustrated to go on and drop all of their efforts in the advanced countries as much as in the poverty striken ones or the other countries governed by the fascists and corrupted people ruling in the name of absent Gods or Allahs sending the most valiant ones to blow themselves up while the fat cats and priests or mullahs or other religious leaders enjoy with their lives and women and amassed Fiduciary capital and properties !
I have decided to not have anymore any serious contacts with people who work for this fiduciary capitalism and neglects to leave it and join the workers coops or coop-communes based on credit-merit system means of exchange, a mass socialization method of working shorter time in a workers collective team-work and dedicating more time for cultivating-struggle-developing constantly towards the socialist aims and helping organize The Fifth to win over the planet ! The complete alternative is with us today and loosing time with organizations in deep political bankrupcy such as Democratic Party in USA, The New Left or other organizations such as Greens, or even those calling themselves communist but working in fact for reformism, sham corrupted elections and in following the socialist parties in total bankruptcy for strengthening neo-fascists and presenting themselves to be able to reforme or direct capitalism in such manners to be a little "less worse" than it is under capitalists themselves, in fact are not the left and are corrupted bankrupt Left, be it socialists or communists ! These are illegitimate orgs and parties for people because avoiding to organize the New Revolutionary Communist International and in fact they are all politically bankrupt, because they have allowed since over 60 years the fascist system and corruption to get fatter and reign its terrors and wars and genocides and recent genocidal wars to go on ! even though this system is openly hated by billions and the masses all over the globe ! Yes the total alternative is here, for example www.oppressedpeople.com, and only pro-fascists or blinds can neglect it ! sardar
20 July 2007, 20:37
I for one feel very sorry for this very confused woman. I can’t imagine her pain at losing her son, but I also can’t imagine why she would want to wrap her arm around a dictator either who is an ally of Iran, who in turn is supplying the VERY weapons and manpower for the insurgency WHO KILLED HER SON!!
One of the prevailing themes that come from leftists, such as yourselves, is this desire to help all oppressed people. Nothing wrong with that at all. However, the war in Iraq’s aim is to keep radical Islam from spreading its viral sickness all over the Muslim world, and Allah willing (sarcasm), even into the West.
If there is one group in Iraq that is responsible for the oppression and the killings of innocents, it isn’t the West, it is RADICAL ISLAMOFASCISTS!!!!! These Taliban loving nut jobs don’t care about any of the rights that you guys fight for...equal opportunities for all....surely their brutal treatment of women would be evidence enough to show you that Radical Islam is the world’s enemy and not Bush?
Is your blind hatred of Bush keeping you from seeing who is REALLY THE BAD GUY? Complete submission to Allah will surely be something you help bring about in the West if you don’t call for the Islamic terrorists to stop brutalizing people!!! Stand up to these terrible people who use children as suicide bombers, who kill their young women for falling in love with a man not from her village, and who use their bodies as weapons to bring about governmental change instead of the more humane way of VOTING!!!
Cindy, bless her heart, is one of the people that Islamofascists LOVE! She is just an instrument to be used to divide and conquer the West. Not only is Al Qaeda my enemy, but it is hers as well. And what is sad, is that she can’t see that. She only sees Al Qaeda as being an enemy of Bush and Cheney, and since she hates them, then in her twisted mind, Al Qaeda and the "Freedom Fighters" can’t be all that bad and must be pitied as victims of American imperialism.
Remember that the Iraqis are BEING KILLED not only by other Iraqis who want a brutal Islamic state mirrored after Iran, but by Saudi Arabians, Moroccans, Egyptians, Afghans, Algerians, Iranians, etc! See a pattern here? Muslims are killing other Muslims and the West is getting blamed for it!!!
Several years ago the West sent over aid to Iran after that horrible earthquake they had. If the West wants to harm Muslims like Cindy believes, why would be send aid in the first place? Nice, also how Iran captured those British sailors and humiliated them while completing forgetting the aid the West sent to help just a few years earlier.
What gross ungrateful people, radical Muslims are.
Texas Girl
23 July 2007, 16:03
Texas Girl: What is truly sad is to find out that there are still so many Texans who still believe in the vile, sickening lies of the neocon party line. FYI: The war in Iraq has nothing to do with fighting terrorists. If it did, the US would no longer be occupying Iraq, since the ultimate objective of the invasion, according to the demented puppet in the White House you apparently still worship, was to remove WMDs and to bring down Saddam Hussein’s regime. This was easily done in less than a year. Yet the US military is still there. Why is it that you neocon supporters fail to see this glaring fact? If the objective of the invasion was the removal of Saddam Hussein and his WMD’s, then why are you still there, miss hotty pants?
Could it be that the original objective was a total lie, an ill-disguised pretext to control a foreign nation and its vital resources, a nation, by the way, THAT DOESN’T BELONG TO YOU OR YOUR NEOCON PALS? NO, you say, if we leave now there will be genocide! What a bunch of texan cow manure, lady. Baghdad alone is now suffering over 80 violent deaths a day. If that isn’t genocide what is, Texas girl? This new surge which your addled-brained neocon leaders have attached so much hope, has only made the insurgency stronger, and more Iraqis are dying than even before.
None of these glaring facts have been registered by your brainwashed Texan brain, apparently. You still seem to think that this occupation is a moral act, a ’moral’ act that continues to kill Muslims indiscriminately at check points, a ’moral’ occupation that continues to destroy Muslim neighborhoods with constant daily air strikes filled with depleted uranium. Oh, but you know nothing about the depleted uranium that the US military uses in virtually every artillery shell and all of its air-borne munitions, do you? Talk about taking the moral highway.
Here’s another glaring fact you Texan neocon goons fail to see time and time again, Al-Qaeda was practically an invention of the CIA. They were CIA funded since the Soviet invasion of Afghanisitan, and the new Al-Qaeda, the group we now see in Iraq, are actually a very different group from the group of terrorists that supposedly created the 9/11 attacks. Different leaders, different men, different objectives. Your mass media is just as ignorant as you are when it comes to who these men are, and who funded them, the original Al-Qaeda that is, in the first place.
Ignorance has no place in a debate where the stakes are life and death. Yet you and your neocon hordes continue to regurgitate the monstrous lies spewed by highly-paid neo-fascist announcers that have dominated AM radio all over the country since the early 80’s. Over night, it seems that these under-achieving rednecks have acquired a working knowledge of the Koran and of Muslim culture in general, when we all know that they couldn’t tell the difference between Mosul and Mua Dib, or the Arabian Nights and Frank Herbert.
So many of the world’s ills, Texas girl, have been created by the US’s half-baked, overly intrusive, overly aggressive foreign policy. To blame the Iraqi people for what the CIA and the US State Department created is to display an appalling ignorance of recent history.
By continuing to occupy this ancient land belonging to a very proud people, the US has only increased the number of insurgents, not terrorists. The invader and occupier of a foreign land will always call the men and women defending the country of their birth, terrorists. The Nazis called the members of the Resistance during WWII ’terrorists’. The new neofascists that now control the USA are doing the exact same thing.
How does it feel to be a silent member of the new Fascist youth, Texas Girl?
One more thought, Texas Girl. Would you feel grateful if over 660,000 of your fellow Texans had died violently in the last four years, all because a powerful invader had ’shocked and awed’ your country into the stone age? Would you feel grateful if a foreign invader, pretending to be benevolent, had cut off your electricity and water for eight hours a day, every day for the last four years? Would you bend over if someone had done that to your beloved Texas?
Think again, miss hotty pants, before you rail against the so-called ’radical’ Muslims.
I see them as nothing but pragmatic people fighting for their REAL freedom, Iraqis who have had enough of a US occupation that is bleeding them dry. All you see are radical Muslims who don’t deserve to live. But hey, I forgot, Texas Girl! Iraq really does belong to you and your redneck allies, right?
The viral sickness the world should contain is ignorance and arrogance, which begets fear, aggression and violence. Our country’s political leaders are far more guilty of arrogant aggression than the radical Muslims. Our country’s people as exemplified in your half-baked comment above, are more guilty of ignorance and arrogance than any other people in the world.
Apparently many of them are so ignorant of the facts of life that they truly believe that Iraq and it’s oil belongs to them. Taking something that doesn’t belong to you, Texas girl is called stealing. And killing innocent people whose country never attacked ours is called murder. Look it up, miss Texas.
Or maybe you Texans don’t care about the facts. Maybe all you care about is killing more Muslims, whether they be radical or otherwise. You would just let your ’god’ sort them out in the after life. Don’t forget, that Almighty God will also ’sort you out’ after you die. Don’t think for a moment that your ongoing support for this criminal war won’t go unnoticed.