Good
Riddance Attention Whore
By Cindy Sheehan
30 May, 2007
Countercurrents.org
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.
Cindy Sheehan is
the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan who was KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04.
She is a co-founder and President of Gold
Star Families for Peace and the author of two books: Not
One More Mother’s Child and Dear President Bush.
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