Cindy
Sheehan’s Lesser-Evilism: Democrats Or Bust?
By Joshua Frank
19 October, 2006
Countercurrents.org
You
can sure tell it’s an election year. Despite the fact that over
2770 US soldiers and 600,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq,
the mainstream antiwar movement, or what’s left of it, has failed
to hold the two war parties accountable for the destruction and death
they’ve initiated. And perhaps most disappointing of all, Cindy
Sheehan, the brave soul who almost single handily resurrected the antiwar
movement from the dark vestiges of the 2004 elections, has now surrendered
to the politics of lesser-evilism.
Sheehan has not completely
curbed her activism like so many other antiwar activists did two years
ago during John Kerry’s bid for president, but she has outright
refused to come out and fully embrace any candidates who are challenging
the Democrats for their explicit support for Bush’s bloody war
on Iraq. Aside from campaigning for any alternative antiwar hopefuls,
Sheehan has also failed to criticize the pro-war Democrats who are up
for reelection.
Before the campaign season
began to heat up Sheehan had lambasted Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton
and Dianne Feinstein, among others, for their backward defense of the
war effort. She even went as far as to describe Hillary’s position
on Israel and Iraq as being equal to that of Rush Limbaugh. Yet, when
it has mattered most, i.e. now, she has been virtually silent. But it
may not be a mystery as to why.
Cindy Sheehan has joined
forces with Medea Benjamin of CODE PINK as well as the Progressive Democrats
of America, where Sheehan serves on the organization’s Board of
Directors. Benjamin too is on the PDA’s Board and has aligned
her antiwar activism with the group’s charge to reshape the Democratic
Party from within.
Medea Benjamin is a truly
baffling creature. After the fall of Sen. Kerry in ’04, for whom
she had campaigned avidly, the former California Green Party candidate
for US Senate told The Nation magazine, “For those of you willing
to keep wading in the muddy waters of the Democratic Party, all power
to you. I plan to work with the Greens to get more Green candidates
elected to local office.”
She certainly has not stood
by that lackluster promise, as she now works for the Democrats. And
I’m not sure how working to elect “progressive” Democrats
to office, which Benjamin and Sheehan are now attempting to do with
the PDA, will ever help build an alternative to the two pro-war parties.
Nor am I convinced that electing Democrats to office will ever end the
war in Iraq -- as John Walsh recently explained in CounterPunch, even
if the Democrats pick up the necessary 15 seats to reclaim the House,
their overall position on the war will not be changing, as no new Democratic
House contenders actually oppose the war.
Perhaps Cindy Sheehan has
fallen into the vicious trap of non-profit activism, where she cannot
truly speak her mind without being fearful that her liberal supporters
will pull their funding from the groups she aligns with. Or maybe Sheehan
just doesn’t get it. Maybe she doesn’t understand that elections
are a great place to go after the war enablers for all of their awful
habits and evil deeds.
Cindy Sheehan isn’t
accustomed to backing down from a fight, and we owe her tremendously
for her efforts to rekindle the antiwar movement when she staked out
Bush in Crawford. But her decision to not take on the Democrats with
vigor this election deserves criticism. We need Sheehan supporting antiwar
candidates, not rebuilding the Democratic Party.
As Sheehan told me a year
ago, “I will not support a pro-war Democrat. I will support any
anti-war candidate ... [We] need to expose the failures of the Bush
administration along with those of Congress and the media. [We] need
to keep pushing for the full withdrawal of troops ‘now.’
That is paramount.”
Come on back to us Cindy,
come back.
Joshua Frank, author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped
Reelect George W. Bush, edits http://www.BrickBurner.org
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