"Good Riddance Attention
Whore"
by CindySheehan
http://www.dailykos.com/, May
28, 2007 at 09:57:01 AM PDT
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.
0. CindySheehan's diary :: ::
0.
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.
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