The inspiring, committed, and very effective peace activist Cindy Sheehan posted an agonizingly pained ‘farewell’ to public life on her Daily Kos website yesterday.
It is worded as a sharp reproach to the Democratic Party:
- 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.”
She said that she had reached her present decision to leave public life in the US, and her conclusions about the Democratic Party and the state of public life here in general, after meditating on some of these issues “for about a year now.”
Yesterday was “Memorial Day” here in the US– that is, a day when citizens are urged to remember all those who have died in war. Cindy Sheehan’s son Casey was killed in Iraq in April 2004, an event that catapulted his mother into three years of extremely energetic (and personally draining) antiwar activism.
I can imagine that all the observances and media attention that are given to Memorial Day must make it a hard time for all those Americans bereaved by the present wars. The more so since the essential pointlessness– indeed, the directly counter-productive nature– of these wars, and most especially the one in Iraq, are increasingly plain for all to see.
Cindy Sheehan wrote in yesterday’sblog post:
- 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 [day] 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.
Cindy first came to my attention when she left a comment on this JWN post, back in January 2005. Since then, I have followed her activism with huge admiration. Then in May last year, she came with Ann Wright and a couple of others to speak here in Charlottesville, and I finally got to meet her. At the time, I wrote about Cindy and Ann: “These two women are national treasures! We have to look after them!”
I guess no-one looked after Cindy well enough for her to keep her energies up. And given the barrage of extremely hateful hostility to which she has been exposed since she first spoke out, it is not surprising at all that currently she feels the need, as she wrote, to “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.
Cindy has long been explicit in saying that one of the things she was trying to do with her activism was to invest the death of her son in combat in Iraq with some “meaning.”
For my part, I see no reason for her to conclude that, in any way, she “failed” Casey, as she wrote. As the parent of three young(-ish) adults, I would say that the main thing I tried to do in raising them was to nurture them so their own God-given gifts and personalities could emerge and flourish. I made them physically in my body for nine months, and I did a lot to feed, shelter, and teach them for a further 18 years or so. But they are not “my” creations; they are their own people.
As a young adult, Casey Sheehan made his own decisions. Maybe his mom had encouraged him to join the military, or maybe not. I don’t know. But Cindy, you should not hold yourself responsible in any way either for him having gotten killed in Iraq… Or, for the fact that all of us in the antiwar movement have– thus far!– failed to bring an end to this terrible war.
George W. Bush and those of his advisors who persuaded him to invade Iraq are the ones responsible for Casey’s death. Period.
And regarding the failure of the antiwar movement– yet– to have fully succeeded, I would say two things:
- (1) We may not have “won” yet, but we have already started to make a huge difference. I see this every time I go down to my weekly local peace demonstration here in central Virginia and hear the support we get there, compared with the very low support– and the much more frequent expressions of hostility– that we got back in late 2003 or early 2004.
Yes, the “progress” we make sometimes seems agonizingly slow– especially when we keep in mind that for every day the war drags on, more US soldiers and hundreds more Iraqis will have to die… But we’re getting there. Even in spite of the self-absorption of the “opposition” politicians in this country and the other dysfunctionalities of the political system here– still, we are making progress. S – l – o – w though it often feels…
(2) I have found, in child-raising and other areas of human endeavor, that the Buddhist discipline of non-attachment to the fruit of one’s labors has been incredibly helpful and empowering. You do the very best you can in any project– but the outcome of those labors really is not in your hands. It is in the hands of God, you might say. (But most Buddhists probably wouldn’t.)
So Cindy, go spend time with your surviving kids, absolutely. Marvel in their uniqueness. Admire their God-given gifts. Be there for them as much as you all need and are able. I’m pretty certain it won’t make your grief at Casey’s killing go away. Probably nothing can do that. But I really do urge you to find a hundred ways to nurture your self… Because I still think– no, I know— you are a national treasure.
Does anyone need further proof of this? Just go to some of the 900-plus the comments at the end of Cindy’s post there, and read some of what her work has meant to people all around this big old country of ours.
Walk in the Light, Cindy Sheehan.
Might you one day walk back into the arena of public activism? Who knows. But the main thing is to keep your special Light of Cindy-ness alive and glowing– whether for a small circle of family and friends, or for the whole world. Anyway, we all are one.
Heartbreaking.
a Peace Movement, handicapped by petty, sniping people… claiming to be Peace Activists… claiming to be living & struggling for the Global Good…
Such is my frustration with Americans. Why? because they’re always so happy to bash Canadians.
always in such a hurry to *divide* North America, while squashing it into NAFTA & SPP
If Peace Activists & unions opened their eyes, they’d see that Canada is AN ALLY to the Peace & Humanist Movements.
But that would mean sharing the stage. Wouldn’t want *that*…
For EITHER bleeding bodies in Afghanistan
NOR Peace Efforts.
Meanwhile, Canadians work our butts off for the War Resisters’ Movement & get *no* sympathy or respect from Americans.
The same Americans who think if the Draft is re-instated, they’ll just “move to Canada”.
We’ll just keep on fighting & struggling… for ourselves, the World… & so you guys have somewhere to go when you’re finished screwing around Down There…
is THAT a way to treat your FRIENDS?
because, we actually do wanna work with you guys…
=======
Spread Love…
… but wear the Glove!
BlueBerry Pick’n
can be found @
ThisCanadian
“Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced”
“George W. Bush and those of his advisors who persuaded him to invade Iraq are the ones responsible for Casey’s death. Period.”
And surely the Democrats bare some responsibility given that they signed off on the war?
it seems to me, helena, that your (eloquent and empathetic, as always) comments miss the main point of what sheehan was saying in her ‘farewell’:
that much of the “anti-war” movement is so entangled with the democratic party (whether it claims to be or not, describes the relationship as tactical or ideological, does explicit electoral work or not) that it has no way of addressing a war which is a product not of one political party but of a state in which the masquerade of electoral politics barely disguises a single viewpoint – one as unremittingly militarist as it is dogmatically neoliberal-capitalist;
that there is no way to “make meaning” from a loved one’s death in war, if one is unwilling to accept the lie of patriotism (‘dulce et decorum est…’);
that she did indeed fail her son, not in any relation to his participation in the military, but because, as she says, she “bought into this system” – from the context, “this system” is not the military, but the combination of consumerism, spectacle-culture, patriotism, and democratic myth which the rest of the world calls ‘americanism’.
i hope that sheehan can take the time to rest and recover from her years of constant, draining work, and then find more sustainable ways of making her resistance to “this system” an active part of her life. sheehan’s radicalism stands as a challenge to both those who attempt to oppose this war without opposing the systems which created it, and to those of us who did not make our resistance visible enough for her to know that there are other movements active in this country.
there is no way to make meaning from the death of a loved one killed by a system they believed in. but there is meaning to be found in struggling to destroy that system in the names of those we have lost to it.
Cindy did not want her son in the military, and she opposed the war (but did not become an activist until several months after Casey was killed), but she did not try to get Casey to move to Canada.
I hope she rests and comes back to work some more.
I have long considered Cindy Sheehan an American national treasure and one of my own personal heroes. In her honor and in support of her sincere anti-war activism I wrote a poem over two years ago that I think still wears well today. Of course, I’d have to update the casualty figures significantly, but the rhyme and meter of the verse might not properly account for the higher number. The point about the needless dead, despite the actual count, remains the same. In any event, I’d like to share the poem once again on the occasion of Cindy’s understandable fatigue and discouragement. She did a lot for us all, and now we need to give her the time and space to do some necessary healing for herself. And so, to a mother who lost her son from a son who lost his mother:
“Metrics for Measure”
The pricking of his thumbs begins to sting
With something fell and wicked coming fraught
Entangled with the painful playful thing
Wherein the conscience of the prince is caught
Now Isabella camps outside his ranch
Her silent supplication real not fake
Her rude requests for justice make him blanch
Her simple power poised to grab and shake
Her time, down in a roadside ditch, she bides
With twenty-hundred crosses witness mute
While safe within his bubble he resides
The gashes in the dead his lies confute
His thought no counsel credible informs
So on he stumbles, mouthing scripted rhyme
Upon the gibbet’s scaffold he performs
For his allotted fifteen minutes’ time
An angry ape with glassy essence clear
Before high heaven trotting out his trick
Afraid of nothing quite so much as fear
Which makes splenetic angels laugh till sick
Assured of his own ignorance he pressed
To have himself informed of what he knew
In little brief authority he dressed
So as to mask his nakedness from view
His counselor, the clown, roved here and there
Professing, like Rasputin, cures to know
For royal hemophilia laid bare
As turds that blossom on the frozen snow
But still the would-be great no greatness had
They thus could only mock the small who sobbed
Until disrobed, in disrepute unclad,
Their perfidy showed clear to those they’d robbed
But Gandalf once to Frodo Baggins said,
In telling him his uncle Bilbo’s tale,
That even small ones lost in fear and dread
Can turn the blast of fortune’s greatest gale
For Bilbo spared the vicious Gollum’s good
In pity of one long so lonely lost
And would not strike him even though he could
Which in the end saved all great evil’s cost
No doubt some live who maybe ought to die
And some that die deserve to live instead
But who shall make of his own life a lie
Who deals out death in judgment of the dead?
And as the wizard might have said at length
What Isabella did, a court to sway:
How excellent to have a giant’s strength
But tyrannous to use it in that way
For even very wise ones cannot see
The end to all the mischief that ensues
From feckless fights and their mad misery
As complex as a rainbow’s many hues
And as such smallish suitors might combine
Soliciting compassion as their cause
They plead for pity in a single line
That pelting petty officers might pause
For making thunder just to hear the noise
And lightning just to see the awe and shock
If overused by adolescent boys
Will look more like the chicken than the hawk
They like it well enough when first they think
That all will go exactly as they dream
But soon enough they shun the fetid stink
That clogs the nose and gags them till they scream
Those wise who hold great power in reserve
And do not waste it in a foolish deed
Have moral power more which well will serve
When faced with future’s grave and greater need
Thus Isabella Baggins now implores
The one who can to pity those who serve
And bring them home from bloody foreign shores
To reap the future lives that they deserve
We only ask for metrics we can use
To measure what is often promised glib
By bureaucrats who went and lit the fuse
And now can only hedge, and stall, and fib
Yet once more he reiterates his lies
He now commands no love from him that dies
With shoulders of a dwarfish thief he tries
To wear a giant’s robe above his size
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2005
Thanks again, for all the hope and encouragment, Cindy Sheehan. Now return to your own private life with the good wishes and gratitude of all whom you so selflessly served.
I’d like to mention my personal connection to Cindy. She wrote me a very touching, poignant note in Jan 2005 for a piece I wrote about the children of Iraq. We continued a correspondence for a little while afterwards, and I feel blessed to have crossed paths with one of the most extraordinary persons I’ve ever had a chance to encounter.
When people ask you: what has this country produced lately that’s so great? Simply answer: Cindy Sheehan.
Cindy was simply stating the obvious.
So was Keith Olberman when he compared the Democrat’s funding extension of the war to Neville Chamberlain’s Munich sellout. (Does that make Bush into Hitler? You decide.)
Let’s go a stage further. After the war it was said there was no effective resistance inside Nazi Germany itself. What does this mean, exactly? Surely there were thousands of Germans who were upset, who did not agree with the policies of their government or the ghastly war & its consequences. There were, there must have been, thousands of Germans who were not the sleepy “good Germans”, those who did not notice anything amiss until the knock on their door. Those unhappy Germans might as well have never existed. Except for those unhappy folk in the top reaches of the German military, I cannot recall ever hearing of a single book about them.
Yes, we have lots of anti-war protesters. What difference have they made?
Bush wants to hand this tar-baby off to the next president. Whereupon, given the inertia inherent in the office, the war will continue unabated. And evil, an evil as bad, as blatant, as anything the Nazis were ever guilty of, will have lodged itself permanently in Washington. This cannot be permitted to happen.
The only effective repudiation of Bush & his policies will be in his removal from office, and subsequent trial for his crimes. This is the goal to work towards.
Will this happen via an angry mob at the White House itself? No.
Will this happen via impeachment procedings in Congress? No. The vote last week was definitive.
The final line of defense is in the 50 state houses. If just one of them passes a resolution to impeach, there might still be hope.
Of course, a great many of those statehouses are limited to 90 day annual sessions, and a great many of those states (such as Maryland) have already used them up for this year, and when these states next convene their legislatures, their schedules will be so filled with overdue business that only the best financed, best-greased legislation has any chance.
But time is running out. Please do not salve your ego, that you held signs & counted the cars that honked as they went past. The Nazis repressed free expression. We merely ignore it, which is a far more powerful solution.
A final note, on the difference between suppressing dissent & merely ignoring it:
When there are many independent & overlapping legislative bodies & executive agents in nation, mere dissent can always be ignored. Effective change in such a mess becomes a matter of finding exactly the right place to put your lever. In Vietnam, with Iran-Contra, we failed. We dare not fail again.
Thank you, Helena, for your wise and compassionate thoughts on Cindy’s efforts and significance to the cause of peace. We need constant reminding that no matter how hard we work or how much we sacrifice, we do not control the outcome. Once we stop this war, there will undoubtedly be another. Still, we must continue to do all that we can, as if we were fully capable of ending all wars (and who knows, maybe some day…).
And it helps greatly if we can hold on to the understanding that if we lack peace within, we won’t make much headway in bringing peace without. (Which is a very different matter from strategically using one’s anger for motivation over the long haul.)
Thank you, Cindy, for your service. Which we honor best by carrying on the work of peace-making.
As one of Cindy’s many putative friends around the world, I think we can all give ourselves a pat on the back for doing what her enemies were unable to do.
She was a little odd in that she earnestly and heroically devoted her life for years to stopping this war. I guess she had her reasons. If only she could have just chilled out and made the most of it like we her friends all do. Become a commentator or celebrity, run for office, drop the “attitude”. She should have accepted that there are limits to what you can do with this system. After all, its this system of ours is destroying humanity before our eyes, and who wants that?
We are so proud in my tiny country to have kept out of Iraq, apart from a very short UN sponsored rebuilding effort a few years back by 40 army engineers in Basra, just long enough to be reported in US/UK media and help our trade negotiations. It is so hard to believe our soldiers ever (before the Iraq invasion) fought alongside Americans seeing your brave army is now the sort of criminal’s machine we once fought with you. Of course there are many kind, friendly wonderful Americans, (just as there are such Iraqis Iranians and Israelis) and Cindy for one will always have a place to stay in New Zealand. Its a beautiful place to chill out.
But we have made many compromises domestically to do so. For decades bipartisan NZ governments have done what the IMF have told us, and privatized nearly everything but health care, which is still “socialized” but severely rationed. A few days ago, a lady discharged from hospital on a portable respirator had her power disconnected and died an hour later. Her family had been paying the privatized power co bills, but were behind. There was no final notice on her last bill. They made payments each fortnight out of her husbands pay. At least manslaughter technically, but what can you do? This never happened here when we had local power boards. Cindy would see the relevance.
Today we expect a lovely warm day, warmer than many we had this summer. Only it is midwinter here. Cutting into the new power companies massive profits no doubt. How was your last winter, was it perhaps equally unusual?
Dear Cindy. As Shakespeare said “better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all.”
Or as Pete Seeger once ad-libbed at a Carnegie Hall concert “better to have fought for humanity and lost, then never to have fought at all.” Then he sang “We shall overcome.”
The theme song of the Democratic party. Once upon a time in fairyland.
I’d put that comment on Cindy’s Daily Kos Daily diary but so far I can’t seem to register-server error. Feel free to pass it on anyone.
Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening?
Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder.
We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right
over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we
can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car.
But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads
when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”
Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the
damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bum s out!
http://irish-rebel.blogspot.com/2007/04/must-read.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-l-pozner/what-sheehans-reluctant-_b_50378.html
According to the above expert the serious feminist anti-war movement have criticised the media for picking, in poor Cindy, the wrong woman as spokesperson.
The thesis is that the MSM picked Cindy as a sensational human interest figure and then set about to destroy her, their usual “MO”.
The writer went on to say that other wise women in the movement, who really understand the underlying issues, are the ones who have the stamina and other necessary attributes to be effective and strong, so the media deliberately doesn’t pick them to focus on.
The arguement continues that the war isn’t going to stop any time soon (as George II kindly just confirmed, 50 more years at least strangely without comment in these forums). So the proper feminist antiwar spokesperson has to be; as it were, invested in the long haul. The sort of opportunity that such a permanent occupation should indeed afford.
Fascinating article to read alongside Cinderellas’s farewell. Quite a contrast.