A Thought for Cindy and Casey Sheehan
Today is Friday, 1 June 2007.
On Memorial Day last, Cindy Sheehan wrote a heart-breaking missive, part of which follows:
“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 ever 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.
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.”
HH had intended to provide extensive comments on this statement. HH will defer it; Ms. Sheehan’s statement deserves to stand alone.
As a veteran of the American peace movement of almost four decades, I add only this, a Letter to the Editor HH sent to The Tulsa World:
“The most charitable description of Doug Marlette’s editorial cartoon concerning Cindy Sheehan (31 May) is “nonsensical”.
Ms. Sheehan is depicted holding a globe, crying like a child (or is the implication the sexist “like a girl”?), and saying, “I’m gonna take my ball and go home”.
Ms. Sheehan suffered the death of her child in the war in Iraq, a war we now know was sold to the American public by multiple falsehoods, then executed incompetently, resulting in the slaughter of Iraqis and Americans we see graphically on the TV every minute of the day. Because of exhaustion and the vicious attacks against her by supporters of the slaughter, she has chosen to suspend her part in the struggle against the war crime in Iraq.
Given all that Ms. Sheehan has sacrificed, such a sophomoric cartoon is as thoughtless as it is tasteless and cruel.
Mr. Marlette should be ashamed of himself.”
Thank you, Ms. Sheehan. Your son did not die in vain: he died to awaken us. If we do not rise up, then he shall have died, not in vain, but to no purpose.
Nonetheless, his sacrifice, and hers, and of all the others, lives within our hearts as conscience.
On Memorial Day last, Cindy Sheehan wrote a heart-breaking missive, part of which follows:
“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 ever 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.
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.”
HH had intended to provide extensive comments on this statement. HH will defer it; Ms. Sheehan’s statement deserves to stand alone.
As a veteran of the American peace movement of almost four decades, I add only this, a Letter to the Editor HH sent to The Tulsa World:
“The most charitable description of Doug Marlette’s editorial cartoon concerning Cindy Sheehan (31 May) is “nonsensical”.
Ms. Sheehan is depicted holding a globe, crying like a child (or is the implication the sexist “like a girl”?), and saying, “I’m gonna take my ball and go home”.
Ms. Sheehan suffered the death of her child in the war in Iraq, a war we now know was sold to the American public by multiple falsehoods, then executed incompetently, resulting in the slaughter of Iraqis and Americans we see graphically on the TV every minute of the day. Because of exhaustion and the vicious attacks against her by supporters of the slaughter, she has chosen to suspend her part in the struggle against the war crime in Iraq.
Given all that Ms. Sheehan has sacrificed, such a sophomoric cartoon is as thoughtless as it is tasteless and cruel.
Mr. Marlette should be ashamed of himself.”
Thank you, Ms. Sheehan. Your son did not die in vain: he died to awaken us. If we do not rise up, then he shall have died, not in vain, but to no purpose.
Nonetheless, his sacrifice, and hers, and of all the others, lives within our hearts as conscience.
posted by HH at 7:09 AM
2 Comments:
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Anti-war icon Cindy Sheehan has gone public on her support for the 9/11 truth movement after she told a radio show that the collapse of the twin towers looked like a controlled demolition and that there should be a new investigation into the terrorist attacks.
Sheehan, who made headlines this week after she distanced herself from the Democratic party and the establishment left, joined Alex Jones to share her views on her skepticism towards the official 9/11 story.
Sheehan said her decision to desert the Democrats was sparked last week when the Iraq war funding bill was passed and it was at this point she realized the Democrats had co-opted her simply to help them regain Congress and that they had no interest in ending the war.
Sheehan attacked Hillary Clinton as a "warhawk and a "warmonger" and said there was very little distinction between her and John McCain or Rudy Giuliani.
On 9/11, Sheehan expressed her support for the Jersey Girl's petition, which calls for a new independent investigation of the terrorist attacks, slamming the 9/11 Commission Report as a "total travesty and a smokescreen." "George Bush and Dick Cheney held hands and testified behind closed doors, not under oath," said Sheehan, adding, "There are many things that just don't add up on that day."
Sheehan questioned why U.S. air defenses were distracted by drills and exercises scheduled for the morning of 9/11 and why standard operating procedure for intercepting errant aircraft was not followed for the first and only time in history.
"When you lose control of an airplane, you intercept it with a military jet and that should only take seconds - from what I understand it's not even an order to do that it's mandatory," said Sheehan.
Speaking on the collapse of the twin towers, Sheehan stated, "It does look to me like a controlled demolition - I'm not an expert - but it does look to me like a controlled demolition - I'm looking at common sense."
"I do see some very high profile people saying it was an inside job," concluded Sheehan.
Click here to listen to Sheehan's interview on the Alex Jones Show.
Source URL: www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2007/310507cindysheehan.htm
The Alex Jones link is such a mess I can't be sure if Cindy Sheehan said such or not.
Even if she did say such silly stuff, it has no relevance to her struggle against the Conquest of Iraq.
And shame on Alex "I stopped the Coup of '06 by my publicity alone" Jones: he's the sort of pseudo-libertarian opportunist whose pursuit of $$$ through publicity for non-extant conspiracies gives ammunition to the Right to smear authentic dissidents. (He's the mirror image of Alan Keyes.)
Anyone with the most elemental knowledge of physics will realize that the design of the World Trade Center Towers was such that they could not withstand the impact and fire of an airliner. This concern was expressed by opponents of the project before it was built.
And I object to someone perpetrating such crap appropriating the designation "Menshevik", who were after all an honourable political tendency.
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