The Death of Cindy Sheehan

No, Cindy Sheehan is not dead - at least not physically. But on Memorial Day, May 28, 2007, the spirit of Cindy Sheehan passed away with her letter of resignation as "the face of the anti-war movement" that was posted on Daily Kos entitled "Good Riddance Attention Whore". The irony is that after all the name calling, ridicule, slurs and harassment she received from the right wing, it is the Democrats that killed her spirit. It was the liberal left that stuck the dagger into her soul just as Brutus betrayed Caesar.

"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.' "

After three years of sacrificing so much for this country - her son, her marriage, her life which she voluntarily chose to stop so she could concentrate all her energies on trying to make blind America see, the America who for some reason or another still had faith in this corrupt administration - Sheehan 's Judas kiss was delivered by the liberal left.

Everything was fine while Sheehan was critical of George Bush and his cronies. She became the "face" of the anti-war movement whether she wanted to or not. The protests at Camp Casey, the five acres she bought in Crawford, Texas so she could be close to Bush on his many vacation days and named after her son who was killed in Iraq, were the talk of the liberal blogs. She traveled the world over to bring the real message of the American people: that two-thirds of us did not agree with our leaders and wanted an end to this war. She was a founding member of Gold Star Families for Peace, a group who have had loved ones killed in Iraq, committed to the sole purpose of ending the war.

But then something strange happened in November of 2006. The Democratic Party won the House and Senate in the mid-term elections. The people had spoken. They had enough of an incompetent, illegal, warmongering, duplicitous administration. They were tired of Bush thinking he was above the law. There was finally going to be accountability as the checks and balances that were so sorely lacking lo these past six years and were trampled by a do-nothing Republican led Congress, were going to come back with a vengeance. The Democrats had won the elections based on promises of ending the war in Iraq, and now it was time to put their money where their mouth was.

Unfortunately, much of that money came from the same pot that the Republicans were raking in. So now Cindy's call to end the war landed on Democratic ears - and apparently they didn't like it. Cindy Sheehan had served her purpose while she was "the darling of the so-called left as long as [she] limited [her] protests to George Bush and the Republican Party", but now the tables had turned and it was time for her to go. The slurs and accusations that once came from the right wing now spat out of the mouths of the left.

But the absurdity of it all was that Cindy Sheehan never misled anyone into thinking that hers was a political cause. Hers was the cause of a grieving mother not wanting any other mother to feel the same anguish that she has felt. Hers were the cries of a truth teller crying for peace, not an election result. And now those cries were falling on deaf Democratic ears.

After all the sabre rattling, I myself mind-numbingly wonder where the Democrats' collective spine disappeared on the most recent vote to continue funding this illegal occupation in Iraq, but for Cindy Sheehan the disillusionment must have been devastating. She has lost her son. She has lost her marriage. She has lost support from those she trusted to be friends and allies. She has lost her country - the country she so desperately fought to save from itself.

So she will go home now - trying to repair the fractured pieces of her life. Hopefully she will find peace. Peace that evaded her as she protested under Bush's nose on those five acres in Crawford. Peace that never came each time she was arrested for civil disobedience. Peace that she fiercely tried to gain for our troops as well as the Iraqi people.

I truly hope she finds that peace. She deserves it. Goodbye Cindy. Thank you.