Prominent US anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan abandons campaign

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan has announced she no longer wants to be the public face of the movement against the US-led invasion of Iraq, a cause she spearheaded following the death of her soldier son.

Sheehan, best known for camping out at President George W. Bush's Texas ranch, said she has become disillusioned with the struggle, which has ravaged her bank account, wrecked her marriage and strained her relationship with her surviving children.

"This is my resignation letter as the 'face' of the American anti-war movement," Sheehan wrote in a blog entry posted Monday titled "Good Riddance Attention Whore."

"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."

She said she made the decision to abandon the movement after about a year of deliberating.

"The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing," she said in reference to her son, who was killed in Iraq in April 2004.

"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."

She said she had lost faith in the anti-war movement's ability to make change and even in Democrats, who are largely opposed to the war and who took control of the House and Senate last year.

"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," she said.

"I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither.

"Goodbye America ... you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I cant make you be that country unless you want it," she concluded.

Sheehan camped near Bush's Prairie Chapel ranch in August 2005 while he was on summer holiday there and spent much of that time asking in vain to meet with him to ask why her son had to die.

She also protested near the site after purchasing a five-acre plot near the president's Texas homestead, and led numerous other anti-war demonstrations across the country.

Prominent US anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan abandons campaign - Yahoo! News

"Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it --

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits."
The War Prayer, by Mark Twain

…

A Poem for Casey Austin Sheehan, a U.S. soldier who died in Iraq on April 4th, 2004 -" A Nation Rocked to Sleep" ~ written by his sister, Carly Sheehan, 14 years old!

Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
The torrential rains of a mother's weeping will never be done
They call him a hero, you should be glad that he's one, but
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?

Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
He must be brave because his boy died for another man's lies
The only grief he allows himself are long, deep sighs
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?

Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
They say that he died so that the flag will continue to wave
But I believe he died because they had oil to save
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?

Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep
But if we the people let them continue another mother will weep
Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?

"Through the travail of ages
Midst the pomp and toils of war,
Have I fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon this star.

As if through a glass, and darkly
The age-old strife I see,
For I fought in many guises, many names
But always me."

-- Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.

I find her disillusionment heart breaking. I have personally never bought into any nationalistic bullcrap ( Except maybe during sporting events - but that's all good fun). But i am aware of how highly the American Dream and the American Identity is valued in the US. For someone whose son was in the forces to lose faith in a major part of her identity must indeed be terrible.

But i can sympathise. I mean you all know that the IRaq war has become less and less about facts and more and more about politics. Right now for the politicians its all about how the voters will react.

It's a mess. and she is right. The Iraq issue is a hot potato which everybody talks about but nobody really wants to handle.

I feel bad, too. She sacrificed almost everything and got nothing in return. Nobody gave her any real regard, and whenever she's mentioned it's as if she was one of the crazy early Vietnam protesters who were derided as "anti-American." It's like nobody gives a damn, and it's pretty sad.