Posted on 05/29/2007 8:25:01 AM PDT by kristinn
FORT WORTH, Texas — Cindy Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized an anti-war movement with her monthlong protest outside President Bush's ranch, says she's done being the public face of the movement.
"I've been wondering why I'm killing myself and wondering why the Democrats caved in to George Bush," Sheehan told The Associated Press by phone Tuesday while driving from her property in Crawford to the airport, where she planned to return to her native California.
"I'm going home for awhile to try and be normal," she said.
In what she described as a "resignation letter," Sheehan wrote in her online diary on the "Daily Kos" blog: "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."
Sheehan began a grass roots peace movement in August 2005 when she camped outside Bush's Crawford ranch for 26 days, demanding to talk with the president about her son's death. Army Spc. Casey Sheehan was 24 when he was killed in an ambush in Baghdad in 2004.
Cindy Sheehan's protest started small but swelled to thousands and quickly drew national attention. Over the next two years, she initially drew huge crowds as she spoke at protest events. But she also drew criticism for some actions, such as meeting with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's leftist president.
"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," Sheehan wrote in the diary.
Kristinn Taylor, spokesman for FreeRepublic.com, which has held pro-troop rallies and counter-protests of anti-war demonstrations, said dwindling crowds at Sheehan's Crawford protests since her initial vigil may have led to her decision. But he also said he hopes she will now be able to heal.
"Her politics have hurt a lot of people, including the troops and their families, but most of us who support the war on terror understand she is hurt very deeply," Taylor said Tuesday. "Those she got involved with in the anti-war movement realize it was to their benefit to keep her in that stage of anger."
When she had first taken on Bush, Sheehan was a darling of the liberal left. "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," she wrote.
Sheehan said she had sacrificed a 29-year marriage and endured threats to put all her energy into stopping the war. What she found, she wrote, was a movement "that often puts personal egos above peace and human life."
But she said the most devastating conclusion she had reached "was that Casey did indeed die for nothing ... killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think."
Sheehan told The Associated Press that she had considered leaving the peace movement since last summer while recovering from surgery.
Then she decided on Memorial Day to step down and spend more time with her three other children. She said she was returning to California on Tuesday because it was Casey's birthday. He would have been 28.
"We've accomplished as much here as we're going to," Sheehan said Tuesday, saying she was leaving to change course. "When we come back it definitely won't be with the peace movement with marches, with rallies and with protests. It will be more humanitarian efforts."
Last year, with $52,500 in insurance money received after her son's death, Sheehan bought 5 acres near downtown Crawford as a permanent site for protests.
"Camp Casey has served its purpose. It's for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas?" she wrote.
Wish the Wench would take Fonda with her!
Obviously it was NOT worth it.I find Cindy’s truth telling about the”peace”movement to be very accurate.A lot of egos and posturing.
I have never been a fan of this woman and never will be but I have to give her a little respect for admitting the cold hard truth about the Democrats AND her comrades in the so called movement.
Well said, Kristinn. Very well stated.
A lot of us wasn't really mad at Sheehan but more towards the various left-wing groups that were exploiting her.
Hopefully, this woman will realize what happened and put her life back together.
You’re right - you’re 100% right.
I am coming from the position of someone whose life she did not effect - so it’s easy for me to make my comments.
I just never had to pay her any attention.
Thanks for your post - I am grateful.
How can I or anyone say anything negative to a USMC Wife.
I tip my hat to you.
Casey and his mom are diametrically opposed regarding the cause he died in support of.
Mother Sheehan was the classic definition of the “useful idiot.” A fairly simple, normal woman, probably liberal and anti-war to begin with, who lost her son and was seized upon as “the face of the movement” by the unscrupulous people on the left. And she ate it up with a spoon. The attention, the accolades, the near-worship she got, it probably all became pretty addictive. And now, Reality raises its ugly head, and it’s all over.
I honestly hope she finds some peace, and that she finally comes to realize that her son did NOT die in vain...presuming that her former friends DON’T get their way. The only way that Casey Sheehan died in vain is if we abandon Iraq and the war on Islamist terror.
}:-)4
So she is not responsible for her actions......she gets an eternal pass regardless of her treachery?
No - I am just trying to say I don’t empower her words or actions.
In her terrible state - she was used as a pawn.
Yeah, she basically gave aid and comfort to the enemy. How many Iraqi and American deaths can be laid at her doorstep? (Assuming she gets a doorstep any time soon.)
She used her son's death as a springboard for her own ego.
I have sympathy for the son and all that mourn him.
I do not think she mourns her son.
She probably realized that she had become totally irrelevant.
Cindy obviously does not realize that ‘normal’ is not within her reach. . .am wondering as well; if she ‘can’ go home again. Somehow, I doubt it.
Ok - I understand the passion - but watch the language.
I take your point.
To dream the impossible dream. . .
You might be right - I just don’t care about Cindy Sheehan.
Perhaps she is ready to mourn her son.
Your comments were loving. This is the sort of person, as you acted, that I wish to be allied with.
There are several stages of grief, anger being one. It was the one that the "peace movement" never let Cindy work through to the next stage.
She was very richly rewarded in a psychic sense by the radical left for being the "angry mom" who has a free pass to say the most vile things about America, the military and the President.
As Maureen Dowd cannonized her with the notion of absolute moral authority, will Maureen Dowd do anything to help this woman in her time of need? Financially, emotionally, spiritually?
But the racical left like Code Pink will not bargin because they fundamentally don't care about Cindy.
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