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.
You might have a future as a diplomat. ;-)
How one respnds to tragedy is a personal choice.
Cindy made hers. . .and if she engenders a visceral, hateful response to her own efforts to diminish the loss of others who like her; are suffering their own tragedies; so be it.
. . .
My compliments, Kristinn. You’re a class act all the way.
On some level I despise the woman deeply, but she’s also one pitiful human being, used by people more evil than she could have conceived.
Let's see how "caring" these peace and social justice people are about Cindy now that she's no longer useful.
Your “healing” comments were classy. Well done.
(and I mean that in a good way)
It’s how she disparages what her son stood for that is disgusting about this ‘woman’. She has done the verbal equivalent of urinating on his grave and memory.
Is anyone other then me somewhat surprised that this resignation would come so soon after they discovered all those funds missing from her Crawford Texas Office?
Me thinks she is going on the lamb LOL
.. you formed the right balance in your statements.
I think that there is a significant portion of "lost her mind" in there, which others played upon and manipulated, and the MSM carefully edited. As Kristinn notes, there were people who did everything that they could to keep her in that state. If it was simple treachery and not madness, I don't think you'd have heard her protest the "Federal occupation of New Orleans" after Katrina.
here is teh back up info on my claim above
TEXAS.
There are allegations of money mismanagement and threats of court action, and members are now leaving the group sponsored by Cindy Sheehan in Crawford, the adopted hometown of President Bush. The Crawford Peace House has lost its corporate charter with the state, and a former member who has rights to the name is now threatening legal action. The organization found its origins from the work of Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war protester.
I know - I was just thinking that the loss of her son drove her over the edge.
I also doubt this woman’s intelligence - I know she has been used and led around by some very nasty political hacks.
She is a pawn - in the worst way -
This isn’t over with. Cindy’s a publicity whore, and it’s a safe bet she’ll find other ways to make a public ass out of herself. Just wait.
The leftists still support Cindy, they just don't support her mission.
Casey did indeed die for nothingThis is the most amazing thing to me. Her son obviously believed in what he was doing and died for what he believed in but his own mother posthumously calls him a liar, over and over again.
They are positively PRO-Palestinian war. They are NOT a peace movement. Where is their rally to protest kidnappings, suicide bombings, tortures, and beheadings?
Some even carry “I support the Iraqi insurgency” banners.
Here in WI, she has as much credibility as Steven Avery.
Yeah, and leave Axis Sally and Lord Haw Haw alone too.
She palls around with Communist dictators.
She offered to hit her own son with the family car before he was deployed.
She is clearly off her rocker. But she was unbalanced long before her son died. He enlisted, she opposed that decision.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.