[Peace-discuss] "Good Riddance Attention Whore"

[John W.]

I wonder how many of you have seen this.  It appeared first yesterday on 
The Daily Kos, apparently, and is all over the interweb by now.  I reprise 
it here without editorial comment.

John Wason



"Good Riddance Attention Whore"




by <http://cindysheehan.dailykos.com>CindySheehan




Mon May 28, 2007 at 09:57:01 AM PDT

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. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the 
Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such "liberal blogs" as 
the Democratic Underground. Being called an "attention whore" and being 
told "good riddance" are some of the more milder rebukes.
    * <http://CindySheehan.dailykos.com/>CindySheehan's diary :: ::

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. 
These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been 
meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and 
very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as 
long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of 
course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the 
Democratic Party.  This label was to marginalize me and my message. How 
could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our 
"two-party" system?

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. 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."

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be 
left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a 
war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It 
amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a 
laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it 
comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party 
loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look 
on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much 
murderous latitude and if we don't find alternatives to this corrupt "two" 
party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what 
we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist 
corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don't see party affiliation 
or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person's heart. If 
someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why 
do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing 
because I am an "attention whore" then I really need to be committed. I 
have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to 
a country that wants neither. If an individual wants both, then normally 
he/she is not willing to do more than walk in a protest march or sit behind 
his/her computer criticizing others. I have spent every available cent I 
got from the money a "grateful" country gave me when they killed my son and 
every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. I 
have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods 
of time away from Casey's brother and sisters and my health has suffered 
and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in 
collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country 
from slaughtering innocent human beings. I have been called every 
despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life 
threatened many times.

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 every 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.

Camp Casey has served its purpose. It's for sale. Anyone want to buy five 
beautiful acres in Crawford , Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer. 
I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too...which makes the property 
even more valuable.

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.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/private/peace-discuss/attachments/20070529/8156b182/attachment-0001.htm