FORT WORTH, Texas - Cindy Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized an anti-war movement with her month-long protest outside President Bush's ranch, said Tuesday 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 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.
. . .
When Sheehan first took on Bush, she 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 in the diary.
She said she 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."
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."
Read the full story at: Yahoo News
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4 comments:
Informative article jazakumAllahu khairan. Two quick lessons I think we can learn from this as we work for Islam:
1. When you are working for any other cause other than Allah swt and His deen you are subject to fatigue and eventually giving up.SubhanAllah, only when the work is for the sake of Allah are we willing to struggle and sacrifice constantly even when we aren't seeing the desired results because we know results aren't in our control.It is the effort that is judged. Only in our desire to seek Allah's pleasure and paradise are we, as Islamic workers, willing to make the struggle for justice our way of life.
2. She says
"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."
Real, concrete change in a society will only take place when the individuals in that society have been changed/reformed. You cannot reform only the physical structure/institutions (type of gov., political structure, economics...etc) and expect that to be real meaningful change. Individuals need to be the starting unit and individuals need to be reformed. Once individuals have been changed and are ready to implement and accept a different more just society/social system, then all other aspects of society will also be reformed. And that is true change.
And Allah swt knows best.
Good for Cindy! I respect her even more now. There was a ridiculous democratic party fiasco at UCI before the elections last year and Cindy Sheehan spoke to the crowd over the phone. I thought it was ridiculous that she affiliate herself with such a weak party that's no different in essence than the people she was fighting. Glad she finally figured it our for herself.
I completely disagree with Cindy Sheehan's comments and her "resignation."
I do understand her fatigue and frustration, but as Farhad mentioned, change must come from within individuals, and if we all get fatigued and give up as Ms. Sheehan has, then the vices that plague our government and society will just keep on dominating.
Yes, the Democratic party needs to strengthen its positions, but it is the closest party (other than the Green party) to encapsulating most Islamic ideals of equality, justice, liberty, and respect for all of Allah's creation. It's certainly the better of the two main parties.
Yes, there are things about the Democratic party that I don't agree with, but I'm not going to throw my hands in the air and give up.
Cindy's solution of going into hiding is synonymous to putting up the white flag and handing this country to the bigoted, extremist right wing Republicans.
We all need to be the change that we want to see in the world, we all need to fight the good fight and be the guiding lights, no matter how dark the pathway seems, no matter how trecherous the way.
Allah swt has urged us to strive, and I am glad that I have Allah as my Lord and Islam as my guide so that I will never have to feel that my efforts are useless.
This is a great message to the Muslims to strive and never give up, because while everyone else will eventually give up, we won't, and we can lead this country and this world to an amazing place insha'Allah.
Excuse my ignorance, but how is this democratic party the closest to encapsulating Islamic ideals? And on what basis are we believing these sentiments...politician speeches and debates?
It's heartwarming to see Sheehan, or any American at all, use the word 'war-machine.' Particularly in relation to one that "even controls what we think."
Speaking of war-machines that control what we think, with relevance, I strongly suggest:
Huxley's Brave New World (and the Revisited edition)...maybe read alongside Orwell's 1984. It's good dystopic literature. Though, as Nietzsche said..literature sometimes plays a "clinical" role in our lives.
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