Cindy Sheehan gives up her protest

[KBCraig]

Anyone go to this Daily Kos and invite her to this group?  Moving back to California is definite surrender.

Just because she's against the war doesn't make her pro-freedom. From everything I can see, she loves big government.

[error]

I can't wait to get up to NH and become an official kook.

What's taking you so long? We miss you!!

[Kat Kanning]

An Open Letter to Cindy Sheehan

by Francois Tremblay

May 30, 2007

Dear Ms. Sheehan,

You have recently written an entry in your diary which, if you'll pardon me the metaphor, hands in your resignation to the anti-war movement. Even though I have not gone through the same experiences, I strongly sympathize with everything you say in it, and I think I may help clarify some things you might not yet be aware of.

Your thoughtful disillusionment with left-wing and right-wing politics echoes the feeling that other reasonable people, who desire change for the better but realize that politics is always the same song-and-dance, are eventually faced with. You are far from being alone.

To me, the most poignant passage in your entry is this:

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.

You, and at least three thousand other mothers of soldiers, as well as tens of thousands of Iraqi mothers, are justified in demanding justice. But such justice will never be granted you by the government, whether it be Republican or Democrat.

Sending young men to their deaths for the interests of the ruling class is a phenomenon that has existed for as long as government has existed as a concept. Every empire, from the Roman Empire to the British Empire to the current " America , World Police," has had its millions of youths willing to spill their own blood for their "homeland," indoctrinated in believing in their "homeland" from day one.

You probably understand the impossibility of getting justice for the war through politics by now. Neither will the end of these unjust wars be granted, even when the Iraq War itself eventually ends. The fact of the matter is this:

Political means cannot give lasting freedom. All that can be achieved by political means is the sustenance of political means (in short: politics can only create more politics).

I do not blame you from not knowing this from the onset, as most people have been indoctrinated into believing that the only avenue for change is to "work within the system." I also used to believe in "working the system." However, no successful ideology or movement has ever achieved any lasting freedom through doing so, because the ruling class is always in control.

You say you want "peace with justice." This is a laudable goal, and I agree with you. In your tumultuous association with the peace movement, have you found anyone who was actually willing to understand the root causes of war, and how to eradicate them? Or did you only find people willing to agitate against war, but with no binding force or principle?

I am sure you have thought about the causes of war. I can't vouch for your reflections on the topic, but I will tell you what I know. There are many factors that cause war, and most of these are outside anyone's reach. But I can point to one necessary and crucial cause that we can change: government power. And who says government, says taxation.

The 20th Century proved, if you were paying any attention, that taxation is the great enemy of civilization. How do you think Hitler paid for that army? With voluntary contributions? How did Stalin pay for the Gulag Archipelago? With baked goods sales?
~ James Ostrowski

Everyone is forced to comply and finance these wars, whether they like them or not, by taxation. By monopolizing the resources in a society, government has the power of waging war on a grand scale, in the name of interests which otherwise would not waste the money needed for such actions. Government has the power of luring our youth with free education in order to do its bidding, or outright enslave them for a period of time (through the draft).

Activists love the government because they want to manipulate its power to their advantage. So it is a very hard fact to face for peace activists, but an inescapable fact, that government is necessary for large-scale war. Anyone who desires peace as a primary value of society must realize that lasting peace can only be achieved if there is no government.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
~ Leo Tolstoy (Christian Anarchist)

As a Market Anarchist, I believe that government, as the monopoly on law and force in a society, exploits people's resources, children and moral integrity in the name of wars that only benefit itself and its powerful friends. I also believe that the only way to prevent governance abuse is to have a free competition of governance, on the market.

Right now, those who govern us are held accountable to no one. They will never be held accountable unless they have equally powerful competitors able to use the law to get recourse for the victims. They will never be held accountable until we can choose to not support them, and support someone else instead, leaving us free to live our lives the way we intend.

It would be absurd for anyone to cooperate with their enemies (the ruling class) in order to try to achieve change! And yet that is what most peace activists do. The ideology of peace, like any other ideology or movement, can only be achieved by disengagement and principled resistance.

All successful improvements in man's freedom and understanding have been brought about by such means. No positive movement in history has ever succeeded by any other means. And disengagement and principled resistance against government and its criminal monopoly is what we advocate.

You may think that the concepts we advocate sound radical. However, I truly believe they are the only solution to the problem of war. Historically, Market Anarchist societies did not wage war on other societies, simply because war is too costly to wage if you have to bear the cost yourself, and you can't steal from others or enslave them in order to wage wars for you. Until we understand that having a monopoly of force able to finance war by stealing from our own pockets and enslaving our children is a bad idea, we will never solve the problem of war.

I hope I have been able to clarify some things for you, and perhaps spark some interest in our growing movement. Either way, good luck to you in your future endeavors.

Francois Tremblay
http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/tremblay/tremblay6.html

[lordmetroid]

I wish mainstream papers would be printing these kind of articles as well... You truly can not work within the system. It is like joining KKK to reduce the frequency of lynchings.  Anyone with even a little brain will see that such action is ridiculously doomed for failure.

[Insurgent]

Dr Carolyn Baker, whose writings have some great merit, penned this thought-provoking article today.


WHAT I ADMIRE MOST ABOUT CINDY SHEEHAN, By Carolyn Baker
May 30, 2007 | filed under bakers-blog | at www.carolynbaker.org


Corporate media—and even some alternative websites, are blaring with headlines about Cindy Sheehan "quitting" the anti-war movement. It is true that Sheehan has stepped down as the consummate symbol of the ordinary, salt-of-the-earth American mother crusading against the empire for the end of the war that brought about her son's meaningless death. But it is not true that Cindy is "quitting." After years of sacrifice, incomprehensible losses, and several hundred stages of burnout, she has walked away from a role and the symbolism inherent within it, but even more significantly in my opinion, and reverberating through her article "Letter To The Democratic Congress," she has rejected the Democratic Party and its pretense of offering an alternative to the politics of empire.

Last night I watched Keith Olbermann begin his "Countdown" show with the story of Sheehan's "quitting" the anti-war movement, even including some quotes from her, but mentioning nothing about her leaving the Democratic Party. How could he do otherwise when he devoted the next twenty minutes of the program to interviewing Al Gore and communicating unmistakably to the viewers that the former Vice-President is unequivocally our "savior"? What else could we expect from corporate media?

Yesterday, I received emails which described Sheehan's departure as "sad" and "unfortunate", suggesting that she had been "worn" down. I understand the intent of these comments, but I emphatically disagree. Could we all please look more deeply into Sheehan's decision? 

What is it exactly that Cindy Sheehan walked away from? What did she "quit"? Certainly, it was not her feelings and opinions about the empire and its endless wars. What she resoundingly rejected was "hope"—that cousin to denial that so many "progressives" want to hang onto above and beyond all manifestations of reality to the contrary. One reason we treasure her and the one quality that has endeared her to us is her unmitigated courage and fortitude in standing toe-to-toe with the empire. Yet, many of us fail to see the courage in her decision to walk away from her most recent expressions of that courage and demonstrate courage on a deeper level. It is one thing to confront the empire with the Democratic Party and a throng of progressives invested in the Party and the rigged electoral process standing behind oneself in "support", and it is quite another to turn around and face those so-called supporters and insist they are part of the problem.

What Cindy is saying is simply, "I no longer choose to embrace the teddy-bear illusion that I live in a democratic republic in which the rule of law and the Constitution prevail. I am no longer willing to believe that a two-party system exists in this empire, and I refuse to continue to 'hope' that one wing of the one-party system will ever significantly challenge or extricate itself from the other wing. I will not live in denial, even if it brings me adulation, inspires others to resist the empire, or nurtures within me a feeling of doing the right thing. I will open my eyes, and my mouth, and I will buy OUT of the current paradigm."

Many of you reading these words have made the same decision Cindy has made, and many of you have also been called "quitters" or "purveyors of doom and gloom." Others of you have not bought out of the illusion that the federal government, the Democratic Party, or some political, environmental, or spiritual movement can save the earth and its inhabitants, and you are still "hoping." And of course, from the earliest origins of the Judeo-Christian tradition to Barack Obama's "The Audacity Of Hope", the culture is replete with moralizing aphorisms that instruct us not to give up hope. Yet, as any recovering addict will testify, it is only when we give up all hope that we can awaken with clarity and a deeper consciousness to the reality of our situation.

I do not mean to minimize the brutal losses beyond the pale that Cindy Sheehan has incurred. No other word than "tragic" can be applied to the loss of her son, the loss of her marriage, the enormous debt she is now facing—including her own personal hospital bills for a heat stroke, and the countless sacrifices she has made in order to speak truth to power and awaken the entranced citizens and politicians of empire. Has she been "worn down"? Unquestionably, and so have many of us who would not have otherwise walked away from empire and its delusional political process. American capitalist/consumerist/corporatist culture is so toxic, so seductive, so addictive, so soporific that few of us are capable of seeing through it without terrible, sometimes traumatic, loss and persecution.

My heart aches for Cindy Sheehan, and at the same time, I celebrate her historic and heroic announcement on Memorial Day, 2007. She has been deeply wounded, but she has also been liberated. Not only has she experienced on a cellular level that the emperor has no clothes, but that the entire paradigm on which the empire is built is both vacuous and lethal. Let us acknowledge that rather than "quitting", Cindy Sheehan has begun a brand new chapter in her saga of resistance.

[Libertarian Hippie]

Sheehan is the poster child of how NOT to do things.
She let her anger consume her every thought.

[jaqeboy]

...I celebrate her historic and heroic announcement on Memorial Day, 2007. She has been deeply wounded, but she has also been liberated. Not only has she experienced on a cellular level that the emperor has no clothes, but that the entire paradigm on which the empire is built is both vacuous and lethal. Let us acknowledge that rather than "quitting", Cindy Sheehan has begun a brand new chapter in her saga of resistance.

I think this is key - quitting being a part of the construct, the paradigm, is liberating. Seeing with clear eyes now - the enemy isn't the other party - the enemy is the system that has created the two parties and the illusion world that it occupies people in while the empire establishment goes merrily along planning it's next conquest. It takes an awakening like this to become free. For Cindy Sheehan, it took all the grief and work and travel and hardship and imprisonment to reach that breakthrough. Hopefully her example will make it easier for others to see the light.

[TheLibertyZombie]

suuuuuuuuuuuuuh 

[DC]

In here farewell blog at Daily Kos, she lamented that she was a celebrity of the left so long as she only attacked Bush:

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."

The problem is that she herself did the same thing: embraced anyone who was anti-Bush, no matter how bad they were in other areas.

Literally embraced:

In related news, Venezuelans are protesting Hugo Chavez's shut-down of an independent television station critical of his policies. In return, they're being met with rubber bullets, tear gas, and water cannons.

Even Sheehan's most anti-war, anti-Bush supporters had to start scratching their heads and asking how she could call Bush and America fascist and dictatorial while having a love fest with Hugo Chavez.

I'm not surprised she burned out. Maybe she'll get the rest she needs, and regain some focus to be an effective voice.

On the news last night they said Chavez arrested the opposition candidate also.

[CNHT]

Cindy finally got a lesson on what the word 'hypocrisy' means...after a good dose of it from the left.

I'm sure if she were in Venezuela, she'd be opposing the dictatorial oppression of the very person she is kissing in that photo.

[Insurgent]

...I celebrate her historic and heroic announcement on Memorial Day, 2007. She has been deeply wounded, but she has also been liberated. Not only has she experienced on a cellular level that the emperor has no clothes, but that the entire paradigm on which the empire is built is both vacuous and lethal. Let us acknowledge that rather than "quitting", Cindy Sheehan has begun a brand new chapter in her saga of resistance.

I think this is key - quitting being a part of the construct, the paradigm, is liberating. Seeing with clear eyes now - the enemy isn't the other party - the enemy is the system that has created the two parties and the illusion world that it occupies people in while the empire establishment goes merrily along planning it's next conquest. It takes an awakening like this to become free. For Cindy Sheehan, it took all the grief and work and travel and hardship and imprisonment to reach that breakthrough. Hopefully her example will make it easier for others to see the light.

Well put, Jack!  This hits the nail on the head.

[jaqeboy]

Cindy Sheehan interviewed by Alex Jones:

"Hillary Clinton is called a 'liberal' - that's just an abomination of the term - she's a war-hawk, a war-monger..."

Good interview - a must hear: http://prisonplanet.com/audio/300507sheehan.mp3

[Russell Kanning]

She seems to have learned quite a bit about the government in general and the democrat politicians specifically over the last couple of years. It might take her a while to get used to the reality that has been revealed to her.

[Russell Kanning]

I would find it very sad if she became disillusioned with the "system" but still thought there was a way that it could possibly work if only the "right people" were in charge.

Oh wait, shit, that's the whole premise of the FSP.

That may be some people's idea of change inside of the FSP, but is not the whole premise. They can't make you do it that way. The FSP is not stopping you from pursuing freedom in the way that makes sense to you.

[Insurgent]

Looks like she isn't giving up after all. After being outraged by the whole Scooter Libby fiasco she is considering a run for office.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/07/08/cindy-sheehan-considering-run-against-pelosi/

Cindy Sheehan considering run against Pelosi

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) — Six weeks after announcing her departure from the peace movement, Cindy Sheehan said Sunday that she plans to run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unless she introduces articles of impeachment against President Bush in the next two weeks.

Sheehan said she will run against the San Francisco Democrat in 2008 as an independent if Pelosi does not seek by July 23 to impeach Bush. That's when Sheehan and her supporters are to arrive in Washington, D.C., after a 13-day caravan and walking tour starting next week from the group's war protest site near Bush's Crawford ranch.

"Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership," Sheehan told The Associated Press. "We hired them to bring an end to the war. I'm not too far from San Francisco, so it wouldn't be too big of a move for me. I would give her a run for her money."

Sheehan announced in May that she was leaving the anti-war movement and selling her 5-acre Crawford lot. She said that she felt her efforts had been in vain and that she had endured smear tactics and hatred from the left, as well as the right.