Sheehan 'resigns' as protest leader

[KBay84]

Sheehan 'resigns' as protest leader - Yahoo! News

By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 38 minutes ago



FORT WORTH, Texas - Cindy Sheehan, the soldier's mother who galvanized an anti-war movement with her monthlong 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.

Cindy Sheehan's protest started small but swelled to thousands and quickly drew national attention. Over the next two years, she 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 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."

Sheehan told the AP that she had considered leaving the peace movement since last summer while recovering from surgery.

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, 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 she 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," she wrote in the diary. "It's for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas?"

Gee....I guess her son's name IS for sale....what a witch of a woman and supposed mother.

[Betty Boop]

I hope Mrs. Sheehan can now get the grief and psychological counseling she needs so she can put the pieces of her life back together.

It's a shame that she was at a vulnerable point in her life and was manipulated and used - and only now is coming to that realization. It has to be horribly, horribly lonely to believe that everyone is against you in life and that no one is trustworthy. I don't know that California has the mental health options available for her though ...

Now maybe her son can rest in peace knowing that his mother will now shut up and not further degrade the sacrifice he made for a cause and people he believed in.

[SherryGrace]

Oh say it isn't sooooooooooo.......

[BrianK]

Buried about midway in the text.

[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.]

That has a P/C ring to it. P/C in the sense that dwindling crowds translates to no longer useful to the far left & her funding dried up. Decent of Kristinn Taylor to phrase it so nicely. Had Cindy Sheehan been the one making the assessment I'd bet it would have been much differant in a negative way.

IMO Geo. Soros wasn't getting the bang for the bucks it cost him to support her travels & expenses. Maybe Hugo Chavez will fly her down to re-open the TV station he closed. That would give her an outlet she can really denounce America through.

I'm with BettyBoop on hoping she gets some help.

[cato2]

Originally Posted by Betty Boop

I hope Mrs. Sheehan can now get the grief and psychological counseling she needs so she can put the pieces of her life back together.

It's a shame that she was at a vulnerable point in her life and was manipulated and used - and only now is coming to that realization. It has to be horribly, horribly lonely to believe that everyone is against you in life and that no one is trustworthy. I don't know that California has the mental health options available for her though ...

Now maybe her son can rest in peace knowing that his mother will now shut up and not further degrade the sacrifice he made for a cause and people he believed in.

If she is receptive to the counseling I think she can work through the grief and see how in fact she was used by the left for their own political agenda. And I agree that she was manipulated in her grief.

Once she steps away from this, I think the door will be closed for her by the people that funded and supported her. She will stop being able to live vicariously through her son. After all, would she have gotten as far if she in fact had not lost her son? I think the answer to that is no, because there are certainly enough people that feel as she does and yet did not have the exposure she had. I do however expect to see a book written by her concerning all of her experiences.

[leobold1]

Originally Posted by Betty Boop

Now maybe her son can rest in peace knowing that his mother will now shut up and not further degrade the sacrifice he made for a cause and people he believed in.

I don't think so. If you read the whole "rant" she is calling on someone to dethrone the Democratic Party. I think she would like to see herself as the standard bearer of a new "Peace" party.

I know Kucinich would be more than receptive to it. He may even become its first candidate.