From Fort Worth, Texas, Cindy Sheehan who began the antiwar movement in August 2005, by camping outside Bush’s Crawford ranch for 26 days, has announced that she is “done being the public face of the movement.” In a letter posted on a liberal Web site Monday, Sheehan stated that her decision is the result of the hatred and smears that have been directed towards her and the Democratic Parties desertion of her after she made it clear that she expected them to live up to the same standards she was demanding from the Republicans. Sheehan then criticized “blind party loyalty” as a danger, no matter which side it involved, and said the current two-party system is “corrupt” and “rapidly descending into “… a fascist corporate wasteland.” In her letter, Sheehan stated: “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.” I hope that does not mean that Cindy is leaving the U.S. to live elsewhere.

Sadly, the mother of twenty-four year old Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, who died in Baghdad, sacrificed a 29-year marriage and endured threats to put all her energy into stopping the war only to find the movement “often put personal egos above peace and human life.” However, 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… I guess no one paid attention to me,” she added, “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.”

While many will sorely miss her outspoken voice, Kristinn Taylor, spokesperson for FreeRepublic.com, states that she believes dwindling crowds at Sheehan’s Crawford protests may have led to her decision. She further stated that “Sheehan’s politics 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.”

Sheehan’s last comments on the matter included the following sad statement, “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.” How sad that mothers across the country are paying the price of an unjust war with the lives of their children, while the President continues to enjoy his own daughters and his life in the safety of the country he is placing in jeopardy both economically and physically as blowback is something that would affect all of us.

[tags]Cindy Sheehan, Anti War Movement, Fascist, Democrats, Republicans, Casey Sheehan, Fort Worth Texas, Attention Whore, Good bye America, Blowback [/tags]