I respect Cindy Sheehan for her enormous contribution to the anti Iraq war movement. She made the ultimate sacrifice any mother could be called upon to make, and nobody - not liberal nor conservative - dare to denigrate her. She paid the ultimate price in loss. She burst upon the anti-war scene in August of 2005 and gave a public face to the grief of other families who also had lost their children. And she worked tirelessly in the cause to end the conflict. Perhaps too tirelessly, for she obviously has crashed and burned.
But there is something almost too self-pitying about her abrupt departure from the scene she built. In her public announcement, she said this:
"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."
One would have thought she had spent 20 years protesting our involvement in Iraq. Yet she captured our attention and our hearts only two years ago. In those two years she actually accomplished quite a lot. Public opposition to the war in Iraq is indeed one of the signature reasons the Republicans lost Congress. Americans are upset over the conduct of Bush's misadventure in the Middle East.
But the Democrats won Congress by a thread. They simply do not have the numbers to override Bush's veto. And they also don't have a consensus among their constituents to set a timetable and pull out come what may. Americans are conflicted over how to exit for a very good reason.
As somebody who opposed this war from the very beginning, I can tell you that my main reason for doing so was because I agreed with Colin Powell's pottery rule. "If you break it, you own it."
Some of us tried very, very hard to warn America that an invasion was unnecessary, and that we would indeed break what was whole with dire results. We were right then. And we are right now when we say that we cannot simply pull up our stakes and leave a failed state overrun with terrorists, even if we are indeed the reason they are there in the first place.
Neither can we keep doing what we've been doing. Bush's strategy has failed. We know that. And we know we must find an exit strategy because we have lost too much blood and treasure. The treasure part I could write off, but not the lives we have lost there. Those are our sons and our daughters. They belong to every American.
There are, in fact ways to exit. They include talks with stakeholders in the area, reviving and strengthening alliances with our traditional European friends and getting them involved in a diplomatic solution. It means pulling back from Iraq but maintaining a military presence in other Middle Eastern nations, with a commitment to contain the Iraqi violence so that it does not spill over their borders. In short, we need diplomatic solutions to this failed military exercise.
But Americans are uneasy with a timeline because, as a matter of strategy, you don't broadcast your exit plans to an enemy. To do so simply gives him an incentive to slip away, hunker down, and wait you out. Instead, we need to be putting pressure on the Iraqi government to find a political solution to their civil war and letting them know in no uncertain terms that we will not prop up their government forever if they don't get control of Shiite militia as well as Sunni insurgents. In other words, the exit strategy involves a diplomatic effort that involves our allies as well as persuasion of the Iraqis.
Bush, however, is not willing to do all that. And until he does, the Democrats don't have the numbers to make him. Politics is not just the art of the possible. It's also the science of counting your votes. Democrats have done that.
Rather than picking up her marbles, blaming the American people for showing a certain maturity that she herself doesn't have, and going home, perhaps Cindy Sheehan ought to cut back her activities, take a well-earned rest, but leave the bitter disappointment.
There is no law anywhere that says she has to continue to make her incredible sacrifices. She indeed is entitled to a personal life. She didn't have to sign on to be a lifelong martyr. A simple, dignified statement that it was time for her to move on with her life and well wishes to the movement would have brought her universal and deserved, accolades from Democrats as well as many moderate Republicans who are beginning to see the problems with this war.
But to put her sacrifice in perspective, the war in Iraq has gone on from 2003 till 2007, four years. She launched her protest in August 2005 - just under two years ago.
Compare that to the Vietnam War, which began in 1959 (at least, American involvement). The anti-war movement began in earnest in 1964 and didn't end until the fall of Saigon in 1975. That was eleven years.
Many of the people who protested that war, from David Dellums to Tom Hayden to Joan Baez to Dr. Spock, Norman Mailer, and countless lesser-known anti-war activists, fought and worked and sacrificed for eleven years without ever giving up. Some did civil disobedience many times. Some like Joan Baez and Dorothy Day served actual jail sentences in grim prisons. And they never said "America it's up to you." They wouldn't think of it.
And remember, also, all the many civil rights leaders and activists and union members who have fought and continue to fight to end racism and economic injustice. They don't give up in bitterness because of one set back. They continue to fight the battle day after discouraging day and have been doing so since the thirties, forties and fifties.
Cindy Sheehan was like a bright, soaring Roman candle, who burst on the scene with such energy. What a shame that in the end she sputtered out in a bitter rain.
Hopefully, the writing will make up for that.
I actually am kind of glad that Sheehan has stepped aside. I think she played her greatest role in her Crawford, Texas stand a couple years ago, and that the past two years her public personality has gotten in front of the issue rather than the other way around.
The facts on the ground are what seems to be providing the strongest pivot point in the public debate--and comments by retired military, and news accounts by reporters like Tom Ricks and Rajiv Chandrasakaren have probably done more to raise my awareness on the likely outcomes in Iraq and for the Middle East at large than any comments in recent years by Sheehan (or for that matter George W. Bush or Dick Cheney).
I appreciate the personal commitment that Sheehan has made, but I think others--ordinary folks rather than media celebrities--are what will ultimately drive the Iraq War to its necessary conclusion. There is nothing that Sheehan could say or do at this stage to provide additional life to the anti-Iraq War movement, because frankly I don't think it needs it. Come September I would not be surprised to see policy makers looking for the exit sign. It's past time.
When a child dies, that loss becomes and remains very core to who the survivors are. And believe it or not, with lots of support and some luck, after many years it is not all bad. Maybe just 99% bad because there's that little extra 1% of insight that you wouldn't have otherwise.
People who have lost children are not the same as everyone else no matter how much we would like to be. And we don't want anyone to have to be like us. Even people we don't like. What I see in Sheehan right now is the beginning of understanding that some people *don't* get it.
I'm not speaking for Cindy Sheehan because everyone is different. But she's not so different that I can't recognize the unresolved pain.
The best way I think of it is as kind of a disability. It's not a desire of pity or special status, it's a desire of acknowledgment of reality - that maybe we go to a dark place from time to time. Or we can't make ourselves care about some fashion that seems silly and transitory. Or we can't go by an accident without tears.
So I don't see this as sputtering out on her part. It's a miracle that she burned at all because this is the grief that can kill. Literally.
I made the worst decisions of my life in the couple of years after my son died. I was vulnerable and in ways self-destructive. I had a really hard time differentiating between those who were truly well-meaning and those who were predatory. That's what I think about with all of this business. I know it hits too close to home.
I just think that too many people are lacking understanding that the loss of one's child, especially when it's sudden and especially when someone lacks an ongoing support system is really not something you can imagine. However bad it may seem in the abstract, the reality is even more painful.
So I've gone on and on, but this is really the only area in which I have any real expertise and I hope it is useful. I don't want or need attention or sympathy but I hope I have conveyed what I'm trying to say here without coming off like an asshole.
Now, Democrats, stop eathing your own, and turn your energy and anger where it belongs....on Bush and the Republicans.
I won't say anything about her because I respect the death of her son and her courage in doing what she did. Regardless of what we can say about her, she had the courage to give up her life to stand up and demand answers from the president. They were only two years, but two very intensive years. And she did this with no planning; she pretty much just took a tent, got a ticket to Crawford, and started her quest. It takes a lot courage to give up your life and take up on the president.
She may not have been the perfect spokesperson, but then, she was the only one. And since no one else got up to the plate, she has been pretty much the only visible face of the peace movement so far.
So I won't talk directly about Sheehan; after all, she sounds to me that she is still in mourning, a mourning that may just had come to an end.
I will speak about the many of those who share Sheehan's disillusionment with the Democrats and our political process. Sheehan's response can be explained by her deep sadness from the death of her son; the reaction of the many other people who haven't been directly affected by the war cannot be explained this way.
As we all know, we are working with thin margins. The democrats were able to win a victory because many people who were disengaged in politics became active. And many simple do not understand how our government works.
We and the Democratic leadership should be worried about this, and should launch some educative project that explains how things work. Our media is not going to do it, and the surface level story and the framing done by the mainstream media makes it look like Democrats gave up.
If we don't educate them enough, we may lose the gains of 2006.
Also, the movie Patton comes to mind when Patton says , "America likes winners and will not tolerate a loser." I think we've got to accept that we might leave by taking a model of the Fall of Saigon, with thousands trying to get in that last helicopter. I'm not saying it'll end exactly like that but that wars are messy things. The days when one side met the other at a table with armies lined up ready to give/accept weapons are over.