Perhaps the loudest protestor of the Iraq war, Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in a 2004 Baghdad battle, has turned off the megaphone, laid down the signs and announced she is officially finished protesting the war. Sheehan wrote a 1,200-word letter titled “Good Riddance Attention Whore” published on the liberal website Daily Kos, enumerating her reasons for giving up the anti-war fight. As anyone could guess, the primary reason for Sheehan packing it in, and granted, she kept it up for over two years, is that the California mom had run out of cash. Sheehan also renounced the Democratic Party, writing “hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike.” While Sheehan writing “Good Riddance Attention Whore” is obviously sarcastic, to some extent, good riddance Cindy Sheehan (I wouldn’t dare call a woman who lost her son in Iraq a “whore”). And not because I disagree with Sheehan’s beliefs about the war or the methods she selected to demonstrate her beliefs. I think much of what she says couldn’t be more true. In her letter she called America “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.” It’s true. People do care a bit too much about American Idol considering what’s going on. And her camping out in front of George Bush’s Crawford Texas ranch in 2005 and his refusal to come out and meet her will go down as one of the great American war protests and simultaneously, one of the greatest acts of presidential cowardice. So then why good riddance to Cindy Sheehan? I’m glad Cindy Sheehan is quitting because whenever she appears on TV or in the paper, it’s a reminder of how pathetic the American anti-war movement has become. This movement used to be led by youthful men with long hair and beards, bare-breasted women, intellectuals, poets, artists and some of the best musicians the world has ever seen. And now? In 2007, four years into one of the most questionable and corrupt wars ever, the face of the anti-war movement is a 50-year-old mom with a mom haircut and mom jeans. At a time when the ground couldn’t be more fertile for a mass movement to end a war, there is nothing. No youth, no art, no music and no breasts. One can only hope, now that the anti-war cause will no longer be defined by a mom, there will be room for a real movement.
•CNN: Cindy Sheehan Gives Up Her Protest
•Daily Kos: Sheehan’s Letter