It is time for Cindy Sheehan to get some grief counseling

I am a great admirer of what Cindy Sheehan has done to draw the nation's attention to what is happening in Iraq, and to the nature of the man who leads this country. The establishment of Camp Casey, and Sheehan's pledge to sit out there in the Texas heat until George W. Bush would tell her what the noble cause for which her son died was the kind of protest demonstration that gives the term a good name. Quiet, effective, poignant, the image of the unglamorous mom grieving for her war-lost son drove home to oblivious Americans the cost of this war in a way nothing else has. The candlelight vigils, the symbolic cemetery containing crosses for each soldier to be killed is a far greater testament to what we have lost than all of Bush's photo-ops with soldiers. It was lovely, heartfelt, and moving.

But then Cindy Sheeham the mom, the protester, succumbed to the siren song of the A.N.S.W.E.R. left and allowed them to co-opt her message and her purpose. I have no beef with Sheehan's meeting with Hugo Chavez, because I have no beef with Hugo Chavez. But at a time when she was making real headway in changing America's hearts and minds about this war, it probably wasn't the most productive move she could make. Then there is the question of whether she claimed her son died for Israel. She says she did not. So does Rabbi Arthur Waskow. There is no documentation that she did other than claims by the usual suspects (such as Christopher Hitchens, David Duke (to whom I will not link, but it's on the first page of Google results, Newsmax, the right-wing New York Sun, and Frontpage. But it doesn't matter -- the meme found its way into America's consciousness and turned Cindy Sheehan into a symbol of the "kook left."

When Sheehan announced in May that she was tired of being the right's favorite punching bag and going home, I cheered her decision. Because the point of her tribute to her son had been lost -- some of it her own inadvertent doing due to her inexperience as an activist, much of it not. Whatever her mistakes may have been, the way Sheehan has been treated by the right is reprehensible, and part of a campaign of smears and lies that seems to be directed at only women who dare to speak out against this Administration. Kristen Breitweiser, a Republican voter whose husband died in the World Trade Center, has been another target of the right wing lie machine for daring to ask the necessary questions.

Yet by now it wasn't just the right that was using Sheehan as its favorite punching bag. In this heartbreaking diary she wrote at Daily Kos, she decries those on the left who had branded her an "attention whore." This diary encapsulates everything that has been wrong with the very activist left into whose embrace she fell. It's impossible to read this diary and not recognize someone who not only has realized that she's been used as a tool by some of the most counterproductive elements of the antiwar movement, but whose emotional state has gone completely off the rails. I recognize it because I've been there more than once, albeit for different reason. When the emotional train derails, there are a lot of boxcars lying willy-nilly across the countryside of the mind, and there's a lot of cleanup that needs to be done.

“I’m going home for awhile to try and be normal,” she said then, which struck me as a healthy, healing thing to do. None of us who haven't experienced the loss of a child can understand what she has felt over these years. But a friend of mine lost a child just about Casey Sheehan's age last year -- not in war, but just as senseless. And the biggest dilemma I've seen in her is the conflict between the human need to be normal again and the idea that to close up the gaping wound in a family that the death of a child leaves is to somehow erase that child's existence. Coping with this kind of loss was described by someone else I know as "finding a place for it." You don't get over it, you find a place for it; a room in your mind that you visit occasionally but that you are no longer able to visit every day.

For the last few years, "finding a place" for Casey Sheehan in his mother's life has been directed towards ending the war that killed him -- at a great personal cost to that mother. It hasn't worked. Because of her position as lightning rod for both the pro- and anti-war sides, she hasn't been able to do the work necessary to find that place, particularly as the war has dragged on and more Caseys have died for nothing.

It seems clear that Cindy Sheehan has been unable to just go home and be normal for a while; to find that room in which to put Casey and visit him occasionally. Yesterday the news came out that she plans to run for Congress against Nancy Pelosi if the latter doesn't put impeachment back on the table:

I was going to announce on July 10 (my 50th birthday) before our Journey for Humanity that I would run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) if she didn't put impeachment back on the table before our tour reached DC on July 23. Impeachment was never hers to take off the table as it is a Constitutional remedy for BushCo, not an optional smorgasbord choice. However, the story was leaked to the AP and we couldn't keep the big announcement under wraps.

The feedback I have received since then has been about 3 to 1 positive and supportive. Some people have offered to quit their jobs to move to California's 8th to help my possible campaign. People are lining up to donate and help and I am again very grateful and touched beyond belief by the generosity and energy of my fellow Americans.

I truly understand the not so supportive people, though, because I have been in their shoes. Here in the USA, most of us put our faith in a two-party system that has failed peace and justice consistently and repeatedly. The Republicans do not have a monopoly on the culture of corruption (although BushCo have elevated it to policy status) and the way we do politics in this country needs a serious shake up when all that we the people get is a shakedown. I was frightened out of ever voting for a third party, or independent candidate, but voting out of fear is one of the things that bestowed the Bush Crime Mob upon us and may give us the Republican in actuality, if not in name, Hillary Clinton.

I was a life-long Democrat only because the choices were limited. The Democrats are the party of slavery and were the party that started every war in the 20th Century except the other Bush debacle. The Federal Reserve, permanent federal (and unconstitutional) income taxes, Japanese Concentration Camps and, not one, but two atom bombs dropped on the innocent citizens of Japan were brought to us via the Democrats.

Don’t tell me the Democrats are our "saviors" because I am not buying it especially after they bought and purchased more caskets and more devastating pain when they financed and co-facilitated more of George’s abysmal occupation and they are allowing a meltdown of our representative Republic by allowing the evils of the executive branch to continue unrestrained by their silent complicity. Good change has happened during Democratic regimes, but as in the civil rights and union movements, the positive changes occurred because of the people, not the politicians.

I have nothing personally against Nancy and have found our previous interactions very pleasant -- but being "against" the occupation of Iraq means ending it by ending the funding and preventing future illegal wars of aggression by holding BushCo accountable. Words have to be backed up by action and if they aren’t, they are as empty as Cheney’s conscience.

That Sheehan is right is beside the point. While I'm as disgusted by the "Can't win, don't try" attitude of House Democrats in regard to holding this Administration accountable for its crimes against the Constitution as Sheehan is, the fact of the matter is that "I'm going home....no I'm not" is chipping away at Sheehan's credibility. I 100% agree with Sheehan's message here, but at this point it is right message, wrong messenger.

I do not oppose for one minute Sheehan's drive to effect change in Congress, because we sorely need it. But at this point in time, she is just not equipped to do so. It's clear that going home to the still-festering wound in her family hasn't helped her to be normal for a while, but she is going to have to find a way to get that wound to heal. Activism just isn't doing it.

It's time for Cindy Sheehan to come to terms with this loss. Not to accept it, not even to forgive the man who sent her son to war. But she must find that place for Casey's memory and learn how to just visit it now and then -- and get on with her own life. If she can do that, then she will be far better equipped to enter the system she's fought so hard and be a real force for change.

UPDATE: Lynn has more.