See ya Cindy

I wanted to write about Cindy Sheehan yesterday, but Johan Santana was clearly the lead story. In fact, it pains me to drop him down the web page, but alas the world moves on. And no, there was no Johan sighting today, sadly.

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan has decided to call it quits.

"I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost."

Noble enough. Fine reasons but, unfortunately, it didn't end there.

As will no doubt surface throughout the rest of this piece, I vehemently dislike Cindy Sheehan. Personally, I think it's fantastic that we live in a society where someone can openly oppose the government's course of action, and I'm fairly mixed on the Iraq war. So as I write on the following, please know that the disdain for her comments originates not from a staunch Republican backing of the war, but rather the complete lunacy of her comments.

Sheehan wrote a farewell letter in which she stated the following:

(Her son Casey Sheehan) died for nothing.

Perhaps it's the need to swing toward the extreme for attention grabbing's sake that causes her to say this. It's stupid, absurd, and insulting to her and to those who have died in the war. Look, Iraq is a completely different place now than it was five years. One of the most ruthless dictators in the history of mankind is no longer committing genocide. Iraqi citizens have freedom unlike anything seen for generations. The country is still a dangerous place with plenty of civil unrest and the reconstruction process far bumpier than anyone wants, but to say "nothing" has changed is moronic at best.

"It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years, and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most."

I honestly wonder how Casey Sheehan would reply to this statement if it had been made while he were still alive. The best I can do is place myself into the situation and comment as if it were my own mother making those statements. I'd be incredibly disappointed that my mother did not support me in something I felt was important. I would be shocked that she would find serving the United States and offering my life for this country and the freedom of the Iraqi citizens an ignoble cause.

The United States is becoming "a fascist corporate wasteland."

Sheehan's bitterness overshadows the valid points that she does make at times. This off the topic rant makes no sense with its vague overtones that detracts from her overall message. These are the type of bitter statements that repulse me from someone who might very well have something valid to say. But when she starts waving her arms, generally blaming everyone for everything, how does someone seriously interpret that?

"I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble."

At a time when Congress is fighting a bill through that includes benchmarks and time tables for troop withdrawls from Iraq, I have a hard time with the aforementioned, repulsive extremism in her quote. "Carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble" is more rhetoric that poorly tries to stress her point and position and yet turns me away in light of actual events. Ignoring facts and throwing around more absolute statements is a waste of time.

"Single-minded crusade" screams of the tragedy of the situation. The article I've linked to cites that Sheehan's "antiwar activism had cost her her marriage" and "that she now owed extensive medical bills." That Cindy Sheehan loves her son so immensely and misses him so much may be her most endearing qualities. That Casey's death has caused her to become so warped and single-mindedly focused on things more important than her health and husband may be her least redeeming ones.

Photo from Rolling Stone