Fort Worth, Texas – Cindy Sheehan, the soldier’s mother who galvanized an anti-war movement, said Tuesday she’s done being the public face of the movement.
“I’ve been wondering why I’m killing myself and wondering why the Democrats caved in to George Bush,” Sheehan said while driving to the airport, where she planned to return to her native California.
“I’m going home for a while to try and be normal,” she said.
In what she described as a “resignation letter,” Sheehan wrote in her online diary on the Daily Kos blog: “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.”
Sheehan began a grass-roots peace movement in August 2005 when she camped outside the president’s Crawford ranch for 26 days, demanding to talk with him about the death of her son, Army Spec. Casey Sheehan, 24, in an ambush in Baghdad in 2004.
Cindy Sheehan’s protest swelled to thousands. But she also drew criticism for some actions, such as meeting with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s leftist president.
She said she sacrificed a 29-year marriage and endured threats to put all her energy into stopping the war. What she found, she wrote, was a movement “that often puts personal egos above peace and human life.”
