Originally posted by Nadir on LastChocolateCity.com

Cindy Sheehan has had it. The mother who began her crusade to end the Iraq War by camping outside George Bush’€™s Crawford, Texas ranch after her son, Casey, was killed in Iraq, issued her resignation as “the face” of the anti-war movement in a post on the DailyKos website this Memorial Day.

The activist has endured a storm of criticism throughout her two-year campaign, and that storm grew stronger last week when she renounced ties with the Democratic Party over their refusal to cut off funding for the imperial occupation in Iraq.

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’€™s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

The punk Democrats were put into office with a mandate from the American people to stop the carnage in Iraq, and to hold the Bush administration accountable for its many crimes. But the hypocrites who took over Congress in November are rolling over for George Bush and the corporate war machine just like the Republicans did. Many of the Democratic Party’s so-called leaders – including presidential candidates senators Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and House Judiciary chair John Conyers of Detroit – have chosen political posturing over what is best for the United States, the people of Iraq and the world.

In fact, the Democrats have taken on the Iraq war as their own. The military funding bill that passed requires the Iraqi parliament to pass an oil law that grants ownership of two-thirds of the nation’€™s oil to foreign corporatations confirming the “€œBlood for Oil"€ motives of the invasion. (Click HERE to watch an animated video that explains the oil law or Click HERE to read the language of the law for yourself.) Cindy Sheehan sacrificed her marriage, her family, her savings and her life attempting to stop the needless bloodshed that has now been coopted by the Democratic Party.

She offers stern criticism for the peace movement “that often puts personal egos above peace and human life… It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.”

But Sheehan is most critical of herself for believing in the United States and its system for so many years, and she has lost so much to it.

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for 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 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.

This All-American mom is packing up and heading home, broken, beatened and bruised from her battles. Her parting words are those of a parent who has done her best to prepare her offspring for the cold, cruel world outside only to find that the hard-headed brat either hasn’t been paying attention or doesn’t care. In the end, all a mother can do is let the prodigal child deal on its own.

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.

The Daily Kos: Good Riddance Attention Whore by Cindy Sheehan

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