*UPDATED* Another Cow Put Out To Pasture: Cindy Sheehan’s Last Dance

Cindy Sheehan has left the antiwar movement. In a farewell letter posted at the Daily Kos, Sheehan commits her final act of ‘shahada,’ martyrdom, by blaming the left, the right and little green men for her predicament. Her rambling, pointless screed is as meaningful as the suicide bomber’s goodbye videotape- and just as effective. No one, other than other dysfunctional misfits out of touch with reality that share her kind of psychopathy, will see her as credible.

Sheehan blurs reality with unreality.

…Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such “liberal blogs” as the Democratic Underground. Being called an “attention whore” and being told “good riddance” are some of the more milder rebukes…

I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?

…However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”

Yeah, that was Sheehan’s real problem- persecution and misogyny.

Her travails are the result of persecution by the Republicans or Democrats. For some strange reason, Sheehan won’t discuss the financial mismanagement that may well lead to state investigations. Apparently, there are some peace activists that are upset at how money was being spent- and made to disappear.

Sara L. Oliver, who left the group in 2005 following a dispute surrounding her efforts to secure grant funding for the organization, and other disaffected members have gone public with their suspicions and accusations against the Peace House, calling for an official investigation into why the group only has $14,700 in its bank account. Tens of thousands in donations, collected during Sheehan’s 2005 anti-war protest at the Crawford site, are unaccounted for, Oliver claims…

Another ex-member, Sandra Row, said she had seen buckets of cash donations in the Peace House in 2005. Some of that money, she said, had been used to pay veterinary bills for a cat living on the property, but many of those who bought supplies for the demonstrators were never compensated. As many as 75 people have quit the group because of grievances over financial matters.

“You’ll never know how much money there is because the cash is gone,” Row said…

The delinquent tax report is also to be filed next week, Wolf said. Because it was not filed in time, Peace House lost its corporate charter – a mistake seized upon by Oliver who filed for the legal right to control the name with the Texas Comptroller’s Office. Wolf has threatened legal action, saying the Crawford Peace House still exists as an unincorporated entity and Oliver is violating the law by using the same or similar name of an existing organization.

According to the comptroller’s office, loss of the corporate charter makes the organization’s board members liable for any Peace House debts. Sheehan, who was listed in 2005 as a board member, could be now forced to deal with the organization’s liabilities.

Sheehan’s Crawford Peace Camp money troubles might be the tip of the iceberg. She is trying to sell the five acres of land used by the antiwar movement in Crawford, Texas.

Camp Casey has served its purpose. It’s for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford , Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer.

Camp Crawford may not be Cindy Sheehan’s to sell, if it was purchased by the ‘movement’. Sheehan seems to care little about the law. She has also stated she will not pay her taxes. Given all the financial irregularities, it should come as no surprise. She probably doesn’t have any money left, anyway, and even if she did, her track record handling money is unimpressive. Despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars she has been paid (if not millions) and the insurance money paid out to her by the army, Sheehan’s beloved Casey went without a grave marker for a very long time. She had time to build a photogenic and dramatic phony cemetery in Crawford, Texas but no time to take care of her son. The decent citizens who did provide for Casey Sheehan’s last rites and care were screwed by Sheehan, too.

Somewhere in the midst of the carnival, Cindy Sheehan became less of a grieving mother and more of a willing pawn, only too happy to have the spotlight shine on her. Cindy Sheehan became the American Palestinian, for whom truth was irrelevant. The object of the game was to stay in the headlines and be perceived as a victim, even if that environment had to be created.

We will repeat, one more time, what you have heard a hundred times.

Cindy Sheehan is grieving over her son, Casey, who was killed in Iraq at the young age of 24. Many Americans- but not all- extend their sympathy to Mrs. Sheehan and the other mothers that have made similar sacrifices.

You see, some Americans, like Cindy Sheehan and her coterie of hangers on, losers and misfits, are very selective as to whom they extend their goodwill. If you don’t share their politics, you can go to hell, and may you and yours suffer and rot away. The hypocrisy is stunning. Unless you support their agenda, you and your dead son deserve no sympathy. In fact, you can be derided and ridiculed.

That is not an overstatement. In referring to parents who have lost loved in in Oraq but do not share Sheehan’s views, she says,

“I am starting to lose a little compassion for them. I know they have been as brainwashed as the rest of America…

I have been silent on the Gold Star Moms who still support [President Bush] and his war by saying that they deserve the right to their opinions because they are in as much pain as I am. I would challenge them, though, at this point to start thinking for themselves…

Hallie Lord wrote in an online message board:

The fact that some of us mothers vehemently disagree with you does not mean that we have been brainwashed. We are perfectly capable of thinking for ourselves and forming intelligent opinions about this war…The more you belittle others the less likely they are to hear and respond to your message.” “What an elitist, arrogant [remark],”

And so it goes. There is no disagreement, there is no room for tolerance or dissent. Disagree and you are labeled a fool, or brainwashed.

To be clear- if Ms. Sheehan were to have adopted a real anti war stance, we would have applauded- and even celebrated, her right to protest the war. While we can respect Cindy Sheehan the mother, we cannot abide Cindy Sheehan, ‘political activist.’

Ms. Sheehan is no more sympathetic a figure than any other mother who has suffered a loss and in fact, she may be less deserving. Instead of legitimately opposing the war, as is her right, Ms. Sheehan has made a deliberate choice to misrepresent her agenda. Ms. Sheehan has made a deliberate choice. She has chosen to align herself with those who have a particular political agenda, as we have noted, and she has allowed the death of her son to be used to camouflage those actions and that agenda.

It is not a principled anti war stand, in the least. Cindy Sheehan and company are asking us to leave Iraq now- right now, and the consequences be damned. Of course, that in fact would most resemble what happened after we left Vietnam. Jane Fonda’s ‘heroes’ swarmed into the south, killed almost a million people and kept ‘re-education camps’ populated for decades. That is what Cindy Sheehan and her supporters are asking us to do now- to turn Iraq over to the ‘freedom fighters’ Ms Sheehan and her supporters speak so highly of.

Apparently, some lives are worth less than others.

It is notable that whenever the Vietnam debacle is alluded to, as of often the case in attempting to make comparisons to the current conflict, no one ever mentions that it was Presidents Kennedy and Johnson that foisted that war upon the country- Democrats. No one today ever refers to those Presidents as ‘Hitler.’ When you consider that over 57,000 Americans died in that war, we find the lack of outrage curious, though not at all surprising. It is also interesting to recognize that President Johnson, who signed the Civil Rights Act, is not credited for wanting to keep South Vietnam free and democratic. After all, a free and democratic society is what leftists abhor and fear most. Hugo Chavez tramples on his critics, on free speech and a free press and the leftists are for the most part silent. Chavez can do what they can only dream of doing. As we have noted, Utopia cannot be imposed without tyranny.

It is clear that Cindy Sheehan is irrelevant. Everything she now claims to stand for and with, is irrelevant, because it is predicated on barely veiled deceit. She has made her choice and she will now have to live with that deliberately chosen deceit, surrounded by people who live by and worship deceit. In due course, she will be abandoned and forgotten, replaced with another, more photogenic icon. She will be relegated to a trivia blip in the real world and will have earned an irrelevant immortality in the politically correct next generation of junior high school history textbooks. As a mother who lost a son in war, she will always have our sympathy. As a political activist, she has earned our contempt.

Cindy Sheehan’s most important accomplices haven’t been the professional political activists, deliberately posing as anti war protestors, hiding the funding and their agenda.

That distinction belongs to the media, barely able to contain itself. The media won’t tell you that David Duke and Stormfront, the neo Nazis have aligned themselves with Sheehan. They won’t tell you that Sheehan and her supporters have not distanced themselves from those people. If the cause is worthy, we suppose, much can be ignored. They won’t tell you just how orchestrated this ‘grass roots’ movement really is. For more insight on the Cindy Sheehan circus, read The Media Force Field, from the The Anchoress.

This unholy alliance of deceit is one of the greatest cons since the pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting, with one exception. That great film was about a fictional con job. Today, the con job is a real one, designed to separate us from the truth and tear it up in the process.

Behind the scenes, machinations are contrived and hatched at a frenzied pace. Say anything, do anything, that pushes the sacred agenda. Welcome to the real world of Cindy Sheehan’s principled world of honesty and integrity.

In Georgia, Cynthia McKinney writes an open letter, insisting that Mr. Bush meet with Cindy Sheehan, in the interest of ‘fairness’ and ‘decency.’ This is the same Cynthia McKinney that refused to vote on a congressional resolution condemning the vile and racist anti-Semitic speeches of Louis Farrakhan disciple, Khalid Muhammad. McKinney saw the vote as a threat to freedom of speech and expression. Apparently, ‘fairness’ and ‘decency’ are relative. You can ignore those calls if you stand behind a racist and a bigot like Khalid Mohammed.

Ms. McKinney was the only American delegate that refused to walk out the Durban conference, of the ‘Zionism is Racism’ fame. This is notable because Ms McKinney sat on the House Armed Services Committee and the House International Relations Committee.

We suppose Ms. Sheehan is willing to overlook McKinney’s track record of hate because of her virulently anti American credentials- the kind that suit Cindy Sheeham and her supporters just fine.

When McKinney lost her seat in the House in 2002, many Democrats breathed a sigh of relief. She openly attributed her loss to ‘the Jews’ among others. When she was reelected, she was hailed as a conquering hero- mostly because she could be counted on as an anti Bush vote.

Someone needs to remind Cindy Sheehan that you are known by the company you keep.

Her open embrace of Hugo Chavez says more about her and those that support her, than it does about Chavez. As that tinpot dictator shuts down media outlets that disagree with his policies- which really means they are holding him accountable and demand transparency- Sheehan’s orchestrated public appearances have made her agenda clear.

See the Anchoress Stunning Media Spin On Chavez and Choosing Liberty for a no rose colored look at the reality of what the likes of Cindy Sheehan and the company she kept, really stand for.

She also needs to be reminded that her son, Casey, too, will be remembered by the company he kept- some of the finest men and women this nation have to offer. Despite all her efforts to the contrary, Cindy Sheehan will be unable to change the legacy of her son Casey, despite the cynical use of her own son’s memory. He will best be remembered by a grateful nation for having given his life in the defense of freedom.

Cindy Sheehan has been abandoned and tossed into the refuse heap. We can think of no more fitting tribute. Those who exploited her and those that have supported her will follow along, shortly.

*UPDATE* The shortest distance between two lines is a straight point. See the Anchoress post, Sheehan’s Usefulness Played Out, She’s Gone:

…she realizes – finally – that the Democrats and the left only loved her as long as she was doing their bidding emotion-tapping, Bush-bashing, Jackson-hugging, insurgent-encouraging, Chavez-hugging, camera-mugging, headline-grabbing, mob-collecting tool of distraction and obfuscation thing, meant to drive down the president’s poll numbers and support for his efforts to keep terrorist attacks from our shores.

When you see that, in black and white, the Sheehan side show can be seen exactly for what it was- a side show. The media cannot bring themselves to honestly report on Sheehan and her clear denunciation of the left. Saint Cindy was canonized by the media, after all. To be honest now would only highlight their own deceit.

Still, the Anchoress provides moral clarity in addition to the play by play:

Madam, your gracious and courageous son – whose death is tragic and for whom your mourning is nothing less than appropriate – will only have died “for nothing” if his mission is left dangling and unfinished by the very people – and their minions – who exploited you and who help to make the job of every soldier in Iraq more difficult. Your son died fighting – like the very noblest and most formidable of heroes – to free a people and a nation from tyranny, and to rid them of the nests of violent and murderous men who keep their nation – and a whole region – under the boot, under the veil and out of the marketplace of ideas and invention, progress and parity. So long as those people are so subjected, the “world peace” you rant for will never take hold, and terrorism – the killing and maiming of utter innocents – will continue, throughout the world, to be the preferred means of movement.

What is most noteworthy is what the Anchoress leaves almost unsaid.

She forgives Cindy Sheehan, for causing her and millions of others, great pain. She does not ask or demand we do the same. If we can find it in our hearts to forgive Sheehan, so much the better. If there are those among us that cannot find forgiveness, so be it. She talks to Sheehan but addresses us, too, with a certain truth.

In real life, conflict and disagreement are inevitable, even among those we love most. The problem is not the conflict- the real measure of our humanity is how we choose to deal with the conflict.

Do go home, Ma’am. Do go home and be silent for a little while, because silence is so much more instructive than noise… Your son had already figured it out. He knew liberty comes through the overthrow of tyrants.

Cindy Sheehan has much to consider. So do we. We can be as divisive as Sheehan or we can be healing, even when we disagree.