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Now!
You can sure tell it's an election year.
Despite the fact that over 2770 US soldiers and 600,000 Iraqi
civilians have been killed in Iraq, the mainstream antiwar movement,
or what's left of it, has failed to hold the two war parties
accountable for the destruction and death they've initiated.
And perhaps most disappointing of all, Cindy Sheehan, the brave
soul who almost single handily resurrected the antiwar movement
from the dark vestiges of the 2004 elections, has now surrendered
to the politics of lesser-evilism.
Sheehan has not completely
curbed her activism like so many other antiwar activists did
two years ago during John Kerry's bid for president, but she
has outright refused to come out and fully embrace any candidates
who are challenging the Democrats for their explicit support
for Bush's bloody war on Iraq. Aside from endorsing any alternative
antiwar hopefuls, Sheehan has also failed to criticize the pro-war
Democrats who are up for reelection.
Before the campaign season
began to heat up Sheehan had lambasted Democratic Senators Hillary
Clinton and Dianne Feinstein, among others, for their backward
defense of the war effort. She even went as far as to describe
Hillary's position on Israel and Iraq as being equal to that
of Rush Limbaugh. Yet, when it has mattered most, i.e. now,
she has been virtually silent. But it may not be a mystery as
to why.
Cindy Sheehan has joined forces
with Medea Benjamin of CODE PINK as well as the Progressive Democrats
of America, where Sheehan serves on the organization's Board
of Directors. Benjamin too is on the PDA's Board and has aligned
her antiwar activism with the group's charge to reshape the Democratic
Party from within.
Medea Benjamin is a truly baffling
creature. After the fall of Sen. Kerry in '04, for whom she had
campaigned avidly, the former California Green Party candidate
for US Senate told The Nation magazine, "For those
of you willing to keep wading in the muddy waters of the Democratic
Party, all power to you. I plan to work with the Greens to get
more Green candidates elected to local office."
She certainly has not stood
by that lackluster promise, as she now works for the Democrats.
And I'm not sure how working to elect "progressive"
Democrats to office, which Benjamin and Sheehan are now attempting
to do with the PDA, will ever help build an alternative to the
two pro-war parties. Nor am I convinced that electing Democrats
to office will ever end the war in Iraq -- as John Walsh recently
explained in these pages, even if the Democrats pick up the necessary
15 seats to reclaim the House, their overall position on the
war will not be changing, as no new Democratic House contenders
actually oppose the war.
Perhaps Cindy Sheehan has fallen
into the vicious trap of non-profit activism, where she cannot
truly speak her mind without being fearful that her liberal supporters
will pull their funding from the groups she aligns with. Or maybe
Sheehan just doesn't get it. Maybe she doesn't understand that
elections are a great place to go after the war enablers for
all of their awful habits and evil deeds.
Cindy Sheehan isn't accustomed
to backing down from a fight, and we owe her tremendously for
her efforts to rekindle the antiwar movement when she staked
out Bush in Crawford. But her decision to not take on the Democrats
with vigor this election deserves criticism. We need Sheehan
supporting antiwar candidates, not rebuilding the Democratic
Party.
As Sheehan told me a year ago,
"I will not support a pro-war Democrat. I will support any
anti-war candidate ... [We] need to expose the failures of the
Bush administration along with those of Congress and the media.
[We] need to keep pushing for the full withdrawal of troops 'now.'
That is paramount."
Come on back to us Cindy, come
back.
Joshua Frank edits the radical news blog www.BrickBurner.org
and is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George
W. Bush, published by Common Courage Press (2005). Josh can be
reached at BrickBurner@gmail.com.
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