Sue Niederer, a former South Brunswick resident whose son Adam was killed in Iraq, reflects on Cindy Sheehan’s “resignation letter as the ‘face’ of the American anti-war movement.“
Niederer tells Politics NJ that Sheehan’s decision to walk away from the movement is understandable given the mix of apathy and anger she has faced.
“It’s a shame,” Niederer said of Sheehan’s decision. “The basic thing is Cindy Sheehan is a very good person, and she has been bombarded from both sides – the left and the right.”
The anti-war mom said Sheehan is right in her assessment of the country’s general disengagement from the war and the war’s effects. Sheehan said the country is more concerned with “American Idol” than with the soldiers in Iraq.
“There’s not any realization until people are physically impacted, or the economy is affected,” concurred Niederer. “Our country right now is more about the idolization of things that are not real. Reality hurts.”
Sheehan and Niederer are correct in their assessments. The war, while incredibly unpopular, has played out like a little-watched TV show, a cable series that has a small following but little impact on the wider culture.
This has allowed the Beltway pols and pundits to continue using an old narrative that distorts the political process and has resulted in a disconnect between what the public says and what the politicians hear.
Watching the news in North Carolina — a national cable station — I was struck by a comment made by one of the regular talking heads who was critical of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s vote against the latest funding legislation. They were now listening to the fringe of the antiwar movement he sdaid (I’m sorry, but I can’t remember who it was) — the implication being that they were acting outside the mainstream. The mainstream, however, wants out and has come to view the Bush presidency as a disaster.
But this is only part of the problem. The extreme partisanship we are facing also has distorted our democracy. Sheehan makes the point that too many so-called progressives have placed the electoral prospects of Democrats over progressive principles, holding back on their criticism of people like Jim Webb, who was elected as a war critic but who voted to give the president the money he requested with no strings.
Sheehan, as she points out, was a darling of liberal war critics until she “started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party” to. That’s when “support for my cause started to erode and the ‘left’ started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used.”
What has now happened is that the Democrats have ceded ground, given up the power of the purse on the war and any authority they might have had to get us out of the deadly mess the Bush administration has made in Iraq.
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Hank Kalet 