Saluting Cindy Sheehan.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

When Cindy Sheehan submitted her "resignation letter" as head of the peace movement, I was happy for her but saddened for the rest of us. More than anyone else I can think of, Cindy Sheehan enabled millions of Americans to see this hideous war for what it is.

Along the way, she was called every ugly name on the Net, which traffics in misogynistic crudities and computer screen snipers.

Going full speed, she threw herself into the effort to impeach Bush and Cheney, and she attacked Democrats who fronted for this war. Their apologists then hurled at her the "same slurs that the right used," she noted.

She said she was tired of the infighting and the ego-tripping within the peace movement. She was disgusted, understandably, with the Democrats, and thoroughly dejected about the possibility of ending this war and rescuing this country.

"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," she wrote. And she added: "George Bush will never be impeached."

She has sacrificed immensely to try to end this war. Now she needs a break, and who can blame her for that?

"I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain what I have lost," she said. "I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable, and rigidly mendacious marble."

I'm not as despairing as Sheehan is. Howard Zinn teaches us that even the seemingly most unbendable marble can crumble at surprising moments, if we keep pushing. But I certainly understand how...