Peace activist Cindy Sheehan, who camped outside President Bush’s Texas ranch after her son died in Iraq in 2004, announced Monday that she will bow out of anti-war activities. She cited her frustration with the Republican and Democratic parties, as well as exhaustion and a desire to be near her children, as reasons for her return home to California.
“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,” Sheehan wrote in her blog. “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.'”
Sheehan’s decision to withdraw from the anti-war movement comes days after Congress approved a bill authorizing supplemental funding for the war in Iraq without benchmarks for troop withdrawals. Some Democrats, especially women representatives, voted against the bill. But other Democrats defended their support of the supplemental funding by saying that Democrats in Congress currently do not have enough votes to override the president’s veto of a bill that includes benchmarks. Representative John Murtha (D-PA) said that Congress will receive a report of the surge, which he said “is not producing the results that were promised,” in September. He said that the Democrats will then find “the votes from both Democrats and Republicans to change policy and direction.”
The approved supplemental bill includes funds to benefit veterans and Hurricane Katrina victims. A minimum wage provision that extends to the Northern Mariana Islands is also included. In Iraq, the law prohibits the use of any funds to support “the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq” and ensures that the United States will not control Iraqi oil resources.
