It’s interesting to see how stories converge. For example, yesterday Cindy Sheehan posted her “resignation letter as the ‘face’ of the American anti-war movement” :
The first conclusion is that 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.”
I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?
First of all, good for her. Many Democrats have been incredibly hypocritical lately when it comes to the war. Cindy Sheehan doesn’t deserve a lot of the flak that she’s received from either side of the aisle. Her loyalty is to the anti-war movement, not any particular party, so kudos to her for avoiding the pressure to become a Democratic partisan.
Having said that, you can count me among those whose opinion of Cindy Sheehan has soured considerably since the “Camp Casey” protests. It all goes back to when she appeared alongside Hugo Chavez and praised him for “supporting life and peace” :

If Sheehan is sincere when she says “when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart”, then I seriously question her judgment. Did/Does she know anything about Chavez beyond the fact that he’s a fellow Bush-basher? When this first happened, I wrote a couple of posts
bashing Sheehan for her appearance with
(military coup leader) Chavez. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re leader in a movement that criticizes the President, aligning yourself with someone who made it a
crime to criticize the President is the very height of hypocrisy. If Sheehan tried to set up a “Camp Casey” in Caracas, she’d be thrown in jail.
Last year, I concluded my last Chavez post by writing :
We could argue about this stuff endlessly, but let me just end by saying that Chavez’s friendship with Fidel Castro doesn’t inspire me to give him the benefit of the doubt. When you’re passing laws restricting press freedom while hanging out with a guy who’s got a long history of jailing dissidents, the idea that an oppressive policy is the result of some accidentally vague wording is pretty hard to swallow. The more likely explanation is that Chavez wants to hold onto power and is willing to trample over the rights of anyone who gets in the way of that goal, but as long as he says the right things and bashes George Bush, I’m sure all of these criticisms are just recycled propaganda, right?
Just this year, we’ve seen Chavez granted the power to rule by decree (would you trust George Bush with this power?), worked towards state control of energy and telecommunications, threatened to take over Venezuela’s banks, and over the weekend has shut down a media outlet critical of the government (a move Human Rights Watch calls “a serious blow to freedom of expression”). Chavez’s defenders will endlessly bring up the specter of the 2002 coup attempt to defend some truly indefensible policies, but despotic power-grabs are the antithesis of democracy.