Jim Dean: Thank You Cindy SheehanNice to hear from a Dean about that horrible funding bill.
Jim Dean is the Chair of Democracy for America:
Last week, Cindy Sheehan announced that she was taking time off to get back with her family and her health. I hope she can bring some peace and tranquility into her life. Few deserve this more than she. I also hope she’ll get back into the fight when she is ready.
As a parent, I cannot possibly imagine how she has gone through each day with the pain of losing her son in Iraq, the pressure to be in twenty places at once, the media circus, the travel, and navigating the politics of destruction that has become the hallmark of the conservative culture. But she has done all of these things and more in her struggle to bring our troops home and to establish a clear line of accountability between our integrity-challenged commander-in-chief and those who must live and die by his politically driven decisions.
All of us our grateful to her for her sacrifice and her inspiration.
For all the things that have been said about Cindy Sheehan, I think we can make a few observations. Cindy Sheehan has succeeded. Like most of us, she is disgusted and frustrated by the Congressional vote to fund the Iraq War without timetables; and fed up with our country’s culture of incumbency that has polluted our democracy. But Cindy Sheehan channeled unspeakable personal grief to make the war in Iraq a national issue at a time when most of this country was not paying attention. Withdrawal timetables would not even be mentioned in Congress had she not woken up the rest of the country to the real cost of Bush and Congress’ decision to invade Iraq.
Thanks, Jim, for speaking up on Cindy and for seeing how much most of us opposed that bill funding the war without timelines.
And Democracy Fest coming up this week-end.
http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/21054