Cindy Sheehan
The face of the US anti-war movement is calling it quits.
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| US anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan |
On Thursday’s Riz Khan, Cindy Sheehan, the face of the US anti-war movement, is calling it quits.
In one of the few live interviews she has granted since her Memorial Day farewell message, she talks about why she is leaving the peace movement, her disillusionment with US policy and what lies ahead.
Spurred by her son’s death in Iraq, Sheehan set up a makeshift camp not far from President Bush’s Texas ranch in 2005.
And while her two-year campaign is credited with bringing media attention to the US anti-war movement, it has come at great personal cost. Sheehan herself says the pressure ended her 29-year marriage, took up much of her life savings and seriously impacted upon her health.
So, on what would have been her son’s 28th birthday, Sheehan left ‘Camp Casey’.
In her farewell message Sheehan said she had struggled to bring meaning to her son’s death but that Casey “did indeed die for nothing … 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”.
Sheehan, who always claimed her efforts stemmed from patriotism, closed by saying: “Good-bye America … you are not the country that I love and I finally realised no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.”
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This episode of Riz Khan aired on Thursday 31 May 2007
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