Stop talking for a while, Cindy Sheehan
...otherwise known as "why the Americentric antiwar movement annoys the piss out of me".
I was informed by a friend of mine several months ago, that during the beginning of the Camp Casey phenomenon, I was shown for a split second on the Daily Show's segment covering the new sensation (which, true to American tradition, held the public's attention for all of one month. This wasn't just because of Katrina... the "spirit of Camp Casey" would have lost momentum, fizzled, and lost the public's attention within a few weeks of it ending anyway). Apparently, the cameraman for the DS caught a moment of me attempting to talk to Cindy Sheehan, her acting bored and stuck up, and me giving her a "drop dead, fucking celeb bitch" look. It was only up for a second, but according to my friend it caught the entire essence of the moment.
So, yes, anti-war movement... Cindy Sheehan fucking annoys me. She doesn't annoy me just because she acts like she is the only American who really feels the pain of this war or only "Gold Star Families" (way to play into the military's system of giving us military families rewards in the form of color coded stars (!!!) that our neighbors can admire and envy) can talk about this war. This has been really exaggerated by the cadre of handlers that glommed onto her in August, and I don't think it is totally her fault. She, Military Families Speak Out, and Gold Star Families for Peace, all annoy the hell out of me because they refuse to talk about the real issue in this war and, at least at Camp Casey, they quashed anyone who did. The real issue here is imperialism- fucking imperialism. Bold, unabashed, militant imperialism. Racism and economic supremecy are driving forces behind our imperialism... not the only driving forces, but extremely strong ones.
However, MFSO and GSFP will not- they refuse- to talk about these issues because it will "alienate their base"... ok... who'se your base? The right-wing family members are already alienated by what they perceive, with some accuracy, that Cindy Sheehan is pimping Casey to end the war. She is perceived as someone craving a spotlight, as someone putting herself in front of every Americans face as often as she can, then demanding that they feel sorry for her. Something went really wrong sometime in August up there in Crawford, and unless they were really in her camp before, military families have stopped paying attention to her, if they haven't flat out started hating her. My mom liked her until about halfway through August. I get the feeling that she feels dissed... her kid didn't die, so no one is paying attention to her. She only has a blue star, not a gold one, so who cares?
I was at Camp Casey all of one day at the beginning, and I could not make myself go anywhere near it after that. I was part of the "really left" crowd, as identified by the vets, MFSO, and GSFP, which included pretty much everyone there with Code Pink and some of the "independants" (me, for example, since I can't stand any of those sheeple groups). At one point, when Bush was going to drive by the camp on the way to a fundraising dinner, MFSO called for all the family members to get behind a banner that said "bring them home" or something. I, being the sister of a wounded vet of this most recent imperialistic venture, naturally went up and got behind this banner. I was told three times to leave. As I was explaining my military cred (does it bother anyone else that you have to basically flaunt your military cred in today's antiwar movement? I am too young to know, but it seems like during Vietnam, you kinda didn't want the military cred... right? what the fuck happened?), I was told that "I'm not a part of MFSO" and yes, believe it or not, that I was with the "activists" not the "families". This is giving me so much hope for the future of this movement, I stand there thinking, when finally an executive decision is made that yes, I can stand with the families since... ummmm. .. by definition I am a military family member, even though I was an activist first and still am and will be. I guess I am a "premature anti-fascist" (if you know what I am referring to, consider yourself very well educated, since the Spanish Civil War is never talked about in the US even though thousands of American leftists went to Spain to fight against the fascists).
Perusing the MFSO website, at www.mfso.org, one can find several speeches given by MFs, mostly parents of soldiers. I am now coming to the thing that annoys me the most about these organizations and the entire war movement in general. These speeches reveal the same kind of token reference to the real 100% victims of this war... not the soldiers, who although stupid and in many ways coerced, did sign up for the military (are we soooo stupid to think that the military doesn't kill people? I keep hearing families say "my boy didn't sign up to kill anyone"... uhhhh... its the military folks... especially after 9/11, what the hell did you think it was about? I mean, we as a country are really seriously stupid, its like our national disease, but we aren't that dumb. We've all seen war movies.) and they did not miss movement when their unit was sent to Iraq. The real 100% victims are Iraqis, and it is rascist and americentric to talk about this war like no one suffers more than the aggressor, the invading army and its soldiers. I am sorry... I've seen it first hand, but nothing I've seen compares to what Iraqis are enduring, and often, dying of as their country remains occupied by those "heroes" in uniform. There are bigger victims than soldiers. Absolutely. And it is wrong for the anti-war movement to talk about the 2,000+dead like 1) they are saints who were in the wrong place at the wrong time... nu-uh, again that's the Iraqis, or 2) like that number is the biggest tragedy in the war. When is an MFSO member going to get up and say, "over 100,000 extra Iraqis died as a result of an occupation my son helped to perpetuate. He added to that figure, and I am sorry." It hasn't happened yet. We are in denial that these sweet kids are killers. My family member who is a vet is a killer, and it haunts him. He did not kill in self-defense. he was part of an agressor army force that went to someone else's home and attempted to control it. That is a decleration of war, and Iraqis shot back at him. That entire sequence of events makes him anything but a saintly victim, and as an anti-war movement we need a serious, long moment of mia culpa and stop this shit. MFSO speeches ramble on and on about the damage done to the troops... the deaths, the injuries, the lack of support when they come home... and all of that is true. Americans frankly don't care. They know full well the casualty figures, etc, and they don't care and those who do don't know what to do about it. I don't know why we insist on always beating the drums of figures which Americans already know... like if we just 2150 one more time, everyone's mind will change. Anyway, we go on and on about the price Americans have paid, and formulaicly and predictably, we then waive our hand for one second to the fact that 50 times more (at least! at the very least!!) Iraqis than Americans have died in this war of aggression. Many more thousands have been injured, driven from their homes, made to live in completely chaos, and have suffered preventable illness and suffering that are a direct consequence of this imperialistic war of aggression. We knew better when we went in. It wasn't like we were making an honest mistake then, no matter what any evil entity in Washington says. We were imperialistic and aggressive then, and nothing has changed. We say it once: "of course we ALSO mourn for the Iraqis..." and go back to what we were saying (emphasis the author's) about how victimized we and our colonial troops are.
Its part of a larger problem that Americans have that we can't see past our noses and that we believe we are entitled to perfect lives, so whenever anything gets in the way of that we cry like someone cut our big toe off. Its sickening, and I'm fucking tired of it, and it sucks that it has taken root in such a strong way in the only "opposition" to this war that America has yet to produce. If we can't be anti-imperialist and anti-americentric, who will be? If we are scared of alienating our "base" by telling them the truth, who will tell them? Who will change anything? We have to be the ones to understand that yes, our base is rascist and imperialist, and perhaps lots of activists are too, but we have to work to eradicate that, not pander to it. Let's get some gumption... some grit... lets "stop singing and start swinging" (thanks Malcolm X, for challenging us to do something strong to challenge power instead of whining amonst ourselves about how bad things are...)
I was informed by a friend of mine several months ago, that during the beginning of the Camp Casey phenomenon, I was shown for a split second on the Daily Show's segment covering the new sensation (which, true to American tradition, held the public's attention for all of one month. This wasn't just because of Katrina... the "spirit of Camp Casey" would have lost momentum, fizzled, and lost the public's attention within a few weeks of it ending anyway). Apparently, the cameraman for the DS caught a moment of me attempting to talk to Cindy Sheehan, her acting bored and stuck up, and me giving her a "drop dead, fucking celeb bitch" look. It was only up for a second, but according to my friend it caught the entire essence of the moment.
So, yes, anti-war movement... Cindy Sheehan fucking annoys me. She doesn't annoy me just because she acts like she is the only American who really feels the pain of this war or only "Gold Star Families" (way to play into the military's system of giving us military families rewards in the form of color coded stars (!!!) that our neighbors can admire and envy) can talk about this war. This has been really exaggerated by the cadre of handlers that glommed onto her in August, and I don't think it is totally her fault. She, Military Families Speak Out, and Gold Star Families for Peace, all annoy the hell out of me because they refuse to talk about the real issue in this war and, at least at Camp Casey, they quashed anyone who did. The real issue here is imperialism- fucking imperialism. Bold, unabashed, militant imperialism. Racism and economic supremecy are driving forces behind our imperialism... not the only driving forces, but extremely strong ones.
However, MFSO and GSFP will not- they refuse- to talk about these issues because it will "alienate their base"... ok... who'se your base? The right-wing family members are already alienated by what they perceive, with some accuracy, that Cindy Sheehan is pimping Casey to end the war. She is perceived as someone craving a spotlight, as someone putting herself in front of every Americans face as often as she can, then demanding that they feel sorry for her. Something went really wrong sometime in August up there in Crawford, and unless they were really in her camp before, military families have stopped paying attention to her, if they haven't flat out started hating her. My mom liked her until about halfway through August. I get the feeling that she feels dissed... her kid didn't die, so no one is paying attention to her. She only has a blue star, not a gold one, so who cares?
I was at Camp Casey all of one day at the beginning, and I could not make myself go anywhere near it after that. I was part of the "really left" crowd, as identified by the vets, MFSO, and GSFP, which included pretty much everyone there with Code Pink and some of the "independants" (me, for example, since I can't stand any of those sheeple groups). At one point, when Bush was going to drive by the camp on the way to a fundraising dinner, MFSO called for all the family members to get behind a banner that said "bring them home" or something. I, being the sister of a wounded vet of this most recent imperialistic venture, naturally went up and got behind this banner. I was told three times to leave. As I was explaining my military cred (does it bother anyone else that you have to basically flaunt your military cred in today's antiwar movement? I am too young to know, but it seems like during Vietnam, you kinda didn't want the military cred... right? what the fuck happened?), I was told that "I'm not a part of MFSO" and yes, believe it or not, that I was with the "activists" not the "families". This is giving me so much hope for the future of this movement, I stand there thinking, when finally an executive decision is made that yes, I can stand with the families since... ummmm. .. by definition I am a military family member, even though I was an activist first and still am and will be. I guess I am a "premature anti-fascist" (if you know what I am referring to, consider yourself very well educated, since the Spanish Civil War is never talked about in the US even though thousands of American leftists went to Spain to fight against the fascists).
Perusing the MFSO website, at www.mfso.org, one can find several speeches given by MFs, mostly parents of soldiers. I am now coming to the thing that annoys me the most about these organizations and the entire war movement in general. These speeches reveal the same kind of token reference to the real 100% victims of this war... not the soldiers, who although stupid and in many ways coerced, did sign up for the military (are we soooo stupid to think that the military doesn't kill people? I keep hearing families say "my boy didn't sign up to kill anyone"... uhhhh... its the military folks... especially after 9/11, what the hell did you think it was about? I mean, we as a country are really seriously stupid, its like our national disease, but we aren't that dumb. We've all seen war movies.) and they did not miss movement when their unit was sent to Iraq. The real 100% victims are Iraqis, and it is rascist and americentric to talk about this war like no one suffers more than the aggressor, the invading army and its soldiers. I am sorry... I've seen it first hand, but nothing I've seen compares to what Iraqis are enduring, and often, dying of as their country remains occupied by those "heroes" in uniform. There are bigger victims than soldiers. Absolutely. And it is wrong for the anti-war movement to talk about the 2,000+dead like 1) they are saints who were in the wrong place at the wrong time... nu-uh, again that's the Iraqis, or 2) like that number is the biggest tragedy in the war. When is an MFSO member going to get up and say, "over 100,000 extra Iraqis died as a result of an occupation my son helped to perpetuate. He added to that figure, and I am sorry." It hasn't happened yet. We are in denial that these sweet kids are killers. My family member who is a vet is a killer, and it haunts him. He did not kill in self-defense. he was part of an agressor army force that went to someone else's home and attempted to control it. That is a decleration of war, and Iraqis shot back at him. That entire sequence of events makes him anything but a saintly victim, and as an anti-war movement we need a serious, long moment of mia culpa and stop this shit. MFSO speeches ramble on and on about the damage done to the troops... the deaths, the injuries, the lack of support when they come home... and all of that is true. Americans frankly don't care. They know full well the casualty figures, etc, and they don't care and those who do don't know what to do about it. I don't know why we insist on always beating the drums of figures which Americans already know... like if we just 2150 one more time, everyone's mind will change. Anyway, we go on and on about the price Americans have paid, and formulaicly and predictably, we then waive our hand for one second to the fact that 50 times more (at least! at the very least!!) Iraqis than Americans have died in this war of aggression. Many more thousands have been injured, driven from their homes, made to live in completely chaos, and have suffered preventable illness and suffering that are a direct consequence of this imperialistic war of aggression. We knew better when we went in. It wasn't like we were making an honest mistake then, no matter what any evil entity in Washington says. We were imperialistic and aggressive then, and nothing has changed. We say it once: "of course we ALSO mourn for the Iraqis..." and go back to what we were saying (emphasis the author's) about how victimized we and our colonial troops are.
Its part of a larger problem that Americans have that we can't see past our noses and that we believe we are entitled to perfect lives, so whenever anything gets in the way of that we cry like someone cut our big toe off. Its sickening, and I'm fucking tired of it, and it sucks that it has taken root in such a strong way in the only "opposition" to this war that America has yet to produce. If we can't be anti-imperialist and anti-americentric, who will be? If we are scared of alienating our "base" by telling them the truth, who will tell them? Who will change anything? We have to be the ones to understand that yes, our base is rascist and imperialist, and perhaps lots of activists are too, but we have to work to eradicate that, not pander to it. Let's get some gumption... some grit... lets "stop singing and start swinging" (thanks Malcolm X, for challenging us to do something strong to challenge power instead of whining amonst ourselves about how bad things are...)
posted by thankgodforpbr at 2/24/2006 11:11:00 AM
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