Ben Johnson provides us with what other members of the Casey Sheehan family are thinking about Cindy Sheehan’s actions:
The fact that Cindy Sheehan has used her son’s coffin as a political soapbox has not set well with many members of Sheehan’s extended family. In a backlash, patriotic members of Casey’s father’s family have distanced themselves and their late, heroic relative from Cindy’s anti-American ways. KSFO-AM radio talk show host and Move America Forward leader Melanie Morgan received the following e-mail from Cherie Quarterolo, the late Casey Sheehan's aunt and godmother, and is sent on behalf of Casey Sheehan’s family:
Hello again Melanie,
Our family has been so distressed by the recent activities of Cindy we are breaking our silence and we have collectively written a statement for release. Feel free to distribute it as you wish. Thanks – Cherie.
In response to questions regarding the Cindy Sheehan/Crawford Texas issue: Sheehan Family Statement:
The Sheehan Family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President, silently, with prayer and respect.
Sincerely,
Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins.
Thank goodness someone in the Sheehan family puts family, country, and dignity above political motivation. At last we see where Casey got the heroic sense of duty and patriotism that led him to lay down his life for his friends. R.I.P.
Johnson also provides more insight on the political motivations behind Cindy Sheehan:
However, she has branched out into denouncing the military and the United States itself. According to FPM contributor Lee Kaplan, Sheehan likened convicted terrorist lawyer Lynne Stewart to literary hero Atticus Finch at a rally at San Francisco State University. Stewart passed on messages from convicted 1993 World Trade Center bomber Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman to his terror cell in Egypt and often pledged her belief in the morality of anti-capitalist violence. According to Kaplan’s account, Sheehan’s rhetoric that evening could as easily have been written by the "Blind Sheikh" himself; she, too, regarded America as the "Great Satan":
America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for.
She furthered this belief with a pronouncement on her official website, in which she describes her vision of a utopian future in America: "I will rejoice to hear the sounds of the collective Mea Culpa and the beating of breasts."
To deprive this evil empire of a sufficient military, Cindy endorsed the San Francisco citywide measure known as "College Not Combat," which would encourage the city’s high schools to deny military recruiters access to their student directories, from which they seek military enlistments. The fact that the cause she championed in the name of "the children" would be a violation of section 9528 of the "No Child Left Behind" Act, an infraction punishable by the revocation of federal education funds, did not cause her or her ideological comrades to bat an eye. The "College Not Combat" coalition includes a host of socialist and anti-American organizations, including International ANSWER, Code Pink, the National Lawyers Guild, the International Socialist Organization, Socialist Organizer, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (which hails convicted cop-killers as "political prisoners"), and others. Such left-wing organizers often speak of the need to reduce the number of young people joining the armed forces, in order to frustrate "imperialist" U.S. foreign policy.
One such radical leftist is Medea Benjamin, the founder of Code Pink, Global Exchange, and the mastermind behind the violent anti-World Trade Center riots in Seattle. Benjamin enjoys a close working relationship with Cindy Sheehan as part of the professional antiwar fringe. Medea, a longtime admirer of Fidel Castro, with the help of fellow Castroite Leslie Cagan, founded the International Occupation Watch. Established in the city of Baghdad during the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Benjamin said its stated goal was to get as many U.S. troops as possible to declare themselves conscientious objectors and be sent home. Through Code Pink, she even managed to take $600,000 of cash, medicine, and supplies to "the other side" in the Iraqi terrorist capital of Fallujah (possibly the whereabouts of Casey Sheehan's murderers). In an essay in Nation magazine, Benjamin spelled out a long-term strategy to deflate the U.S. military presence in Iraq and around the world.
Benjamin’s anti-American foreign policy views are seemingly shared by Kathy Kelly, with whom Cindy shared the stage during antiwar protests. Kelly is the Director of Voices in the Wilderness, which violated UN sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1990s. Kelly visits "political prisoners" held captive by the United States…in Iraq. She has spoken at numerous campuses, often with radical Islamists, and has supported the Nicaraguan Sandanistas. In late 2003, Kelly received a three-month sentence for trespassing at Ft. Benning, Georgia, during a massive protest against the anti-Communist "School of the Americas."
David Fenton has been laying the propaganda groundwork the Left needs to justify its anti-American policies for nearly a generation. A one-time photographer for the Weathermen, a left-wing terrorist organization, as well as a partisan calling for the "liberation" of South Vietnam, Fenton went on to angle the U.S. media on behalf of the Nicaraguan Sandanistas and the Marxist regime of Grenada. Fenton Communications was soon enlisted to popularize the George Soros-funded MoveOn.org and the Win Without War Coalition. In 2004, Cindy Sheehan appeared in an anti-Bush TV commercial, paid for by a 527 group known as "Real Voices," which were distributed by…Fenton Communications. Coincidentally, David Fenton also promotes the September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, another organization of left-wingers making political capital from the death of their loved ones.
Fenton is not Sheehan’s only public relations conduit. Her statements are also distributed by the Institute for Public Accuracy, the organization that sponsored Sean Penn’s trip to Baghdad on the eve of war. The day after September 11th, this taxpayer-funded entity offered "expert" testimony on terrorism to credulous media outlets. One IPA-sanctioned spokesman said Osama bin Laden’s handiwork "holds up a mirror to U.S. policy of causing massive civilian suffering in Iraq…[W]e hope that along with the grief, we can…form deeper compassion and understanding." The IPA is a member organization of United for Peace and Justice, the "mainstream" face of the antiwar movement, which held many of the major antiwar demonstrations in 2003 and was founded by…Communist Party member Leslie Cagan.
It appears Sheehan embraces the anti-American views of the far-Left, possibly even advocating that soldiers disobey their officers. An online interview reveals that after defining "supporting war and killing" as "anti-Gospel, anti-religion, and anti-Christ," she told American troops they were being "misused," and finally exhorted them: "Refuse to kill innocent people." Yet no U.S. officer can legitimately order someone to kill "innocent people"; it seems she has joined Medea Benjamin and Leslie Cagan’s crusade to mint ranks of conscientious objectors who will study (anti-terror) war no more.
Whose side is Cindy Sheehan on?
