An Evening With Cindy Sheehan

http://original.antiwar.com/henderson/2009/09/06/an-evening-...

"If we thought [the wars in] Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan were wrong when Bush was president, then they’re still wrong."

So began Cindy Sheehan in a speech at the Peace Resource Center in Seaside, Calif. (near Monterey).

I had never seen Ms. Sheehan speak, and I found her performance impressive. I’ve always respected her for her courage and her persistence. Last Thursday, my respect grew.

My respect for many of my fellow Monterey-area antiwar activists also grew. There was a pretty good turnout for a Thursday-night event on a warm Monterey evening: The room held a capacity crowd of about 60, and others were turned away because of a government regulation restricting the number of people in the room. And many of the faces I saw were people I’ve come to regard as friends – left/liberals whom I met during the Bush administration when it was easy to oppose the various wars because, for many of them, Bush was so easy to dislike. After Obama was elected, I wondered whether many of my erstwhile allies against the war really would continue to be my allies. I have not been disappointed; most of them still are. The Peace Coalition of Monterey County, an umbrella group of almost 30 other groups, is still going strong. Thursday night was part of the evidence. Our pending Oct. 2 protest against the war on Afghanistan, with the theme "Out of Afghanistan: Eight Years is Enough!," is further evidence.

But back to Cindy Sheehan. With her lead-off line, she made the exact right point and set the right tone. She could have soft-pedaled her views, knowing that there were probably some Obama partisans in the room, but she didn’t. Nor did she pull her antiwar punches throughout the speech. She stated, "Obama was inaugurated on a Tuesday. On Friday, he bombed with drones in the Swat Valley. Three days in office and he’s a war criminal."

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