recent article<\/a> in these pages, I criticized Cindy Sheehan for going soft on Hillary Clinton\u2019s warmongering. Well, I was wrong. Sheehan hasn\u2019t gone soft on Clinton; she’s attacked the New York senator for her hollow position on the Iraq conflict. <\/p>\nAt a rally outside Hillary Clinton\u2019s office in New York, Cindy Sheehan declared to the crowd on hand that Clinton must either speak out against the war or risk losing her job. In fact, New York antiwar advocates are hoping Sheehan will run against Clinton in the Democratic primaries in 2006. Others out West are hoping Sheehan will take on Dianne Feinstein in California.<\/p>\n
In a recent interview with the Village Voice<\/I> Sheehan contended that she was \u201cso frustrated\u201d by top Democrats like Hillary Clinton \u201cwho should be leaders on this [war] issue, but are not,\u201d arguing that it is \u201ctime for them to step up and be the opposition party. This war is not going to end unless the Democrats are on board with us.\u201d<\/p>\n
It sure would be nice if more antiwar activists were to follow Cindy\u2019s lead on this one. If the majority of protesters took their protests to the front steps of each elected pro-war Democrat as well as Republican, we might have a big-time movement on our hands. I\u2019ll admit it; Sheehan is savvier than I gave her credit for. She knows that the antiwar movement should stick to the war, not lesser-evil politics. Too bad Sheehan wasn\u2019t making headlines during the 2004 elections; if she had been, the antiwar movement might have not been so soft on the pro-war Kerry campaign.<\/p>\n
We certainly have a long way to go before antiwar activists start taking on the Democrats for embracing everything Bush has propagated.<\/p>\n
Some have speculated, including respected journalist Wayne Madsen, that the Democrats didn\u2019t attend last weekend\u2019s rallies because the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC had urged them not to. Madsen reported that Congressman Barney Frank was pressured by AIPAC to intervene and scare Democrats out of attending the rallies. I certainly agree that AIPAC doesn\u2019t want elected officials to attend antiwar festivities, but to think that AIPAC alone is responsible for the Democrats\u2019 absence is foolish. The Democrats have been pro-war and pro-occupation since the Iraq war\u2019s inception. Is this solely because of AIPAC\u2019s influence? <\/p>\n
No, the Democrat\u2019s inability to challenge Bush goes a lot deeper than their ties to Israel. The Democrats haven\u2019t been able to go after Bush on any major issue, from PATRIOT Act to CAFTA to John Roberts. The Iraq war is just one more failure in a laundry list of Democratic disappointments.<\/p>\n
Perhaps next we\u2019ll see Cindy Sheehan take on the plight of the Palestinians and speak out against Israel\u2019s influence over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. If she does so, we might really be getting somewhere. In the meantime, however, let\u2019s just be happy that Sheehan recognizes the Democrats are Bush\u2019s war enablers. At least it\u2019s a start.<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joshua Frank writes: In a recent article in these pages, I criticized Cindy Sheehan for going soft on Hillary Clinton\u2019s warmongering. Well, I was wrong. Sheehan hasn\u2019t gone soft on Clinton; she’s attacked the New York senator for her hollow position on the Iraq conflict. At a rally outside Hillary Clinton\u2019s office in New York, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}