Sit Down for Change and Stand Up for Peace

Day 3

I haven't met anyone who likes to go to funerals. Attending a funeral must be one of the last things anyone of us would ever choose to do. Here in America we are even more distanced from death than we are from birth. Both natural activities have been made abnormal and something that only happens in hospitals.

Even though I had my babies at home, I am totally like the average American who has an aversion to death and funerals. So, can you imagine the feeling of panic and immeasurable pain when I awoke on April 13, 2004, the morning of my son's funeral? Can you imagine how I was feeling when I took a shower that morning, a morning just like every other morning, except I was burying my oldest child? Can you imagine the surreal feeling of putting on a new "mother of a hero" suit and walking out to the limo that picked us up for the very well-traveled trip to our church, where I had spent so many happy hours with Casey? My surviving children looked so beautiful in their funeral clothes and Casey's dad was so handsome in his new black suit. It took all my energy to not throw up. This week, how many more Iraqi mothers and American mothers have had to so needlessly walk in the same sad shoes that I had to walk in two and a half years ago? To the people who say I should just "get over it," the tears are pouring down my face right now recalling that awful April day, but also for the families who will have to go to their loved ones' funerals because of the clown in chief.

Yesterday, in his press conference, George said that he has been to "rodeos" before. Was he the one in the clown suit diving into the barrel right before the bull gored him in the buttocks? What George has done to our country is not a "rodeo," it is one long funeral of death and misery, and the rodeo clown has presided over the demise of our democracy and abolishment of our security.

America and humanity won huge victories this week, but peace wasn't the victor, change was.

To have true peace we need more than Rumbo to resign. Congress needs to do its Constitutional duty to impeach the rest of the war criminals and remove them from office. Like Saddam, George, Darth Cheney, Rumbo, Condi, and the rest of the warniks need to be tried for crimes against humanity.

Yes, we won some battles this week, but we need to stay on the offensive and work for true change and peace. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid need to know that we voted in record numbers to bring our troops home. The Democratic leadership also need to know that we stood in long lines and sometimes in the rain to vote for accountability and justice. We can't relax now that we have the upper hand.

When the 110th Congress is sworn in in January, we will need to be there in the halls of Congress demanding that the people we just elected represent us, and not the war machine.

Our responsibilities as American citizens do not end on election day. True democracy happens between elections, and the time between elections is where the real work gets done.

We Americans are a formidable force when we unite and work together and, in the past, we have engineered and have been responsible for amazing change in our nation.

Let's make history and do it again.

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Casey Sheehan, who was KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04. She is the president and co-founder of GSFP and the author of Peace Mom. Send her mail at CindysPersonalMail@yahoo.com.

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