12/30/09 – Cindy Sheehan – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton and this is Antiwar Radio.
And our guest on the show right now is Cindy Sheehan.
She's the mother of Casey Sheehan who died in the Iraq war back in 2004 and she's been a peace activist ever since then and she still is.
How are you doing, Cindy?
I'm pretty good, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing all right.
Thank you for joining us on the show today.
Really appreciate it.
Well, no problem.
I just hope we all have a better 2010.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
In fact, I wasn't really sure when I told Angela, see if you can get Cindy.
I wasn't sure whether I really want to talk to you about what's been going on for the last year or what's coming up in the next.
Maybe we can do a bit of both.
Let's start with next year.
You told me, I guess it was just a couple months back, that you're planning a big thing in Washington, D.C. in March, right?
Right, exactly.
All right, tell us all about that.
Well, we're calling it Peace of the Action, P-E-A-C-E of the Action, and you can get more information at peaceoftheaction.org.
But we're going, we're planning on setting up camp in Washington, D.C. on the lawn of the Washington Monument, and it's called Camp Out Now, and we're planning on doing acts of civil disobedience every day, Monday through Friday, in the heart of the evil empire of Washington, D.C., until our government agrees to start bringing troops home.
And we're starting on March 13th.
We're going to set up camp.
We're inviting activists from all over to come and join us.
If you can come and be a part of it for as long as it takes, or a few days, or a week, or whatever, we're just urging everybody to come, because we think that the time for symbolic actions are over, and we really have to start making some sacrifices and doing some pretty radical acts of civil resistance to make any kind of changes.
You know, I think part of what we're facing here, Cindy, is sort of a fatigue, you know, where, like for so many years, Afghanistan was the forgotten war.
Now Iraq is, and not that the war's over, the occupation is over by any means, but it's, you know, it's almost like any other TV show or something.
People just get sick of it after a while.
It jumps the shark, and they don't want to pay attention anymore.
But, I mean, the thing is, really, we owe it to these guys.
You know, most people who join the military, I'm sure like Casey, they go in there based on a lot of illusions, you know?
You hear people talking about fighting for freedom, even today in 2010, they talk about fighting for freedom as what these wars are about, and there are a lot of people who buy into that, and it's my responsibility, and your responsibility, and these listeners' responsibility to bring these guys home.
I mean, we both know our democracy is pretty broken, and we don't have nearly the influence that we're supposed to have over it being, you know, the people and all, but there is somewhat a democracy going on here, and we owe it to these guys.
They trust us, basically, to keep the politicians from ever sending them off to die or lose their limbs over no good reason.
It's our responsibility to say, like, hey, I don't care if you're bored.
The war is still on.
We have to stop it now.
Well, you know, I'm super tired, too.
I'm sorry, I'm quitting smoking, and so I'm kind of, you know, loony.
A little grouchy.
Well, you know, the poor last guest.
You should have heard him.
He was withering under the assault.
Oh, no.
Well, you know, I'm exhausted, too, Scott, and I want the wars to be over, and I don't want to be doing this.
It's a full-time job.
It's 24-7 for me, and I would love a life that didn't involve, you know, what I'm doing, being an anti-war activist, but we not only owe it to our soldiers, we owe it to the people of Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and now Yemen to do whatever we can.
We might be tired.
We might be exhausted, but don't you think they're tired of having these occupations, or these bombs dropping on them from the sky from robots?
So we owe it to humanity to get it right right now, as long as we can, because we do have the illusion and appearance of democracy.
So let's see if we can put the Democrats to the test this year.
Yeah, I mean, that's really the challenge, right, is to make the Democrats in the House of Representatives feel such pressure that they just refuse to cooperate with Pelosi, or maybe even she somehow can be forced to just refuse to cooperate with the executive branch anymore.
No, you can't have any money.
The war is over.
You won't end it.
We will.
That's what the House of Representatives is supposed to be.
I mean, if you read the Constitution, it's...
Well, we're hoping that we will put pressure on the Democrats.
And if the Democrats, you know that the Democratic base is anti-war.
The Democratic base bought into the illusion that Obama was going to be different from George Bush.
So we know their base is anti-war.
So let's join together to force them to do what their base wants.
And, you know, they're very vulnerable already in 2010.
So let's see if we can force them for once to do the right thing instead of stupidly letting their corporate interests decide what their policy is going to be.
Yeah.
Well, and the generals themselves, you know.
Well, so let me ask you a couple of things here.
Do you think, first of all, that there's been much progress on, well, cynicism?
Are people yet feeling their buyer's remorse for Barack Obama?
Or how long is that illusion going to last, you think?
Well, I think that there's a lot of people in the base who are already disgusted and not just disgusted, but they feel betrayed.
And, you know, unfortunately, they weren't really listening to what Barack Obama said during the campaign.
And so he's actually doing, in foreign policy, he's actually doing what he said he was going to do, which is so unlike a politician to follow campaign promises.
But I do see a lot of dismay in the base.
Like, I just wrote a piece where I was saying that at the beginning of the year, after Barack Obama was elected, and I would be out speaking, people would actually walk out on me.
That's never happened to me before, because I would be pointing out the similarities between Barack Obama and George Bush's policies.
And people would get up and walk out on me.
But now people seem to be flocking to, you know, hear people who have had this same opinion, people who have had the integrity of their position, no matter who's president.
So I do see a lot of, well, and then we see people that are so called in the left intelligentsia, like, you know, members of Code Pink, and Tom Hayden, and Michael Moore starting to show buyer's remorse in Barack Obama, which is unfortunate.
I'm glad they are.
But it's unfortunate to me that they're the ones who, who pushed Barack Obama down the throats of many people in the Democratic Party, or even on the left.
Yeah, well, it's funny.
I mean, I seem to remember pretty clearly that Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich were anti-war, and the rest of them might as well have been sitting on the board of directors of Lockheed.
I mean, give us all a break, y'all.
Come on.
Oh, absolutely.
And I just think that until we as an anti-war, pro-peace movement, get out of the notion that that politicians are going to help us, that we have to be constantly on the outside being the gas flies, being the sandpaper, being whatever that we have to do to rub these people raw, to rub them the wrong way, to come towards us, nothing is going to happen.
And, you know, unfortunately, I wasted a year out of my life running for Congress against Nancy Pelosi.
But I learned a lot of lessons in that campaign.
And one thing I learned is that we have no power in the political sphere.
So we have to stay outside of it.
And we have to be we have to join together no matter if we're anti-war right or anti-war left.
And we're the ones that have to drive foreign policy, not the politicians.
Well, and that's that's another very important point is that you need cover from the right.
I mean, there are more and more Republican politicians.
I don't know if you can get what's that guy, Duncan?
Is it John Duncan, who gave a pretty great anti-Afghan escalation speech?
I don't know.
Obviously, you know, I don't know who needs to do it.
Maybe I can try to help.
I don't know what the hell I could ever do about it.
But, you know, the thing would be hopefully to try to get as many conservatives and libertarians as possible to show up for your big rally.
And so to try to make it more difficult for TV to portray this as simply the liberal base, the progressive base, the left wing of the Democratic Party, because that is according to every single person on television.
That is the group of people that can all safely be ignored no matter what it is that they're saying.
So, you know, whether I agree with them or not, they are all the example of what everyone on TV is trying to prove that they're not.
Don't you dare call me one of those, you know, regular people who tends to vote Democrat.
I'm a total sellout like Bill Clinton style, DLC type, I swear.
That's what they, you know.
So what we need is for right wingers to say, yeah, I'm standing here with Cindy Sheehan because she's right and this war has got to stop.
And then that way it makes it more, hopefully would make it more difficult for them to just say, oh yeah, you know, Sheehan and them, blah, blah, blah, and try to write you off.
Well, we're keeping our demands very focused and very narrow because of that.
It's troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan, no more drones, no more mercenary killers, close the permanent bases and close the torture facilities.
And we're not going off on to health care or the economy.
You're not even talking empire in general, it doesn't sound like.
You're talking about these wars.
We're very, we're being very specific.
Of course, most of the people, most of my colleagues are anti-empire.
We want all the bases around the world closed.
We want our troops to come home.
We want to minimize our military exposure to defensive purposes.
Of course, we're all for that, but we want to keep our demands very narrow to attract a wider participation.
And we feel like if we bring the troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and all our other demands start to be met, then that's going to start a reduction of the empire.
But is it going to be reduced like this in a very sane, in a very strategic way?
Or are we going to have a total collapse like the Soviet Union did when they were mired down in Afghanistan?
Is it going to be like Gerald Salenti said, an Obamageddon?
Or are we going to actually have a very sane strategic reduction of our military empire?
Man, you said it.
I mean, right there, that is it.
You know, I'm a, well, I'm a terrible evil person.
Like I told you, I quit smoking cigarettes, but it hadn't been long enough where I'm over it yet.
So I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, this is, you know, the, the worst version of Scott you're going to find.
But, uh, right now I'm just imagining 55 people showing up to support you at this thing.
And that even includes if I could possibly go, which I doubt I'll even be able to, uh, what is it going to take to get, uh, I don't know, half a million people to show up and just bum rush DC and make the whole place have to stop and say, Oh my God, I can't believe Cindy Sheehan showed up with 500,000 people.
I mean, what do we got to do?
I don't have a billion dollars.
Somebody has got to have a billion dollars, right?
To afford the buses, to get, to, to hire the, the, uh, cold call people to, to get on the phones, to organize what?
I don't know.
I'm just a talk show guy.
I don't, I don't do the organization, but there's got to be a way to make this thing.
We still got a couple of months here to make this thing, uh, you know, undeniable, uh, to make this thing, uh, the answer, uh, that, uh, they can't, uh, help, uh, go along with, you know?
Well, we're, you know, first of all, um, we're the way we're planning is we don't need a half, a half a million people.
If we have a half a million people, that would be great.
We were thinking a thousand people could shut down Washington DC on a daily basis in 10 different places.
If we make it strategic, you only need about 20 people to shut an intersection down.
You just need a handful of people to shut a building down.
So what we're, what we're trying to do is not, you know, that's, that's, that can't be, numbers can't be the judge of our effectiveness or from the start, we're going to fail because first of all, this country's in the middle of a terrible recession.
People are unemployed.
You know, they don't have the resources, but then again, that's what the good thing about Campout now people can come.
People will be fed.
People have a place to stay.
People will have a place to build community.
But even if we start with 100, 200, 300 people, I'm sure as time goes on, that the momentum will build and it will grow.
I mean, we have, um, a Facebook page now.
It's called Peace of the Action.
We have 2000 people committed on that.
We have an active listserv.
And I think that especially at the beginning in March, when the colleges are on spring break, we have some colleges and some classes that are committed to coming and helping us get off the ground and helping us get started.
But people here are feeling the effects of the US empire.
The chickens are literally coming home to roost.
And so between shows like yours, my radio show, other people who know that it's the empire, it's our military empire that's causing this economic breakdown at home.
If we can start to educate people that if we could solve this, these military problems in a better way, then we'll be, our economy will be better off here at home too.
So it's just talking to people and, and having it start slow and build up, but we don't want to, we don't want to hinge it on numbers because that's what they always say.
Even if we have 500,000 people Scott come, they would say we have 10,000 people come.
So we can't play the establishment game.
Yeah.
Well, you're right.
I mean, and you know, on in any other situation, I'm against people blocking streets and all that.
Cause it just frustrates regular people and, and turns them against the people doing the protesting.
But in DC, they're all a bunch of federal government employees and they have, they have no feelings.
I'm bound to respect whatsoever, man.
And so screw them.
Now I, and that's what I agree with you totally is we're going to the heart of the empire.
And the imperial court, that's what William S. Lynn calls it.
He says, Washington DC is not the capital of, you know, America or anything like a Republic.
It's simply an imperial court, which I just, it just has all, you know, images of everybody with a purple robe on, but it's all basically the same thing, you know?
And so we want, and so we want to disturb the parasites because that's what they are.
And we want the parasites out of the host and we want true change to happen, not just symbolic actions, which the anti-war movement, unfortunately, specializes in symbolic actions and we don't have symbolic problems.
We have real problems that need real solutions.
Yeah.
Well, okay.
So tell me about, you know, kind of coordination when it comes to, because I understand what you're saying.
I agree with what you're saying, especially, you know, we don't want to, you know, set expectations all high and then fail to meet them.
And it doesn't have to be about numbers, depending on what exactly it is you're doing with the numbers you have and so forth.
You're talking about, you know, screwing up traffic on the street, I guess, and whatever other direct actions you say you have planned there.
But are you coordinating with other groups with any part of Code Pink or World Can't Wait or Answer or any of those?
Well, World Can't Wait and Answer and Veterans for Peace have jumped on board to, we don't really want endorsements.
Endorsements to us are meaningless.
What we want are people on the ground.
We want real help.
We want help we can touch, not just, you know, endorsements.
So we are working with groups in Washington, D.C. that have done these actions on a smaller basis and doing coordinating that way.
And if people want to be involved, they can email me at action at peaceoftheaction.org.
We have regular conference calls.
We have organizing happening in Washington, D.C. right now.
If anybody's in the area, I would love for them to help us be involved.
It's an enormous project.
It's something that's never been done before.
And so we're going to need a lot of logistical help.
Right on.
And again, for anybody tuning in late here and missed it, the giant thing is called Peace of the Action, a massive protest and direct action beginning of a new attempt to stop the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Cindy Sheehan's putting it all together.
And it starts March 13th in Washington, D.C.
And your colleague, Angela Keaton, is very committed to organizing libertarians to help us.
So if anybody wants to talk to Angela Keaton about that, too.
Yeah, that's that's a great idea.
And her email is simply Angela at antiwar dot com.
And of course, Cindy just said hers is action at peace of the action dot org, which is the website.
The P.A.
C. of the action.
Right.
And and again, that thing starts March 13th.
So many of us are out of work because of the giant war bubble that popped and all the distortions in the market that have to take some time to work themselves out.
So, hey, why not show up in D.C. and make life miserable for the people who are making all of our lives miserable?
That's our motto.
Oh, good.
Two thousand and ten.
Less killing in 2010.
Let's shoot for that.
Exactly.
And, you know, ride share.
We're going to have ridesharing boards and we're hoping to really build a community that just doesn't end with peace of the action that keeps going to really challenge the empire to take it further and to start a reduction in the U.S. military empire.
Right on.
And you know what?
I apologize because I didn't mention your other website earlier.
It's Cindy Sheehan's soapbox.
You can find some blog entries and the radio show archives there as well.
Absolutely.
Okay.
Thank you so much for your time, Cindy.
Great luck to you.
Best of luck to you.
Happy New Year.