Cindy Sheehan

Short book by the mother of Killed in Action 1st Cav. Specialist Casey Sheehan and her transformation to peace activist. The first chapters deal with her personal anguish and then her need to put her anger to more productive purposes other than contemplating suicide. From Bellflower, Calif., UCLA graduate and raised Catholic Sheehan worked in the church for many years. She now considers all religions questionable. Her life work is promoting pacifism to halt any more mothers from having to deal with what had happened to her. Sheehan considers her own guilt as not having dissuaded her son from enlisting in the first place. The most interesting part of the book is when Sheehan happens upon the idea to go to Crawford, Tx. to ask Bush a simple question, "For what noble cause did my son die?" She got no answer, since he would not meet with her. Sheehan says that if she had read Butler's "War is a Racket" earlier in life she might still have her son. Sheehan critiques the media (A. Cooper, L. King, R. Limbaugh, B. O'Reilly) but says that "...everyone in America has bloody hands from this [Iraq War] monstrosity...". This quote comes late in the book and the whole thing trails off from there. This book is a testament to Sheehan's feminist awakening and her finding a place in the peace movement. This book begins as a biography of her son and ends being her personal journey to empowerment and liberation. Sheehan's raw feelings are expressed and it is not often an entire book is devoted to a mother's anguish for her son's place in her heart.… (meer)

I knew who Cindy Sheehan was, but was in Japan for the duration of the Camp Casey media circus and thus missed out on the particulars--which is why I decided to read this book. Sheehan definitely has a bone to pick--her description of her "visit" with an unfeeling President Bush primed for a feel-good photo op sent me into a chilled rage from which I didn't recover for hours. The rest of the book reveals less about the overarching politics of the Iraq War than it does the ways in which that war has devastated people back home: destroyed marriages, bred neglect for surviving siblings, chilled friendships, and led to lost jobs and a basic inability to function in society. Sheehan also has a bone to pick with other anti-war protesters, but is rather oblique about it; I imagine people who followed the coverage as it was occurring will understand her references, but they left me out at sea. At any rate, "Peace Mom" is not the best book dealing with the repercussions of the war, but it does illuminate an angle which has been neglected by other volumes.… (meer)