I finally read Cindy Sheehan‘s farewell letter to the anti-war movement, and it’s quite a moving indictment, written from the perspective of a still grieving woman trying to understand her world, rather than a political actor trying to massage a message. I hope that leaving activism behind will begin to help her heal. She writes:

when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an “attention whore” then I really need to be committed. I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither. If an individual wants both, then normally he/she is not willing to do more than walk in a protest march or sit behind his/her computer criticizing others. I have spent every available cent I got from the money a “grateful” country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey’s brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings. I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

I hope some day she will realize that she did as much as she, one woman, could. She helped break the bond between the American people and the president in August of 2005, according to a Bush strategist I heard speak last fall. The turn in public opinion against the president began that summer with high gas prices and the questions she raised, and then was solidified by the horrors of Katrina. I don’t know much about what Sheehan has been doing since then, and the bigger questions she raises about the capacity of any activist movement to change the dynamics of power in this country are ones confronted anew by each generation of activists, in a variety of arenas. But I also know that conservative obsevers see the ability of the Congressional Democrats to get the president to sign onto a bill with benchmarks as a win for the anti-war forces, even if the anti-war forces feel that they have lost by failing to get a withdrawal bill.

It is, at this point, a banal observation to say that America is a great, slow beast — slow to change course and slow to anger. September 11 rousted the nation and sent it careening into the forest. Sheehan kicked the Leviathan and it began to move again, and in the direction she sent it. That’s about as much as any woman can ask.

The saga of the dueling Hillary Clinton books continues with a highly unsual mid-week “preview” publication of Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr.‘s New York Times Magazine cover story on Clinton’s Iraq war vote and subsequent foreign policy moves. Oddly, the Times fails to disclose at the end of the adaptation from the duo’s book Her Way that Gerth is married to a “top” foreign policy aide to one of Clinton’s Democratic presidential primary opponents, Sen. Chris Dodd.

Now, in the world of punditry, such ties don’t have to bind. People with skin in the game opine all the time. They are rightly called to account when they fail to fully disclose their ties, but otherwise it’s not considered an insurmountable problem.

The world of straight news reporting operates by very different rules, however. The Los Angeles Times has deprived the nation of the wonderful news analysis and deep reporting of Ron Brownstein this presidential cycle because he is married to a staffer for John McCain, which could have created the appearance of a conflict-of-interest in his presidential coverage. Instead, he now writes for The Los Angeles Times opinion page, where he’s made sure to disclose his wife’s role. Granted, the Times Magazine is much more likely than the rest of the paper (Op-Ed page excepted) to publish essays and reports from opinion writers, academics, and others with a background in the political or policy arena. Still, one would think The New York Times‘ disclosure rules would, at the very least, require a writer married to a foreign policy adviser to a Clinton competitor to disclose this to readers of his critique of Clinton’s foreign policy approach.

Gerth, to his credit, disclosed his wife’s job at the end of Her Way, and even sat out reporting on the 1996 presidential campaign, during which Dodd chaired the Democratic National Commitee, because of it, according this 2001 Columbia Journalism Review story. Here’s his disclosure from the book on Clinton, which Gerth dedicates to his wife, Janice O’Connell, and daughter Jessica:

Since the mid 1980s she has also served as a foreign policy adviser to Senator Christopher J. Dodd, who is a member of the committee.

That’s the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is currently chaired by another Clinton competitor, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden. Clinton competitor Barack Obama also sits on that committee, as does potential third party presidential candidate and Republican Chuck Hagel. O’Connell has worked for the committee since 1977. The Times Magazine omits Gerth’s wife’s job from its end-of-story disclosure. It would seem to be a particularly relevant disclosure, given that Gerth and Van Natta rely heavily on anonymous sources, including, they reveal in the Times, “dozens of interviews with … past and present senators and their aides.”

–Crossposted from Tapped.

Say whatever else you will about Ann Althouse, she’s a really fantastic botanical photographer.

The major east coast dailies have been on a bit of a roll over the past week when it comes to covering the changing (for good and for ill) status of women in the Muslim world. In addition to today’s awful news from Syria, there was Michael Slackman‘s front-pager from before the holiday on the Algerian women’s educational revolution — still worth a read — in The New York Times and Faiza Saleh Ambah‘s excellent Washington Post front-page round-up on the new abayas of Saudi Arabia and the slow weakening of Wahhabism.

–Crossposted from Tapped.

Let us never again listen to the administration’s facile, self-congratulatory talk of liberating Iraqi women without raising also the question of the refugees. War always degrades women. Always. The liberation of woman during the 20th century was one of the greatest non-violent revolutions the world has ever known. But war has always operated on contrary principles, and with results as likely to harm them as free them. From The New York Times today comes this heartbreaking story:

Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.

But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.

Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.

As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.

“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” …

For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore …

Many of these women and girls, including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months …

Inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration’s top foreign aid official, Randall Tobias, stepped down after admitting to visits from an escort agency charged with prostitution, making a mockery of the administration’s anti-trafficking agenda. The whole system of lies and corruptions from Washington to Baghdad to Damascus is so disgusting and outrageous and awful it’s hard to come up with anything to say beyond a furious shudder of condemnation. And so I will leave you with the president’s own words from 2004:

[F]or 25 million women and girls, liberation has a special significance. Some of these girls are attending school for the first time. It’s hard for people in America to imagine. A lot of young girls now get to go to school….

The advance of freedom in the greater Middle East has given new rights and new hopes to women. And America will do its part to continue the spread of liberty.

–Crossposted from Tapped.

Via Michael Petrelis comes this news from The Berkeley Daily Planet:

Berkeley High School administrators informed students this week about a change in board policy that requires all juniors and seniors who do not want their names and addresses released to the U.S. military for recruitment purposes to sign an “opt-out” form.

Prior to this, Berkeley High had simply handed over names and addresses of students who had “opted in” or wanted to receive information from recruiters.

But under threat of losing millions of dollars in federal funds, the Berkeley school board decided earlier this month on the change.

According to the federal No Child Left Behind act (NCLB), school districts must provide the military with the names and addresses of all juniors and seniors for recruiting purposes unless there is a signed letter from the parents or the student indicating that they are “opting out” and do not want information released.

Berkeley High was the last high school in the country to acquiesce to this policy.

And so the era of resisting military recruitment on high school campuses officially comes to an end.