Observations on America

Far from the eye of Hurricane Katrina and the attendant media storm, Cindy Sheehan finally concluded her vigil outside George W Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, on 31 August. The quietness of her departure was in striking contrast to the publicity fanfare of the preceding month. For some, this was simply confirmation that Sheehan's cause was silly-season emoting, now replaced by a real issue of life and death. But, for Sheehan herself, Katrina proved the relevance of her message - a message which, she is at pains to make clear, she has only just begun to deliver.

"Katrina says a lot about the state of our nation and the priorities of this administration," she told me from Los Angeles as she began a hectic schedule of speaking engagements. "What Camp Casey demonstrated was that we've really got a momentum behind our movement. What's important is that we don't pass up this opportunity." Camp Casey, named for the son she lost in Iraq, was the seat of her protest in Texas.

For now, Sheehan's energies are directed towards 24 September, when the United for Peace and Justice group marches on Washington. "We aim to get people there in their tens of thousands, to surround the White House, and actually hold Congress accountable."

Sheehan's initial demand was for ten minutes with the president; if Bush met her now and showed compassion, would she leave the political stage? "Absolutely not. It's gone beyond that. This started out when Bush was using the name of my son as a reason to pursue what he termed a 'noble cause'. So we won't stop until that cause - the occupation - is over."

To critics, Sheehan's broad engagement with politics has fatally undermined her moral position. A string of quotations, suggesting that she perceives the occupation of Iraq somehow as a Zionist crusade, has appeared on the internet. Asked about this, she was laconic: "I never said that. The right-wing commentators and bloggers made it up to smear me." Sheehan had plainly been briefed to avoid contentious subjects outside a defined range. "I don't know anything about broader issues," she said. "I'm not qualified to speak about that."

Where she did feel able to contribute was as a lightning rod for Democratic resistance. "I've come across so many congressmen who've told me that, thanks to the courage I've shown, they can now form a united front," she said. Which raised a question: why should America's opposition party require such an excuse to attack as controversial a policy as Iraq? She could see the point. "Certainly, I've been very disappointed by the leadership shown on the left. I think that was the reason John Kerry lost - because he wasn't strong enough in speaking out. But I think the tide has begun to turn."

Sheehan said that more than a hundred congressmen are now prepared to speak out against the war. Intriguingly, some are Republicans, even though, as she remarked, "Obviously, there is such pressure against speaking out."

Her critics pick holes in her statements and accuse her of self-aggrandisement, but my impression was that Sheehan's faux pas reflect runaway enthusiasm and naivety rather than anything else. Her style is not subtle, but at a time when even the New York Times has been giving prominence to stories from Iraq about the creation of a women's radio talk show and a professional baseball team, a little bluntness about

what's going on doesn't seem out of place.

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