There may be plenty of good things to say about Cindy Sheehan. As an antiwar activist (her son was killed by enemy action during the Iraq War) she has attracted national and international attention, especially for her 2005 extended antiwar protest at a makeshift camp outside Bush’s Texas ranch, and she has been a passionate critic of American foreign policy – actions and stances that have drawn the support of plenty of people we admire.
However, critical thinking is clearly not her strong suit. In 2007 Sheehan began expressing sympathy for the truther movement, and in 2010 she came out as a confirmed truther: “I think it [9-11] was an inside job, I just don’t know how far inside it went. […] Was it CIA? Was it whoever? Whoever, um, it had to be an inside job. There’s like no way they could have done that, just like the one on December 25th. There’s no way that guy could have done it without some kind of help, and we know he got help. Who was (crosstalk) that nice-dressed man that got him through that these people witnessed, got him through security?” Subsequently, she has appeared at several truther events with people like Dylan Avery, Jon Gold, Richard Gage and others, thereby amply undermining any efforts for good she may previously have been involved in – and indeed: The result of her rebranding has precisely been not to draw people to the truther cause, but instead to make people distance themselvesfrom her previous causes.
And downwards it spirals. In the 2012 presidential election Sheehan ran as the vice-presidential candidate for Roseanne Barr’s Peace and Freedom Party. The same year she traveled to the Bohemian Grove to protest against their annual meeting together with Mark Dice and Alex Jones, who thinks the meetings are Satanic rituals. She has recently lent her voice to anti-GMO protests as well, but fortunately few seem to care anymore.
Diagnosis: A sad, sad tale.