Cindy Sheehan is the Founder and President of Gold Star Families for Peace. In 2004, when her son Casey was killed in Iraq, she threw herself into the campaign to end the war.

Sheehan followed President Bush wherever he went. She camped outside the White House and established “Camp Casey” next to the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas. Her challenge to the president was persistent and simple:

“You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died so you can spread the cancer of imperialism in the Middle East. You tell me that.”

Democrats and liberals loved Sheehan when she attacked Bush and the Republicans, but they turned on her when she held them to the same standard.

The Democrats were swept into Congress on a wave of popular revolt against the war. Despite their anti-war posturing, they gave Bush billions more dollars to continue the war. Outraged, Sheehan condemned the Democrats as heartless hypocrites:

“How can you even go to sleep at night or look at yourselves in a mirror? How do you put behind you the screaming mothers on both sides of the conflict? How does the agony you have created escape you? It will never escape me…I can’t run far enough or hide well enough to get away from it.”

The Democrats have proved to be just as committed to ruling the Middle East as the Republicans. Democratic President Bill Clinton presided over the deadly UN embargo against Iraq. In 1998, he signed the Iraq Liberation Act to force regime-change in Iraq and barely two months later, he ordered the bombing of Baghdad.

Neither of the two Bush presidents could have invaded Iraq if the groundwork had not been laid by the Democrats. And the war could not continue if Democrats did not support it. Both parties serve a capitalist class that is determined to dominate the world, and controlling the Middle East is central to that domination.

We expect to be attacked by our enemies. We do not expect to be betrayed by our friends. Back-stabbing Democrats accomplished what Bush and his supporters could not – they brought Cindy Sheehan to her knees. On Memorial Day, she announced that she was too depleted to continue fighting. However, she was too angry to stop for long.

Sheehan urges us to “figure a way out of this two-party system that is bought and paid for by the war machine.”

Despite consistent betrayal, sections of the anti-war movement will continue to back the Democrats, because the alternative is to reject capitalist rule altogether. That is the only way we can end this war and all other imperial wars for profit.