Politics & Power Quote by Cindy Sheehan

Sheehan’s line is built like a rally chant, but it’s also a deliberate reframing of patriotism. “Stick together as an American people” borrows the language of civic unity that usually props up war efforts; she flips it into a tool for resistance. The opening clause is doing strategic work: it preempts the familiar smear that antiwar dissent is un-American. She’s not stepping outside the flag, she’s claiming it.

Then she drops the accelerant: “war criminals.” That’s not garden-variety outrage. It’s an attempt to drag U.S. leadership out of the comfortable realm of “policy disagreements” and into the moral and legal vocabulary associated with tribunals, command responsibility, and crimes against humanity. The phrase forces a binary: either the audience accepts that the war is not merely misguided but criminal, or they reject her premise and, by extension, her movement’s legitimacy. Polarizing on purpose can be a mobilization tactic when polite critique has failed.

The subtext is about power and complicity. “Running our country right now” implies illegitimate stewardship, not just bad governance, and it situates responsibility in the present tense: the emergency is ongoing, the citizen’s role immediate. Context matters: Sheehan became a prominent face of anti-Iraq War activism after her son’s death, and her grief gave her rhetoric a particular permission - she could say the unsayable and force media and lawmakers to respond. The intent isn’t simply condemnation; it’s to convert private moral shock into collective action, with unity as the only counterweight to state violence.