Surrender

"The rest is up to you." With these words, Peter Gabriel set his microphone on the stage and walked out of the spotlight, as the crowd continued to chant the refrain to his human rights anthem "Biko." He had led us on a musical journey to the edge of action, and then he gave us the chance to make a difference.
"It's up to you now." These are the words Cindy Sheehan used to sum up her resignation as the public face of the peace movement. "Good-bye America ... you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it." Ouch. Was she aiming at my pride, or something just a little bit lower?
Like many of us, she was stung by the Democratic cave-in on war funding last week. So much for timetables, so much for accountability. If someone asked you for a thousand dollars, you'd probably want to know how it was going to be used. You might even expect results. If you were going to give someone billions of dollars, wouldn't you expect some way to check in on how your money was being spent?
What if you didn't give them money? What if you gave them your son? Would you want to know that there was some measure of relative success or failure that might justify the loss of your child? Now her twenty-nine year marriage is over, and she has decided to call it a day while she can still spend time with her remaining children. "I'm going home for awhile to try and be normal," she wrote. Fair enough. It's what we're all trying to do these days, right?