Mother's Day and the peace movement

Please take a look at these excerpts from an article called "It’s Mother’s Day Again and We’re Still at War":

But it’s now Mother’s Day. Few Americans know that Mother’s Day was initially suggested by two peace-minded mothers, Julia Ward Howe, a nineteenth century anti-slavery activist and suffragette who wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and Anna Reeves Jarvis, mother of 11, who influenced Howe and once asked her fellow Appalachian townspeople, badly polarized by the Civil War, to remain neutral and help nurse the wounded on both sides.

Howe had lived through the barbarism of the Civil War, which led her to ask a question that’s as relevant today as it was in her time: “Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the costs?” Mother’s Day, she insisted, “should be devoted to the advocacy of peace doctrines.”
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Sadly, on this Mother’s Day, peace seems further away than ever. How many more war widows and grieving families do we need? Do we need yet another war memorial to the dead in Washington? Do we really need to continue disseminating the myth - and lie - that an idealistic America always fights for freedom and democracy?

On Mother’s Day 2007 nearly 3,500 American soldiers and Marines have already been killed, and many more have been wounded in body and mind, not to mention dozens of thousands of Iraqis. They all had mothers.

Amen.