I found this on Delco Times:
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Millions of American mothers today are being showered with flowers, candy and other gifts from their children and husbands. They are being taken out to dinner, served breakfast in bed and otherwise wined and dined in salute of their maternal status.
Sons and spouses are saluting their “best girls” while daughters are dedicating the day to their ultimate role models.
Grandmothers and great-grandmothers are also being honored for their parenting skills.
But for some mothers, it is a day of sad remembrance of children lost to war.
For mothers like anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq two years ago, it hearkens back to the true origins of Mother’s Day in the United States.
A special day for American mothers was first suggested in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe as a day dedicated to peace. She was inspired to organize mothers after unsuccessfully attempting to assemble an international pacifist conference following the Franco-Prussian War.
“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 cost?” wrote Howe.
For a while in Boston and elsewhere, Howe inspired Mother’s Day celebrations of peace. But Mother’s Day wasn’t officially recognized in the United States until May 8, 1914, when Congress passed a joint resolution designating the second Sunday in May as a day for the U.S. flag to be displayed “as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our county.”
The resolution was a result of extensive lobbying by Anna M. Jarvis who felt children often failed to show appreciation of their mothers while they were still alive. Her mother, Anna Reese Jarvis, who died in 1905, was a community activist and a peace advocate in her own right.
“Mother Jarvis,” as she was known, organized women’s brigades during the Civil War and entreated the workers to lend aid to those in need, whether they sympathized with the Confederacy or the Union. After the war, she worked to heal the bitterness between Confederate and Union neighbors.
Sheehan has perpetuated the original spirit of Mother’s Day by staging a series of anti-war demonstrations in the last week. She first was plunged into the public arena last summer when she camped outside George W. Bush’s Texas ranch during his month-long vacation, seeking an explanation from the president for continued U.S. presence in Iraq.
Her 24-year-old son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., a Humvee mechanic, was one of eight soldiers killed by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire in Baghdad on April 4, 2004.
At a rally in Seattle Town Hall last Monday, she said U.S. troops should withdraw and all U.S. bases should be closed in Iraq with peacekeeping duties left to unarmed Arab forces.
“We are the problem. When we leave, problem solved,” maintained Sheehan.
There are some who would try to paint Sheehan — or anyone who disagrees with Bush — as unpatriotic and not supportive of U.S. troops.
But what could be more patriotic than exercising one’s First Amendment right of free speech in criticizing the powers-that-be?
And what could be more supportive of the troops than wanting them home safely from a military presence that an increasing number of people see as an exercise in futility?
If Sheehan’s voice and the voice of many American mothers questioning our continued presence in Iraq are not credible enough for the Bush administration, the voices of veterans and retired military leaders should be.
“Support the Troops, Oppose the Policy,” is the motto of Veterans Against the Iraq War.
Six retired U.S. generals are so disturbed by our current state of affairs in Iraq, that theyhave called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the First Infantry Division in Iraq, said, “This current leadership of ours discounted professional military advice, ignored 12 years of really good planning done by very competent people, didn’t look at lessons learned from history and, it seems to me, they ignored the tribal, ethnic and religious complexities that have always defined Iraq.”
Batiste, by the way, is a Republican not running for office and not writing a book.
Sheehan is certainly not alone in the loss she has suffered.
She is one of more than 2,400 American mothers whose children have been killed and more than 17,800 American mothers whose children have been injured in Iraq since Bush sent U.S. troops there three years ago.
Noted Sheehan, “The people in Iraq have a right to resist occupation. I wish they didn’t, otherwise my son wouldn’t be dead.”
Cindy Sheehan is as much a patriot as any American in her desire to bring the sons and daughters who remain in Iraq home now.
©DelcoTimes 2006
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 