from a cousine/friend

misty

2006-05-08 20:02:17 UTC

Post by Alice Chauvin SWAMPQUEEN
What's your perspective?

I let this sit on me for a few days. I follow this list, and honestly let
most of your political stuff wash over me, because I disagree so wildly it's
almost amusing.
However, You asked for a response, and I felt someone should offer a
different view to this. My perspective comes together from a lot of places:
As a mother of a small boy, who will one day be thrown into this mess if
it's not resolved (and Vietnam lasted for twenty years, so it's not
implausible both that the war will continue and the draft will begin), as a
young woman who watched many of her friends shipped out after 9-11, right
out of high school; and as an unabashed liberal and pacifist.

The problem with this list is that it equates some wildly different
conflicts, I don't think too many people can say that the clusterf^^k that
was Vietnam was somehow as noble an endeavor as freeing survivors from
concentration camps or slaves from plantations, and none could really be
equated to Jesus' death on the cross, Christian or no. It also equates the
WAR with the SOLDIERS; which is a huge mistake. This war isn't bring freedom
to anyone, it isn't bringing peace, it isn't bringing happiness. Do some
wars? we, as a military, have entered wars to end them and brought those
things, but a war has never been started for those ends. I can support our
soldiers, and do, without supporting the war itself or understanding why
they need to be there dying.
It was said best (and aptly enough, right before mothers' day this year) by
Julia Ward Howe in her Proclamation for Mothers' Day in 1870:
Mother's Day Proclamation
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

//end rant-y. sorry 'bout that. :-)

"Alice Chauvin SWAMPQUEEN" <A-mae-***@webtv.net> wrote in message news:10935-445B563D-***@storefull-3258.bay.webtv.net...
from a cousine/friend
in new brunswick, nova scotia:

What's your perspective?

Cindy Sheehan asked President Bush, "Why did my son have to
die in Iraq?"
Another mother asked President Kennedy, "Why did my son
have to die in Vietnam?"
Another mother asked President Truman, "Why did my son have
to die in Korea?
Another mother asked President F.D. Roosevelt, "Why did my
son have to die at Iwo Jima?"
Another mother asked President W. Wilson, "Why did my son
have to die on the battlefield of France?"
Yet another mother asked President Lincoln, "Why did my son
have to die at Gettysburg?"
And yet another mother asked President G. Washington, "Why
did my son have to die near Valley Forge?"
Then long, long ago, a mother asked, "Heavenly Father, why
did my Son have to die on a cross outside of Jerusalem?"
The answers to all these are similar -- "that others may
have life and dwell in peace, happiness and freedom."
This was emailed to me with no author and I thought the magnitude and
the simplicity were awesome ...
IF YOU DON'T STAND BEHIND OUR TROOPS,PLEASE FEEL FREE TO STAND IN FRONT
OF THEM!