Read this let­ter in the Wash­ing­ton Post from Mary Jo Cooney as she sends her only child to war — it is elo­quent, beau­ti­ful and heartfelt.

Can I expect my son to return unchanged by this expe­ri­ence? If the media reports are any indi­ca­tion, that is doubt­ful. Will his mind be seri­ously dis­turbed by what he sees, or will his body bear wounds that will not heal? Will we, as a nation, do all that we can, as Abra­ham Lin­coln put it, ” to care for him who shall hath borne the bat­tle, and for his widow and his orphan”?

Or will we con­tinue to make vet­er­ans prove that they are enti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion for the injuries they have suf­fered since we can­not make them whole?

Will it take a uni­ver­sal draft for Pres­i­dent Bush and the rest of the coun­try to under­stand the price that this war is exacting?

Then read the Moth­ers’ Day Procla­ma­tion writ­ten by Julia Ward Howe in 1870

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our bap­tism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great ques­tions decided by
irrel­e­vant agen­cies. Our hus­bands shall 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 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 bosom of the dev­as­tated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says “Dis­arm, Dis­arm! The sword of mur­der is not the bal­ance
of justice.”

Read the rest here