Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
- The Rise of the New Economy Movement
- Preying on Poverty: How Government and Corporations Use the Poor as Piggy Banks
- The Organic Watergate: Alarming Report Reveals USDA's Cozy Relationship with Corporate Agribusinesses in 'Organics'
- Updated: Under Pressure, TED Releases 'Income Inequality' Talk
- Are JPMorgan's Losses a Canary in a Coal Mine?
Popular content
Today's Top News
A National Peacemaker’s Day
It isn't enough to talk about peace, one must believe it.
And it isn't enough to believe in it, one must work for it.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
It is right and proper that our nation sets aside days to honor the men and women who have fought in the service of our country. They fully merit our collective thanks and admiration for their bravery and sacrifice.
But our nation fails to honor the peacemakers. Americans can serve their country not only by fighting its wars, but also by struggling to avoid war and promote peace. No president or general orders the peacemakers into action. They expect no glory for their deeds. Yet it is well past time that we set aside a day to honor the peacemakers. As Americans, we rarely equate honor, loyalty, and courage with actions on behalf of peace. Too often, we make the tragic mistake of equating advocacy for peace with disloyalty or subversion, when for the peacemakers it is their patriotic duty.
The late Robert McNamara said, "we were wrong, terribly wrong" about the war in Vietnam. Yet we not do today celebrate those who were right about Vietnam, the millions of ordinary men and women who put themselves on the line by taking to the streets to protest the war. To the contrary, in 2004, John Kerry's anti-war protests were turned against him as akin to near treason against the United States. Yet, had McNamara and President Lyndon Johnson listened to the peacemakers when it mattered, they might have saved many tens of thousands of American lives and perhaps millions of Asian lives.
Who today remembers the struggles of American Friends Service Committee, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and the World Council of Churches in the 1950s to end the horrific testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere and oceans? Their efforts ultimately contributed to the Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which rescued humanity from deadly nuclear fallout, with unpredictable effects on the future of the human race.
The litany of peacemakers who were right in their time goes on. However, we honor all our soldiers regardless of whether we believe they fought in just or unjust wars. So too we should honor all those who fought for peace, whether we now believe they were right or wrong. Their dedication still deserves our recognition.
We should respect as well the groups that today are protesting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were scorned during the early fervor for these wars, but now the majority of Americans are in accord with their views.
"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God" says the gospel of Matthew. It is time to make this blessing a reality with a national peacemaker's day.
Allan J. Lichtman is Professor of History at American University. His latest book is, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement.
13 Comments so far
Show AllI find myself wondering about how we conceive of "avoiding" and /or "preventing" war.
Avoiding seems to imply a path already taken and steering away from, while preventing seems to call for facing and unequivocally working to build that which ends war.
Blessed are the cheesemakers?!
Blessed are the cheesmakers, for they will be recognised by their distinctive smell.
You are the cheese of the earth. But if the cheese loses its cheesiness , how can it be made cheesy again? Try bathing once in a while... You stank.
-Extra Cheesy Bible
we don't need "a national peacemaker's day."
we need PEACE.
xmas is coming up and all the apologists will be joy-unto-ing and goodwilling and all that insincere sanctimonious crap . . .
we don't need "a national peacemaker's day."
we need PEACE.
There IS a day celebrating a peacemaker. It's called Christmas -- celebrating the birthday of the Prince of Peace. Jesus said don't just love your neighbor, you should love your enemies.
Today, "Christians" are slaughtering innocent people in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere with the blessing and active support of "Christian" ministers and priests. The US, one of the world's most Christian countries, has a nuclear arsenal that could literally destroy all human life.
To bad most "Christians" don't practice what Jesus preached.
I thought Dec 25th was a pagan holiday?
It is important to honour the approx 14 million killed and 35 million wounded in the noble effort in THE GREAT WAR to keep Serbia German...or was it Austrian? ..or Turkish? French anyone?
Also the noble 78 million killed in the "do over" a few years later.
Or the varied and numerous instances of penis comparision that have started the subesquent 100 or so murderous wars.
Personally, I refuse to participate in and glorify these instances of global insanity.
I see the poppy as a badge of stupidity and ignorance.
Peacemakers? One would have to be in possession of peace in order to make it.
Protesting war
Struggling to avoid war
Promotion of peace
Test bans
Yes, excellent and necessary. I'll repeat, to temper the knee jerk onslaught, all of these activities are good and necessary and should be continued. In addition it is also necessary to realize that none of these things are or come from the 'realization or experience' of peace. What is being described is the absence of war. Better than war, but not peace. Action does not 'create' peace but can be found to be appearing inside of peace with out disturbing it. remaining in peace and then acting , makes action peaceful.
This nations business is war and peace is an anathema to the war business. This country worships the war business and that is why you have a Vietnam war memorial wall in D.C. with 55,000 sacrificed soldiers for the MIC and no peace wall with all the names of the people that sacrificed to bring that bloody war to an end and that is why this nation has a war department which is euphemistically called the department of defense and no department of peace.
Don't give ignobel prize Barack any more strictly rhetorical, cosmetic Obamass-covering ideas! Let him face the full HISTORICAL consequences of his calling.
"In 2004, John Kerry's anti-war protests were turned against him as akin to near treason against the United States."
Nope. Not true. The Kerry campaign strategists shot themselves in the foot on this one entirely on their own.
Sure, the Swift Boaters and the usual demagogues in the right wing media took a few snipe shots, but the Bush reelection campaign very cleverly downplayed John Kerry's previous high profile involvement in the Vietnam era antiwar movement.
Along with giving little George a complete pass on the whole issue of Abu Ghraib torture, the most colossally stupid decision of the 2004 Democratic Party leadership was to erase their candidate's role in Vietnam Veterans Against the War from Kerry's biography. He came off to voters as inauthentic because he was inauthentic. All purple heart heroism and "John Kerry reporting for duty!" Nothing whatsoever about the virtues of peace, the importance of citizen protest, the lessons of the Vietnam quagmire, or even Ike's warnings about the dangers of an unchecked military industrial complex.
We cannot realistically expect anything remotely resembling a national holiday to honor nonviolent peace advocates like Martin Luther King, Eugene V. Debs, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Julia Ward Howe, Andrew Carnegie, Eleanor Roosevelt, and others until contemporary political leaders stop running away from the image of swords being beaten into plowshares.
Bill from Saginaw
The way Kerry was campaigning I half expected him to claim that the US only lost in Vietnam because he wasn't in charge.
I wonder if Allan J. Lichtman's American University has an ROTC working to get college kids to join the service? Now that the price of college is going up and jobs get scarcer, will the ROTC be more successful? What is needed is a Peace organization or institute to begin teaching the young people about the glory of working for peace and justice. I believe the Late Paul Wellstone, "Wellstone Action" works with the youth. I have been marching, letter writing ,meetings , vigils and so much more since the Vietnam War and i am tired. When I was a School Nurse I tried to get permission for a Peace Group to set up a table next to the ROTC table in the school hall. I got voted down because no one else ever asked for that project. We tried to get the Catholic church to allow Peace groups to go to Schools and colleges to speak about Conscientious objection without success.This Sunday I will join Kathy Kelly( If anyone should be honored Kathy should)and march against drones.We who worked for peace and justice do not want to be honored except to encourage the young people to take part in the peace effort.Peace Action does give awards to students who are peace activists.