It's time we have a holiday to honor those who try to stop wars too

[n2doc]

Memorial Day and Veteran's Day often get equated, but there is an essential distinction between the two. Veteran's Day honors all who have served the American military in wars. Memorial Day honors those who've perished. It's an annual reminder that wars have grave human costs, which must be both recognized and minimized.

Those costs are not inevitable. We ought to also set aside time to remember those throughout American history who have tried hardest to reduce them, to prevent unnecessary loss of life both American and foreign: war resisters.

War resistors can be heroes

American history is littered with examples of pointless wars fought for bad reasons, and with people who risked their careers and their freedom to oppose them. The Mexican-American War, for one, was a blatant land grab. While James K. Polk claimed that Mexico had struck first — saying in his war message to Congress that "Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon America's soil" — the truth was that he had sent American troops into disputed territory between the Rio Grande and Nueces Rivers, whereupon Mexican troops, concerned by American encroachment, attacked.

Abraham Lincoln, then in his only term as a Congressman from Illinois, questioned Polk's rationale and introduced what came to be known as the "spot resolutions" demanding that the President point out the exact spot on which American blood had been spilled, to prove that it was really American land. Lincoln received vociferous attacks from Democratic newspapers and meetings back in his district; participants at one rally condemned him as "this Benedict Arnold of our district." But he was on the right side of history: the war was unjustified and caused needless suffering.

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http://www.vox.com/2015/5/25/8656381/war-resisters-memorial-day

[TexasProgresive]

1. The third Monday of January works for me

1967
Martin Luther King, Jr., speaks out against the war
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/martin-luther-king-jr-speaks-out-against-the-war
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, delivers a speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam” in front of 3,000 people at Riverside Church in New York City. In it, he says that there is a common link forming between the civil rights and peace movements. King proposed that the United States stop all bombing of North and South Vietnam; declare a unilateral truce in the hope that it would lead to peace talks; set a date for withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam; and give the National Liberation Front a role in negotiations.

King had been a solid supporter of President Lyndon B. Johnson and his Great Society, but he became increasingly concerned about U.S. involvement in Vietnam and, as his concerns became more public, his relationship with the Johnson administration deteriorated. King came to view U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia as little more than imperialism. Additionally, he believed that the Vietnam War diverted money and attention from domestic programs created to aid the black poor. Furthermore, he said, ‘the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home…We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.'” King maintained his antiwar stance and supported peace movements until he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, one year to the day after delivering his Beyond Vietnam speech.

[Hoppy]

2. Peace Pilgrim. William Jennings Bryan who, unlike Colin Powell,

resigned as Secretary of State, rather than be a mouthpiece for a war he felt was dishonorablem