Thank you for the opportunity to be with you this evening. I’ve been asked to share my perspective as the parent of a soldier currently deployed in Iraq and also speak to the issue of reducing the expansion of nuclear weapons in the world today. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or would like more information on Military Families Speak Out. (You can e-mail Tom at: raftnfool@comcast.net)

As a parent we all are responsible for keeping our children safe and steering them towards a healthy, happy, and productive life as adults. You can imagine my concern then when in the middle of a war with no end in sight, my son wanted to join in the fight. He completed nearly two years of training to become a Special Forces Army Ranger Medic. Not only was I proud of him for all his accomplishments but relieved that all this was keeping him stateside and relatively safe. Then the inevitable happened, his Battalion was deployed.

I knew it would happen, the state of denial I’d been in was shattered in a flash as I said goodbye. I was given an APO address and asked to send mail and packages to him there.

It is difficult to really describe how you feel as a parent knowing one of your children is in harms way. Adding to all of this are the reminders seen in headlines and TV every day. I cannot simply tune out the war and ignore what’s going on.

In June, Fort Lewis, where my son is stationed when not deployed, decided to change the way they memorialize soldiers who are killed in action from holding individual services to a single monthly service. Parents and family members of those killed were devastated. The Army had decided there were just too many to handle, 20 soldiers from Fort Lewis were killed in May alone. Just recently they went back to individual memorials at the request of the families. Four more soldiers were killed last week in Iraq.

All the current wrangling in Congress will not bring these soldiers home. We must stop pouring money into the effort. A simply majority in either house of Congress to stop funding would bring a quick end to this awful war, but there is not enough support on either side to make that happen. There is a great fear among Congress that they will be seen as being soft on terrorism or not supporting our troops. The sad fact is if we wait until the next election and a new President, another 1,500 young American men and women and countless numbers of innocent Iraq civilians will die.

This brings me to the other reason I am here tonight, money.

It is tragic how little control we have over how our tax dollars are spent. We are the most powerful country in the world with arguably the greatest freedoms, yet we elect our leaders and trust that 50 Senators, 428 Representatives, 1 President and 1 Vice President can effectively control thousands upon thousands of special interests and make the right choices for all of us.

The defense budget in 2005 was officially listed at $401.7 billion dollars but when you add in the supplemental spending bills for Iraq and Afghanistan and interest costs associated with this huge number the total is actually estimated to be $754 billion. This equals $2,500 dollars for every man, woman, and child. To put this into perspective, that works out to $17,500 dollars for our family of seven……just in 2005 alone.

Our current administration has increased the amount earmarked for weapons every year since 2001 with projections taking the current level from $90.6 billion to $114 billion in 2009. These numbers do not include billions in foreign military aid we pour into countries around the world. A recent announcement by the Bush administration indicates they will send $30 billion dollars in military aid over the next decade to Israel, $13 billion to Egypt, and $10 billion to Saudi Arabia. The announced intent is to “stabilize” the Middle East. This to me is like throwing gasoline into a fire and expecting it to extinguish it.

Something has to change. The present course we are on can lead only in one direction and that is towards further conflict, more wars, and more loss of innocent life. If we put the same amount of energy, resources, and innovation into finding and following another path we can succeed in bringing the kind of stability our leaders say they are looking for. Are we naïve to think like this? Some would say yes and I’m certainly not the first person to suggest we find another way, but the time has come and each of us need to become engaged in turning the current state of affairs around. All it takes is one person doing one thing. A spark, a new idea, a new way of thinking to make a difference.

Many years ago before all the talk about global warming hit the news; a suggestion was made to create a new department within the Federal Government called the Environmental Protection Agency. It was a revolutionary idea that was ahead of it’s time in finding ways we could protect our country from the ravages of pollution. Many thought it was not necessary, just another waste of taxpayer dollars but this is an idea which has proven to be very good for our country and for the American public.

I recently heard about an organization calling for a new department within the Federal Government, a U S Department of Peace. This may be the very spark, the new idea, the innovation; we are looking for to take us down that other path. Their charter calls for research on nonviolent solutions to conflict, both domestically and internationally. It calls for supporting our military with complementary approaches to ending violence; provide educational programs to alleviate domestic violence, school violence, and conflict between law enforcement and the community. I believe this is an idea which is not ahead of it’s time but certainly one that’s time has come.

I ask each of you listening tonight to go home and discuss what you’ve heard with your kids, your spouse or significant other, or friends and then ask yourself how you can do one thing, just one thing to create peace in the world, and then go do that one thing. In this effort we can bring change, right a wrong, or create justice.

Thank you for this opportunity to be with you this evening.