Hello, my name is Adele Kubein, I am a member of the advisory board of
Military Families Speak Out and the mother of a permanently disabled
Iraq veteran.

I have been invited here tonight to speak about the cost of the Iraq
war. Who pays this price? The simple answer is all of us, but some
more than others. I can rattle off monthly figures for the financial
cost of war (over three billion), and the numbers of American soldiers
killed (almost 4100), as well as the estimated number of dead Iraqi
civilians, (somewhere between 100,000 and 600,000). But when one
focuses on the particular, the cost becomes horrifying. As a mother I
cannot escape the particular and neither can the other members of
MFSO, nor the people of Iraq. Numbers cannot chill the soul the same
way my soul was chilled when I sat in a darkened hotel room and
listened to my daughter recount what it was like to clean her friend?s
brains and body parts out of a humvee. The chill I felt when she
described the shock of looking into the eyes of the first person she
killed, a twelve year old boy. At that moment I knew we could never go
back to the time before. From the minute my daughter took life our
lives have been divided into then and now.

Then was a time when my daughter laughed, and we hiked mountains,
snowshoed together, rode our mountain bikes, and shared our joys as
well as our sorrows. I remember the day she left for Iraq. I begged
God to magically swap us, I offered myself as sacrifice; the way
mothers have done throughout the ages. And most of all I begged God to
send her home with her soul intact. I was willing to give up a bit of
her beautiful body, a leg, an arm, some of those toes I tickled long
ago, because I knew that infirmity can be dealt with, whereas
innocence can never be returned.

Now is the time when my daughter wakes screaming from dreams of blood, when she limps around the house in agony, feared to go out in public because of the consuming anger she feels toward the unknown. Now is the time when she begs the doctors to amputate her leg, like an animal
in a trap. We still share joys and sorrows, but the balance has
shifted toward sorrow. My grandson was born with a disability, perhaps
because of the things my daughter was exposed to, such as depleted
uranium and oil fires. The same things Iraqi mothers are exposed to.
We and thousands of other families struggle with the Veteran?s
Administration for medical equipment, and care. My daughter has been
sewing the same leg brace together again for six months now, and we
have waited over a year for our overburdened, under-funded state to
provide the special services her son requires. We seek to find meaning
in our sacrifices, to escape the feeling that it was for nothing. I
would have been proud to see my daughter in Darfur saving lives, but
we eat bitterness each day this needless carnage goes on. We military
families hope that the pain we experience will help to bring this
nation toward the light; that is the only meaning we will find
acceptable. Toward that end I have been speaking out since November of
2002, when I joined the fledgling organization which was to become
Military Families Speak Out.

I am joined by over four thousand other family members, some of whom
no longer have their loved ones. I have held mothers while they cry
their burning tears into my neck. I have fielded calls from frantic
fathers worried that their sons are committing slow suicide with
alcohol and drugs. The Lucey family desperately sought help for their
son and were turned down, until the Thanksgiving Day when their son
hung himself with a garden hose in the basement of their home. In
Washington DC I marched with a mother, who in a level voice told me
what it was like to see her son return burned literally to a crisp.
She said she will never forget the sound of his last breaths when she
unhooked his life support. We are doomed to repeat our stories over
and over until someone hears us, and sometimes it seems as if pop star
scandals are more important than the death and life battles that
people in both nations are waging for the lives of their families.
Wars are easy to get into, but the ship of state is hard to turn once
it has been set on a path. We hope that our stories will incite you to
help us push. For us it is personal and particular, and it should be
for you too.

We mothers weep, yet our sorrows are but a fragment of the sorrows the
Iraqi people face. From a nation that boasted female doctors, lawyers
and judges, a place with universities, hospitals, running water,
electricity and garbage services, Iraq has turned into a place women
cannot even go out in public, a place where mothers early in the
morning must push the dead bodies out of the way so that they may walk
their children to school without terrifying them. Sewage runs in the
streets and the population has nowhere safe to turn. Death can come
from your neighbors, the Americans, Iraqi soldiers, and common
criminals. The cradle of civilization echoes with the cries of agony.
The gates of Nineveh are shattered and tanks crush the traces of
ancient civilization. We must face the hard fact that all of our
bullets and bombs cannot put Iraq back together again. We must cease
killing and support the Iraqi people as they go about putting their
shattered country back together. There will be years of grief in Iraq
which we cannot escape, but our soldiers are trained to make war, not
peace. We are responsible for the uses to which they are put. It is
time to send in the peacemakers and bring the warriors home.

If we avoid the particular we become the population that allows its
government to torture, to kill civilians, to bomb families, hospitals,
and weddings. We are no better than the people throughout history who
stood by as their governments shed blood. The families of MFSO have
loved ones on the line, and the people of Iraq are paying the ultimate
price. All we ask is that you join hands with us and do some simple
things. If we all push together we can turn the ship. Please call your
representatives, and do it often. Let them know that we want
accountability and peace. Write letters to the editor. Even if a few
people read them they will tell someone else who will tell someone
else. Don?t be afraid to talk to the people around you, you might be
surprised to find they too want peace. You will give others courage to
speak out. Each person you speak to will speak to a few more, and soon
many of us are sharing the task. Each one of you is important and can
effect change. Each push toward peace is like a pebble dropped in a
pond, the ripples spread to the edges. Give yourself the gift of
knowing that you are one of the people who does not stand by
helplessly. Give the gift of peace to the future. No one stands alone,
and we hope that you will stand with us.

Adele Kubein
Department of Anthropology
Oregon State University
Waldo 278, Corvallis, 97331