Military Families Speak Out (MFSO)
Presentation by MFSO Member Adele Kubein on April 15, 2004
Oregon State University
I am honored to welcome all of you to this event. I have great respect for Congressman Kucinich, he wants the best for our nation and he gives much thought to help us find the right path. My name is Adele Kubein. I am a student here at OSU as many of you are. I became active in the peace movement in the 1960's and 70's during the Vietnam War, and I resumed my peace activities when I realized we would certainly go to war with Iraq. I did not realize my own daughter would be caught up in this war when I began to speak out against it. My daughter enlisted in the Oregon National Guard in 1999. She is a highly trained Army engineer, and her contract specifically read that she would never be in combat. She was a marine biology student at OSU, the same age as many of you. She wanted to fight fires and build roads in Oregon. She needed college money and thought she could help her home state while earning it. She is a real person. She could not stop thinking of the Iraqis as real people too, and that knowledge haunts her today. Her unit was told they would build schools and homes in Iraq, that they would be welcomed as liberators. Instead she was put behind a 50 caliber machine gun, with no body armor, or even any ammo at first, to protect Kellog, Brown, and Root convoys in Northern Iraq. In the first days her unit had minimal ammo, one meal a day, and hardly any water. She rode on roads covered with depleted uranium dust and littered with burned cars full of dead bodies. Listen to a few words from a letter my daughter sent me from Mosul, Iraq in mid April of 2003: "Dear Mom, I have angry moments, frustration, all those things I had before, but I also have found something else. I cannot describe the joy I have in living. Even the bad moments, I find something of beauty around me. I hold to this with all my power. I may not be able to change the situations I face, or the world here, but I can hold true to the things which make me myself. I will change. I will come home different. But I will not let go of this joy in life. I will not let go of the ability to find beauty in squalor. I can't explain the faith that surges through me, but I know that I will return whole. I will not let this tear me apart." It did tear her apart though, and she will never go together again as she was. How can we condone bombing and destroying a country with women and children and students with the same dreams you and I have? Iraq posed no threat to us, yet we allowed others to convince us war was the righteous thing to do. Knowing we all share the same earth, the same air; will we stand by and allow mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, just like our very own, to be killed? That is what war is about. We value individuality and choice, yet in a single act of killing, war strips away all that makes us human. Do you really want to kill someone? I know my daughter did not. When she called me sobbing and told me she looked in a young man's eyes as he died from her bullet, she knew she had lost her humanity for a time. She will bear the burden for the rest of her life, just as most veterans do. Right now my daughter awaits surgery on a base in Colorado, and she wakes screaming from dreams of death at night. Her body and her mind will never be young and joyful again. She and I may never again hike or mountain bike together. She is my closest friend and companion, her grief is mine on many levels. We are all brothers and sisters. We must realize we all feel the same and bleed the same. This is our nation, we are the future. We have the strength to be heard, to change things, and to lead us all to a more civilized future.
Oregon State University
I am honored to welcome all of you to this event. I have great respect for Congressman Kucinich, he wants the best for our nation and he gives much thought to help us find the right path. My name is Adele Kubein. I am a student here at OSU as many of you are. I became active in the peace movement in the 1960's and 70's during the Vietnam War, and I resumed my peace activities when I realized we would certainly go to war with Iraq. I did not realize my own daughter would be caught up in this war when I began to speak out against it. My daughter enlisted in the Oregon National Guard in 1999. She is a highly trained Army engineer, and her contract specifically read that she would never be in combat. She was a marine biology student at OSU, the same age as many of you. She wanted to fight fires and build roads in Oregon. She needed college money and thought she could help her home state while earning it. She is a real person. She could not stop thinking of the Iraqis as real people too, and that knowledge haunts her today. Her unit was told they would build schools and homes in Iraq, that they would be welcomed as liberators. Instead she was put behind a 50 caliber machine gun, with no body armor, or even any ammo at first, to protect Kellog, Brown, and Root convoys in Northern Iraq. In the first days her unit had minimal ammo, one meal a day, and hardly any water. She rode on roads covered with depleted uranium dust and littered with burned cars full of dead bodies. Listen to a few words from a letter my daughter sent me from Mosul, Iraq in mid April of 2003: "Dear Mom, I have angry moments, frustration, all those things I had before, but I also have found something else. I cannot describe the joy I have in living. Even the bad moments, I find something of beauty around me. I hold to this with all my power. I may not be able to change the situations I face, or the world here, but I can hold true to the things which make me myself. I will change. I will come home different. But I will not let go of this joy in life. I will not let go of the ability to find beauty in squalor. I can't explain the faith that surges through me, but I know that I will return whole. I will not let this tear me apart." It did tear her apart though, and she will never go together again as she was. How can we condone bombing and destroying a country with women and children and students with the same dreams you and I have? Iraq posed no threat to us, yet we allowed others to convince us war was the righteous thing to do. Knowing we all share the same earth, the same air; will we stand by and allow mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, just like our very own, to be killed? That is what war is about. We value individuality and choice, yet in a single act of killing, war strips away all that makes us human. Do you really want to kill someone? I know my daughter did not. When she called me sobbing and told me she looked in a young man's eyes as he died from her bullet, she knew she had lost her humanity for a time. She will bear the burden for the rest of her life, just as most veterans do. Right now my daughter awaits surgery on a base in Colorado, and she wakes screaming from dreams of death at night. Her body and her mind will never be young and joyful again. She and I may never again hike or mountain bike together. She is my closest friend and companion, her grief is mine on many levels. We are all brothers and sisters. We must realize we all feel the same and bleed the same. This is our nation, we are the future. We have the strength to be heard, to change things, and to lead us all to a more civilized future.
posted by BLONDIE at 4:22 PM
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