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News :: Iraq : Peace : Regime |
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Military Families, Veterans Say No to War |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sehvilla M.
Email: smann (nospam) riseup.net (verified)
Address: Urbana |
01 Apr 2004
Modified: 02 Apr 2004 |
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Rosemary Slavenas, whose son Brian was killed in Iraq last November, and others spoke out against the Iraq war and Bush regime at the library on Thursday evening. |
Thursday evening, Rosemary Dietz Slavenas of Rockford spoke against the Iraq war on a panel sponsored by the Anti-War, Anti-Racism Effort (AWARE). The event was held at the Champaign Public Library.
For her the cost of the war is deeply personal. On November 2nd, 2003, her son Brian, 30, was killed when his helicopter was shot down near Fallujah, Iraq.
Both Rosemary and Brian Slavenas opposed invading Iraq from the outset of the push for war early last year. She has been active in such organizations as Military Families Speak Out.
In early 2003 Brian Slavenas resigned from the Illinois National Guard, in which he was serving. Initially this was accepted, but later this acceptance was somehow withdrawn. His unit was called up in February 2003. When Ms. Slavenas last saw her son in March 2003, “[Brian] said he hated it there [in Iraq].”
“ Mom, I don’t want to hurt anybody,” he told her.
Unlike the US government, she does not consider her son’s death to be a worthwhile price to pay for the war.
“If it’s not worth declaring, it’s not worth killing for. If it’s not worth declaring, it’s not worth dying for. My son did not give his life for his country…”
Ms. Slavenas noted that on his death certificate, her son’s cause of death was listed as homicide. “It is inevitable that people die…but homicide is preventable. …Who is responsible?”
She holds “the congress and the president” liable for starting a war whose purpose was not to protect Americans or free the Iraqis but to provide “Halliburton contracts” and to benefit the interests of the administration. “Operation Iraqi Freedom. I have to see this on the mail I get: my son died for ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’.”
Iraq was chosen as a target because of its vulnerability, she said, not because it was a serious terrorist threat. Now that its infrastructure is destroyed, however, it has become a “breeding ground for terrorists.” The war has resulted the deaths of over 550 American soldiers and “about 10,000” Iraqis.
“Never has the political integrity of this country sunk so low,” she said, denouncing Bush and his administration. “The only evil axis we need to worry about is the one that is running, and ruining, our country.”
“Even if we all were to die by terror, we don’t have to live by terror,” she said of the war.
Brian Slavenas was a recent graduate of the University of Illinois. He held a degree in industrial engineering. He also had a commercial pilot’s license and instructor’s license. Rosemary Slavenas was last in Champaign-Urbana for his graduation.
Other speakers on the panel included Joe Miller of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and Paul King, a veteran from Champaign.
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