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Mr. President, I want to join my
friend from California in paying tribute to a remarkable young
woman from Lakeport, California, Marla Ruzicka.
Marla was the founder of a humanitarian organization called
"Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict," which is devoted to
helping the families of Afghan and Iraqi civilians who have been
killed or suffered other losses as a result of U.S. military
operations. Marla died in Baghdad on Saturday from a car bomb,
while she was doing the work she loved and which so many people
around the world admired her for.
I met Marla three years ago, which she first came to Washington at
the young age of 26. She had been in Afghanistan, where she had
seen the effects of U.S. bombing mistakes that had destroyed the
homes and lives of innocent Afghan civilians.
In one or two incidents, wedding parties had been bombed. In
others, bombs had missed their targets and destroyed homes and
neighborhoods. I remember one incident where every member of a
family of 16 people was killed, except a young child and her
grandfather.
These were the cases Marla spoke about, and she felt passionately
that the United States should help those families piece their
lives back together.
It didn’t take long to convince me because she was so obviously
right. We not only had a moral responsibility to those people who
had suffered because of our mistakes, we also had an interest in
mitigating the hatred and resentment towards Americans that those
incidents had caused.
And it was Marla’s initiative – going to Afghanistan, meeting
those families, getting the media’s attention, coming back here
and meeting with me and my staff – that led to the creation of a
program that has contributed more than $8 million for medical
assistance, to rebuild homes, to provide loans to start
businesses, and for other aid to innocent Afghan victims of the
military operations.
From Afghanistan Marla went to Iraq, where she arrived a day or
two after Saddam’s statue fell. She and an Iraqi colleague, Faiez
Ali Salem, who died at the same time as Marla, organized dozens of
Iraqi volunteers to conduct surveys around the country of civilian
casualties.
She returned to Washington, and again, her efforts led to the
creation of a program – now known as the Civilian Assistance
Program – which has provided $10 million to the families and
communities of Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. and other Coalition
forces. Another $10 million was allocated for this program just
last week.
To my knowledge, this is the first time we have ever provided this
type of assistance to civilian victims of U.S. military
operations, and it would never have happened without the
initiative, the courage, and the incomparable force of character
of Marla Ruzicka.
Mr. President, in my 31 years as a United States Senator I have
met lots of interesting and accomplished people from all over the
world. We all have. Nobel prize winners, heads of State, people
who have achieved remarkable and even heroic things in their
lives.
I have never met anyone like Marla Ruzicka. There are many stories
about Marla, and some of them are being recounted in the hundreds
of press articles that have appeared in just the past 48 hours.
One story I remember happened the day after Marla arrived in
Washington from Kabul. She had heard there was a hearing in the
Senate where Secretary Rumsfeld and General Franks were going to
testify.
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Thinking, perhaps a bit naively, that they might talk about the
problem of civilian casualties, she decided to go. After the
hearing was over and disappointed that the issue she cared so
deeply about had not been mentioned, Marla walked straight up to
Secretary Rumsfeld, and from the witness table, down the hallway
and outside to his car, she did not stop talking to him about the
families of civilians she had met who had been killed or injured
and the need to do something to help them.
As anyone who knew Marla discovered, she was not someone who it
was easy to say no to. In fact it was almost impossible, and that
was not simply because she was insistent. It was because she had
been there, she knew what war was about, she had seen the tragic
results, and she was not about blaming anyone. She was about
helping, in whatever ways she could.
Marla saw her work as part of the best of what
this country is about. It was the face of a compassionate America
that she believed in, and that she wanted the people of
Afghanistan and Iraq to see.
It took time to realize that Marla wasn’t just a blond, bundle of
energy and charisma – she was in fact a person of great intellect
and courage who realized that if she wanted to help war victims it
wasn’t enough to protest. She needed to work with people who could
help her do it.
And that meant the Congress, the U.S. military,
the U.S. Embassy, and the press. She quickly understood that, and
she made the choice to put politics aside and focus on the
victims.
It did not take long before the U.S. military saw the importance
of what she was doing, and started to help her. There were several
Civil Affairs officers with whom Marla worked like a team, she
finding the cases, and they arranging for the plane to airlift a
wounded child to a hospital, or some other type of assistance.
Marla became one of our most beloved Ambassadors.
I think one of the reasons so many people around the world feel
Marla's loss so deeply is because we saw how important her work
was and that it meant taking risks that the rest of us are
unwilling to take. In a way she was not only helping the families
of Iraqi war victims, she was also helping us.
Until she finally became an innocent victim of war herself.
Marla has been called many things. An angel of mercy. A ray of
sunshine in an often dangerous and dark world. One person who knew
her well described Marla as being as close to a living saint as
they come, and I suspect that’s how many of us feel.
Speaking for myself, I have never met, nor do I ever expect to
meet again, someone so young who gave so much of herself to so
many people, and who made such a difference doing it.
Our hearts go out to her parents, Cliff and Nancy Ruzicka, who had
the courage to let Marla be the person she wanted to be. Not that
there would have been any stopping her.
Our job now is to carry on the work that Marla started, because it
is so important. That is what I am committed to, and I look
forward to working with my friend from California to honor Marla
in that way.
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