Karen Van Fossan's Testimony in Support of SCR 4022 (House)
March 22, 2007
Chair Haas and Members of the Committee,
My name is Karen Van Fossan, and I stand before you on behalf of the 712 members and volunteers of the North Dakota Peace Coalition. I am also one of more than 366,000 North Dakotans who are deeply distressed by US policy in Iraq.
Just months before he died, I asked my grandfather, a veteran and peacemaker, “What makes you want peace?”
“What makes me want peace?” he said. “I don't like to kill anybody.”
I asked him to tell me more. “Like back when I was in service,” he said. “How do you know the bullet is going to hit the one that you want? Which you didn't want to hit them in the first place.”
He reminds me of my friend, Paul Dyer, who served 13 years in the US Army and suffers from PTSD. “An end – there is no end,” he says. “You can't stop the quick initial reaction. When I walk by a row of pictures, I can tell you which one's uneven – I'm trained that way. Now I tell myself, 'That's OK. I don't have to be alarmed by an uneven picture.'”
My colleague in the Peace Coalition, Ron Saeger is a retired officer from the North Dakota Air National Guard. “If you cannot support withdrawl from Iraq," he says, “then think about which of your own family members you would like to see running this gauntlet for more than a year at a time – if they survived." But what about troop morale? As a Viet Nam veteran, his response is this: “Some argue that disengaging our military forces from Iraq would have a demoralizing effect on those who serve. Trust me – they are smarter than that.”
Many of you may know Liz Sweet. These are her words:
“My husband and I are the parents of Sgt. Thomas J. Sweet II. Our son lost his life in Iraq on Thanksgiving Day 2003. Our son was deployed from Ft. Riley, Kansas on September 8, 2003. Their mission, as they understood it, was threefold:
- Find Saddam Hussein,
- Search out, secure, and destroy weapons of mass destruction,
- Their mission at the end was to be a peacekeeping mission to build schools for the children of Iraq.
“In our son's first letter home he wrote, 'The first day our convoy crossed over into Iraq, I really had to think to myself, couldn't there have been a better way of getting rid of Saddam Hussein than bombing the hell out of this country? As we have passed through towns and by the people on the roads we have seen bombed out buildings, wreckage from the first Gulf War, still next to the road, and then you have to look at the faces of the people and it is heart wrenching.' This written by a 22-year-old young man who wouldn't let any of us in his family kill a spider, he would make us scoop it up, and let it go outside.
“Saddam is dead, there are no weapons of mass destruction, and our son was never part of a peace keeping mission. We have been told the US troops cannot leave Iraq now because that would mean that those who have lost their lives would have lost them in vain.
“I ask you; does that mean, for Spc. Jon Fettig's (Dickinson) death on July 22, 2003 not to be in vain
- that Pfc. Sheldon Hawk Eagle, Grand Forks, had to die on November 15, 2003, and for his death not to have been in vain,
- our son, Bismarck, had to lose his life on November 27, 2003, and for his death not to have been in vain
- Sgt. Keith Smette, Makoti, had to lose his life on January 24, 2004, and for his death not to have been in vain,
- Staff Sgt. Ken Hendrickson, Bismarck, had to lose his life on January 24, 2004, and for his death not to have been in vain,
- Spc. Philip Brown, Jamestown, had to die on May 8, 2004, and for his death not to be in vain,
- Sgt. Lance Holmes, Hettinger, had to lose his life on May 8, 2004, and for his death not to have been in vain,
- Staff Sgt. Lance Koenig, Fargo, had to lose his life on September 22, 2004, and for his death not to have been in vain,
- Pfc. Anthony Monroe, Bismarck, had to die on October 11, 2004, and for his death not to be in vain,
- Spc. Cody Wentz, Williston, had to die on November 4, 2004, and for his death not to be in vain,
- Spc. Dennis Ferderer Jr, New Salem, had to lose his life on November 2, 2005, and for his death not to be in vain,
- Spc. Michael Hermanson, Fargo, had to die on May 24, 2006, and for his death not to have been in vain,
- Cpl. Jeremiah Santos, Minot, had to lose his life on June 15, 2006, and for his death not to have been in vain,
- Pfc. Paul Beyer, Jamestown, had to die on June 23, 2006, and in order for his death not to be in vain,
- Cpl. Nathan Good Iron, Mandaree, had to die on November 23, 2006.
“Our son was casualty #432. Had anyone asked us on November 27, 2003, a day on which our son was the only casualty, we would have said, 'Not one more soldier has to die to justify our son's death. His death will never be in vain.'
“As a legislative body, these 15 North Dakota soldiers lost their lives on your watch. Our family would gratefully repay you as a body the $2,500 you sent us on behalf of the 'Grateful State of North Dakota' after our son's death, if it meant that not one more North Dakota soldier would have to lose his or her life so that the 15 soldiers before him did not die in vain.
“As a gold star family, we know the true cost of war. This resolution will not cost you a penny. “My husband and I respectfully ask that you support the passage of Senate Concurrent Resolution 4022.”
Those are the words of Liz Sweet. On behalf of her, her family, and the faces of those her son saw in Iraq, I urge you to make a DO PASS recommendation on SCR 4022 and bring our troops home. As my grandfather said, “When I get up in the morning, I'd like to feel I'm going to make it to bed that night — without somebody dropping a bomb on me.”
I would be honored to stand for any questions.