U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY

Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy,
On The Death Of Marla Ruzicka
April 18, 2005

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.

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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