April 2003

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Message from a 12-year-old

Charlotte Aldebron, 12, attends Cunningham Middle School in Presque Isle, Maine. What follows is excerpts from the transcript of Charlotte's speech at the Maine Peace Rally, where she addressed 150 Aroostook County residents on Feb. 15th, a day of global protests against the War in Iraq, which drew millions of the world's citizens, young and old, on to the streets.

When people think about bombing Iraq, they see a picture in their heads of Saddam Hussein in a military uniform, or maybe soldiers with big black mustaches carrying guns, or the mosaic of George Bush Sr. on the lobby floor of the Al-Rashid Hotel with the word criminal. But guess what? More than half of Iraq's 24 million people are children under the age of 15. That's 12 million kids. Kids like me. Well, I'm almost 13, so some are a little older, and some a lot younger, some boys instead of girls, some with brown hair, not red. But kids who are pretty much like me just the same. So take a look at me, a good long look. Because I am what you should see in your head when you think about bombing Iraq. I am what you are going to destroy....

Recently, an international group of researchers went to Iraq to find out how children there are being affected by the possibility of war. Half the children they talked to said they saw no point in living any more. Even really young kids knew about war and worried about it. One 5-year-old, Assem, described it as guns and bombs and the air will be cold and hot and we will burn very much. Ten-year-old Aesar had a message for President Bush: he wanted him to know that a lot of Iraqi children will die. You will see it on TV and then you will regret.

Back in elementary school I was taught to solve problems with other kids not by hitting or name-calling, but by talking and using "I messages."

The idea of an "I message" was to make the other person understand how bad his or her actions made you feel, so that the person would sympathize with you and stop it. Now I am going to give you an "I message." Only it's going to be a We message. We as in all the children in Iraq who are waiting helplessly for something bad to happen. We as in the children of the world who don't make any of the decisions but have to suffer all the consequences. We as in those whose voices are too small and too far away to be heard. We feel scared when we don't know if we'll live another day. We feel angry when people want to kill us or injure us or steal our future. We feel sad because all we want is a mom and a dad who we know will be there the next day. And, finally, we feel confused because we don't even know what we did wrong.

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