The Personal Price of War

"Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young," Boxer said. "You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families."

These were the words of Senator Barbara Boxer to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, which made perfect sense to me. Personally, I am grateful that neither of my boys are in the military.

But the White House and certain other people - mostly likely Republicans - are all up in arms, calling the remark "outrageous," claiming Senator Boxer attacked Secretary Rice for not having children, etc. Leave it to these people to attempt to whip up a loaf of bread with no yeast.

Life allows us to feel only a certain degree of empathy for the bereaved; it simply isn't normal - indeed, it's probably an inkling of a mental disorder - to literally feel someone else's pain. I do remember crying when I saw that movie that was made about the five Sullivan brothers, who were all killed when the ship they served on together went down in World War II. The scene when the family was informed of the deaths still stays with me today ("Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, I'm afraid I bring you very bad news . . .")

As bad as most of us feel when we see the photographs on the news of military men and women who have been killed, the cold, hard fact is that no one feels these deaths more keenly than their loved ones, and everybody knows it. Why do you suppose the rich and powerful use their connections to keep their children out of it, whether it be the Civil War or the war today?

Senator Boxer merely pointed out that neither she, with children too old and grandchildren too young to serve, and Secretary Rice, an only child who did not have children, do not have direct familial connections to the men and women serving in the military. The Secretary is a woman of high intelligence; there is no reason for her to be confused by the Senator's statements. Her reaction is nothing more than a staged attempt to turn the focus to women's lifestyle choices, and off of the real issue, the lives being lost in the ongoing Iraq war.

I just hope Senator Boxer sticks to her guns. The last thing the Democrats need is another John Kerry, whose comments about the unlikelihood of seeing college grads serving in Iraq were dead on, but whose waffling of the issue during the ruckus that followed did in his political career.