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Friday, January 12, 2007
Boxer Makes The News Again
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Boxer lit into Rice on Thursday with bitter diatribe during a heated line of questioning before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee looking into Iraq policies. At one point, Boxer turned to the broad question of who pays the ultimate price for war. Rice has never married and has no children.
"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."
White House spokesindividual Tony Snow responds:
"I don't know if she was intentionally that tacky, but I do think it's outrageous. Here you got a professional woman, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Barbara Boxer is sort of throwing little jabs because Condi doesn't have children, as if that means that she doesn't understand the concerns of parents. Great leap backward for feminism," Snow told FOX News Talk's Brian and The Judge.
Boxer spokesgal Natalie Ravitz releases this statement (emphasis added):
"I spoke the truth at the committee hearing, which is that neither Secretary Rice nor I have family members that will pay the price for this escalation. My point was to focus attention on our military families who continue to sacrifice because this Administration has not developed a political solution to the situation in Iraq."
A few thoughts come to mind:
- The question of whether politicians have relatives going to Iraq is irrelevant to the merits of war policy.
- Boxer's original statement referred to immediate family members, not family members in general. Rice might still have blood relatives of military age. (Would have to be cousins, since she was an only child.)
- A Secretary of State, along with the President, VP, and Secretary of Defense, are emotionally invested in the outcome of a war like no one else in the nation. It's a very different kind of personal price, and it's very heavy.
- An Iraqi citizen could apply her logic and tell Boxer that she has no family members at risk of slaughter at the hands of the Sunni or Shi'a militias, thus she pays no personal price if the war fails.
Labels: Middle East, Politics, War on Terror
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