The Workday Liberal

To preface, all links in the following post link to extremely right wing news and commentary... If you want to give them a hit by clicking a link feel free, but I'm not encouraging you to do so.

Fox News and the Murdoch media empire, along with the White House sound machine, (of course this means the entire right wing-blogosphere will follow in kneejerk reaction that would make Pavlovs dog seem like chaos defined) are in high dudgeon because Representative Barbara Boxer told Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice the truth. Here is what the whole (manufactured) bru ha ha is all about:

"I'm not going to pay a personal price," she [Boxer] said. "My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family."

Boxer talked about families losing loved ones and soldiers in hospital burn units. "These are the people who pay the price."

Rice said evenly that she understands the sacrifice of service members and families.

"I visit them. I know what they're going through. I talk to their families. I see it. I could never and I can never do anything to replace any of those lost men and women in uniform, or the diplomats, some of whom. ..."

Boxer cut her off.

"Madam Secretary, please," she said. "I know you feel terrible about it. That's not the point. I was making the case as to who pays the price for your decisions."

The truth is the truth, and Boxer, Rice, Fox News, Tony Snow, the wingnut blogs, and the military families know it. The truth is that Barbara Boxer, Condoleeza Rice and most of the American people are not the ones sacrificing for the war in Iraq. Under the Administrations plan, I won't sacrifice. My daughter is too young to serve. The only sacrifice the Presdident is making is to his political career. His daughters are not being called to service in Iraq. I'm not aware of any immediate relative of the Presidents who is serving. There are very few family members of any policy makers at all who are at risk because of the policies being debated here. Senator Jim Webb is a notable exception, and Senator John McCain's son is soon to be deployed as well.

Feeling faux outrage over this issue does not change the facts. What Boxer is pointing out here is that Americans in general are not being asked to sacrifice on a personal level. She's not slamming childless single women. She's not slamming people who do not have children in the military. She's not slamming anyone at all! She is just being honest.

I especially appreciate how the N.Y. Post anticipates future partisanship with the following insight:

The vapidity - the sheer mindlessness - of Sen. Boxer's assertion makes it clear that the next two years are going to be a time of bitterness and rancor, marked by pettiness of spirit and political self-indulgence of a sort not seen in America for a very long time.

The mindlessness in this whole affair is by the right wing lunatics pretending that Boxer has somehonw defamed Rice by stating the truth. Frankly, reading as the apologists of this administration prattle on about political self indulgence kicked in my involuntary gag reflex. Political self indulgence is personified by this administration and the former Republican rubberstamp Congress. We've seen unmatched political pettiness of spirit (the President actually said voting for Democrats means the terrorists win and America loses, how much pettier can you possible get?) from the very people this N.Y. rag carries water for on a daily basis. Their extremely loud and obnoxious proclamations regarding the mote in the eye of the Democrats would hold much more meaning if they had been 1/2 as vociferous regarding the board in the Republics (commonly referred to as Republicans) eye.

The fact remains. Boxer, Clinton, Rice, Bush, Cheney, Hastert, Rumsfeld and most, if not all of the rest of the gang who had so much to do with leading us into the quagmire of Iraq will not pay a personal price for their mistakes. If having this pointed out to them is so freaking hard on their poor little psyches, imagine how tough it would be for them if they found out a loved one were killed or maimed in the mistaken war they are responsible for starting. Having the truth pointed out to them is a very small measure of the anguish they are responsible for giving to thousands of American families.