Opinion: The Mommy War over Iraq

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Advantage Condi Rice in her faceoff with Sen. Barbara Boxer over Boxer’s observation, during a hearing on Iraq, that ‘you’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family.’ Boxer, who noted that the fruit of her own womb was too old to fight in Iraq, was suggesting that, as a spinster, Rice didn’t have any hostages to fortune, and therefore ... what? That she shouldn’t be secretary of state? That she shouldn’t defend Bush’s surge?

Boxer’s gaffe was so dumb that it almost excuses the crocodile tears from conservative bloggers about her affront to working women. But the personalization of policy is a bipartisan temptation. Remember the conservatives who couldn’t accept ‘draft dodger’ Bill Clinton as their commander-in-chief? Or the anti-war Bush-bashers who ridiculed ‘chicken hawks’ like George W. and Dick Cheney?

Ad hominem attacks (if we can use that term to refer to female-on-female dissing) are more trouble than they’re worth. Does Boxer believe that pro-choice Supreme Court Justice David Souter, a bachelor, should recuse himself from parental-consent cases because he can’t empathize with fathers who don’t want their teenage daughters to have an abortion?

And if Cheney is a chicken hawk, what do we call opponents of the war in Congress who had draft deferments during Vietnam? Chicken doves? Should they shut up about the war, and leave the debate to John Murtha or John ‘Reporting for Duty’ Kerry?