I just heard about Boxer's comments to Condi Rice yesterday. Based on the vitriolic response, she apparently hit 'em in a tender spot.

I did not hear the actual speech myself, but just reading the comments in the paper, I really don't see anything new or shocking about them. I think the comments and the reaction are a sign of how little we actually discuss the cost of this war, who is going to pay for it, and whether it is worth it. For the most part, we only talk about whether it is worth it which leads to a very skewed analysis.

One of the biggest issues here is that over the past five years, we have grown very used to this idea that you can have a war without any costs at all. In historical terms, this idea is totally bizarre. In other ways, it is a very dangerous idea.

The whole point behind Colin Powell's warning that if we go into Iraq we will be responsible, his so-called "you break it, you buy it" argument, is that war IS costly. War is terrible and that is why wise men and women avoid it. At the time, Powell's voice of experience fell on deaf ears and was lost in the emotional arguments about patriotism. Are people starting to realize how right he was?

the costs

War has a huge cost, in both lives and dollars. Anyone with an education should have known that before we invaded and anyone who has been paying attention should know that this war is no different.

There is a huge cost in lives. A few thousand Americans have died but over ten thousand have been permanently wounded while 36,000 Iraqis were killed just last year. In this war, Iraqis are paying most of the blood price.

There is also a huge financial cost for war. You can see this cost by adding up the total tax burden of the Pentagon budget and the supplemental "emergency" budgets the White House has used to pay for Iraq. The supplemental budgets alone are over $400B so far with no end in sight.

For all those people that obsess about paying taxes, that is $400B TAX DOLLARS; money that could have gone into New Orleans, or schools, or health care but instead went elsewhere. (Not to mention the fact that our own GOA asserts much of that money was lost to embezzlers and crooks.)

misdirection

In truth, the White House has very deliberately kept public discussion away from the cost of war and their organized campaign of intimidation has have been amazingly successful at it. Few reporters ever asked hard or direct questions. We are not even allowed to see photographs of US bodies coming home. (One photograph was leaked a few years ago and the person who took it was fired.)

Any discussion of a balanced budget has also disappeared, especially from Republicans. The entire cost of this war has been paid with borrowed money. Future tax payers will get the bill. What we got instead was a tax cut while the president urged us to continue shopping. Hardly a sacrifice.

nothing new

Despite the recent press attention, this issue of personal costs is not new. Michael Moore pointed out the same issue several years ago when he asked Congressmen to have their children enlist in the military. Moore pointed out that almost none of our elected leaders actually have a relative or child in uniform. The wounded and dead will be other people's kids.

Further, when someone who has lost a child in this war tries to bring attention to the issue, they are branded as traitors or crack pots, e.g. Cindy Sheehan. By discrediting the messenger, the public lost sight of the message.

Boxer's comments are merely a reminder of these previous discussions. Frankly her comments have nothing to do with being a single woman or a feminist. Boxer's comments apply equally to all of the White house staff and the Congress.

who really pays

The decisions of whether to put Americans in harms way are all being made by people without anything personal to risk. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice... Not a single one of them has a child or family member in uniform. The same is true for the Congress.

The costs of the war are born disproportionally by the poor not the wealthy. The poor see a military career as an opportunity to better themselves or to get an education. The wealthy have much better choices, like the lacrosse team at Princeton.

On the other hand, this situation is not anything new. Even popular movies like Platoon pointed out this issue in Vietnam. What is new perhaps is not having a draft.

When you draft people, you get a much bigger cross section of citizens (such as rich kids like John Kerry) in uniform to see for themselves what sacrifice and fear are. Sure the rich could still get off with postings in the Texas National Guard but some of them did their duty and served. And our democracy is better served when both leaders and voters have real battlefield experience, not just movie-theater experience.

In fact, Robert Heinlein raised this issue decades ago in his book "Starship Troopers". In that book, Heinlein asked the question of whether everyone had to serve in uniform for democracy to work. He also asked if you should get to vote if you are not a veteran. These are issues that had some relevance in war time but seem out of place today. We are more likely to debate whether you can vote with your iPhone than whether you are actually voting with your brain.

As pointed out by many recently, military families bear the most personal cost of this war but ironically they are also the ones who complain the least about it. At least publicly. Even retired officers have been reluctant to criticize going in to war as well as how we have executed the war. Moreover, the Pentagon itself is the strongest voice against a draft.

a wind of change?

In the bigger picture, Boxer's comments are not terribly important. On the other hand, maybe they are a sign that things are changing. Even the president now says "mistakes were made" but no one actually stands up and admits any particular mistakes or calls for any changes based on their personal learning.

Are American's tired of the war and ready to reflect on what we have done, what it has cost us, and who is responsible? One can hope.

At the moment we are still living with a mindset about war that better matches the dotcom bubble than reality. In 1999, the idea was that you could get rich with a company that didn't actually make any money. War 2.0 is the idea that you can have a war without any sacrifice. Neither mindset is likely to stand the test of time.