Small price

House Republican Minority Leader, John Boehner, says that all the dead soldiers and Marines, all the wounded, crippled, maimed, and broken men and women coming back home from Iraq are a "small price" to pay to achieve whatever goal the war supporters decide this week has been the goal of the war all along.

He also referred to the war as an "investment."

I like that phrase.  "Small price."  Stirring words.  Comforting words.  I wonder if Boehner puts them in the condolence letters he writes to the families of the dead from his district.

"My deepest sympathy on the loss of your son/daughter/husband/wife/father/mother/brother/sister.  Thank you, though, for the small price your family paid to continue this necessary investment."

Does he use it in eulogies when he goes to their funerals?

"Friends, we're all greatly grieved by our loss today, but we can take comfort in knowing that the dearly departed is up in heaven now and proud of the small price he/she paid to be part of our investment."

Stirring words.  Comforting words.  I don't think the Congressman should limit their effect to his own district.  I think he needs to share them with all the families of all the dead and wounded and maimed and broken troops across the country.

That's a tall order though.  Maybe he should just focus his attention on the families of the dead for now.  He should call each and every one.  That's only a little over thirty-seven hundred phone calls.  If he calls eleven or so families a day, he can be finished by the end of next summer.

Of course by that time, five or six hundred or more small prices will have been paid.

Comments

[The Viscount]

Well said Lance.

Fucking outrageous.

[Kevin Wolf]

I've only read the question and his answer, not seen or heard it, and it didn't strike me that he was necessarily speaking of troop deaths, simply because the question posed starts out clearly asking about the monetary cost. Maybe you have to see it (can't do so at work) but it didn't seem so egregious to me in print.

But maybe when I do see the clip I'll want to sock Boehner. I do know he's a Bush tool.

Even if he's talking cash, though, I've yet to see him or any politician make a case that this is an "investment" that will pay off. Not unless you're a stockholder at Halliburton.

[Zappatero]

Blitzer specifically asked about blood.

BLITZER: "How much longer will U.S. taxpayers have to shell out $2 billion a week or $3 billion a week as some now are suggesting the cost is going to endure? The loss in blood, the Americans who are killed every month, how much longer do you think this commitment, this military commitment is going to require?"

[KC45s]

A few years ago, I thought the war would have to end fairly soon simply because Americans and their politicians would eventually become so offended by how much it cost. That when we got right down to it, the billions spent (and lost) trumped all the rationales for keeping things going.

(Sigh) I've learned a lot in the past few years...

[Guinefort]

During World War I, a young man from the town that I grew up in (who from all accounts sounds like one of those insufferably virtuous heroes from the improving fiction of the day), volunteered to fight before the US even entered the war. He wrote a letter home, received after he died in battle, in which he told his family not to mourn for him if he was killed because, "like a Liberty Bond, it is an investment, not a loss, when a young man dies for his country." Those words (minus "like a Liberty Bond") are inscribed on the town war memorial.

When I read about that and saw the words, I thought of them as being very much of their era and feeling very glad that nobody could actually say that kind of thing seriously anymore. I guess I was wrong.

[Halloween Jack]

The thing that astonishes me is that this is the House Minority Leader. This is a politician saying these things. Maybe he's in a rock-solid-red district (it's his ninth term) and has forgotten basic politicking, but I wonder if some of these Republicans were so sure of the "permanent Republican majority" that they simply lost the taste for basic human decency; they let the mask fall and shatter and can't quite bring themselves to pick up and glue together the pieces.

[harry near indy]

i wonder if you plan to send a letter/e-mail with those sentiments to boehner. do it, say, until he responds, or at least five times if he doesn't.

if he doesn't, then call him out for the callous knave that he is.

[misscripchick]

this reminds me of something my professor said to the class today:

student: "why don't we just throw a few bombs in iraq and get this over with?"
professor: "that would work but people don't like to see people killed."

is that so UNREASONABLE??

[S.L.]

Boehner's phrase "small price to pay" shows that he has had little if any contact with injured military and/or surviving family members of those who have been killed. His remarks are cold and callous and show he has no empathy for those in the military and their loved ones.