War IS a Women’s Issue, Senator Clinton

[Carolina]

"I spoke with Senator Clinton back in 2006 ... spearheading Operation House Call, a daily vigil in the summer sauna of Capitol Hill, with a growing number of combat boots representing what Congress’s decision to “stay the course” in Iraq was costing our troops. The Senator is smaller and softer in person than she is on TV... the benefit of living in the political and financial Green Zone that affords the luxury of denial; that insulates and isolates an elected official from having to face the human and domestic costs of war.

...Speaking to audiences of women... she focuses almost exclusively on domestic policy, framing her presentations in terms of family, health and home... Perhaps Hillary thinks women shouldn’t worry their pretty little heads about things like war... Or perhaps it’s because the Senator has no real grasp on precisely how the seemingly-interminable occupation of Iraq and the repeat, extended deployments are destroying the American home front.

As the (separated) wife of an Iraq war veteran, and a card-carrying member of Military Families Speak Out, I have no buffer. I live daily with the fall-out from this war... We are America’s uncounted, unrecognized collateral damage, left to fend for ourselves in a system that denies our experience and dismisses our existence.

... We’re branded “unpatriotic” if we ... dare to tell the truth... slammed and slandered for being anti-military and not supporting the troops. Our loved ones are the troops. And now we’ve got a female Presidential candidate who is trying to secure the women’s vote by talking to women about “women’s issues,” ... but refus to address the domestic disaster that is descending upon military families across this country as the direct result of America’s foreign policy.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/01/4947/

by Stacy Bannerman author of When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind [e-mail].