September 13, 2007 12:28 PM

Kerry & The Value of a Life

It's a theme John Kerry has trumpeted for over 30 years. As a returning veteran, he asked: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

Today, in response to Rep. Boehner's statement that the loss of life in Iraq would be "a small price" for the end of defeating Al Qaeda, Kerry returned to the topic of valuing a soldier's life and sacrifice, writing on The Huffington Post:

A single life is a large price to pay for any endeavor. Sometimes, in our national interest, we choose to pay that awful price, but we must always make sure that the policy is worthy of it.

Visit our wounded warriors at Walter Reed hospital and ask whether the price they paid was small. Talk to the mothers, fathers, husbands and wives of those who have been killed and ask them to measure the price of war. Young lives stopped short, children who won't have a mother or father there as they grow up, when they graduate, when they get married -- that loss is many things, but it is not small.

I'm not as concerned with putting pressure on Boehner to apologize. I'm more concerned that men like Boehner probably do believe it's a "small price" -- and what that does to the way they make decisions about the life and death of others.