Aside to Sally Field...

... grow up.

Seriously.

Look, I understand being against the war, and wanting to speak out against the war, and maybe even wanting to remind people that there are military mothers at home waiting and praying that their kids come home safe.  All this, I am good with.

The thing I am not good with is the statement that (bleeped or not) if mothers ran the world, there would be no wars.

OK, two things wrong with this.

First, did you happen to notice there's a mother running for President?  You would think that by 2007, women's rights -- and the perception of women in this country -- have progressed to the point where a female candidate for the highest office in the land wouldn't even have to dignify with a response questions that would suggest that a woman lacks the cajones to be the Commander in Chief of our military.  Set aside for a moment (I know it's hard, but work with me here) your obvious opposition to the current war.  But sometimes, it is just and necessary to lead your country into war, and it would be really nice to think a female candidate for President wouldn't have to face the sort of stereotypical thinking that says a woman just isn't capable of the military mindset.  It's bad enough that women have to deal with this from some backward-thinking men, but really outrageously frustrating to get it from someone who is supposed to be supportive of women's rights.  Really, Sally, the idea that having an infant come out of your womb is somehow inconsistent with an ability to make war is simply downright insulting to women -- even if the idea is coming from a good, peace-loving place.

Second, it's pretty darned offensive to fathers, too.  Since you think that mothers would never make war, but clearly fathers do, you must be working off a premise that women -- by means, I guess, of the actual act of gestating a child and giving birth to it -- have a greater, deeper love for their children than men do.  So, go ahead, brush aside as irrelevant the fathers of soldiers who have lost their lives in Iraq -- and those fathers who stand up against the war.  Because obviously you figure their pain and devotion to the cause can't possibly be as strong as those of parents of the other gender.

So maybe, just maybe, you should join the rest of us on this side of the 1970s and realize that mothers can be for a war, fathers can be against it, and that broad generalizations based on gender are hurtful and stupid -- no matter how good the intentions behind them.