Does losing their husbands, fathers, and sons in combat make women the primary victims of war?

Does losing their husbands, fathers, and sons in combat make women the primary victims of war

[Warning: This answer includes graphic imagery]

In a river of idiocy, this is possibly the dumbest thing Hillary Clinton has ever said.

[Edit: A commentor has made me realize I took her statement slightly out of context. Clinton was not referring to women who stay home while their men go off to fight. Here is what she actually said.

The experience that you have gone through is in many ways comparable to what happens with domestic violence. Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children. Women are again the victims in crime and domestic violence as well. Throughout our hemisphere we have an epidemic of violence against women, even though there is no longer any organized warfare that puts women in the direct line of combat. But domestic violence is now recognized as being the most pervasive human rights violation in the world. Here in El Salvador, according to the statistics gathered by your government, 1 in 6 women have been sexually assaulted and the number of domestic abuse complaints at just one agency topped 10,000 last year. Between 25 and 50 percent of women throughout Latin America have reportedly been victims of domestic violence.

The problem is all pervasive, but sometimes difficult to see. Every country on earth shares this dark secret. Too often, the women we see shopping at the markets, working at their jobs, caring for their children by day, go home at night and live in fear. Not fear of an invading army or a natural disaster or even a stranger in a dark alley, but fear of the very people — family members — who they are supposed to depend upon for help and comfort. This is the trust-destroying terror that attends every step of a victim of violence. For these women, their homes provide inadequate refuge, the law little protection, public opinion often less sympathy. That’s why we have to say over and over again, as Elizabeth has done and as so many of you have echoed, that violence against women is not simply cultural or a custom. It is simply criminal, a crime. The devastating effects of domestic violence on women are just as dramatic as the effects of war on women. The physical injury, the mental illness, the terrible loss of confidence limits the capacities of women to fulfill their God-given potentials.-Hillary Clinton, 17NOV98, Domesitc Violence conference in El Salvador

Her statement, taken in context, is slightly less idiotic, but no less erroneous. Further, comparing domestic violence victims with war refugees is disingenuous.

I have replaced the original picture of the woman in this answer with one more contextually appropriate.]

Tell me, who is the greater victim here?

Or

The woman, grieving the loss of her son, husband, or father, or the only home she’s known, but alive and with her children? The woman who still has a future ahead of her? Or the men lying dead, broken, and mutilated on the field?

That Clinton said this with all seriousness tells me exactly two things. In Clinton’s mind,

1. Men are disposable.
2. Soldiers aren’t people.

Because we don’t matter. We die in job-lots, but women are the primary victims. To Clinton and those who agree with this idiocy, the suffering, agony, and trauma that men endure is less important that the women back home who are kept safe by the deaths of their men.

Men place their precious selves, mind and body, between beloved home and war’s desolation. But of course. That’s the place of men. To be shattered and broken by war. Because our deaths don’t matter.

I want to be clear. My unmitigated scorn does not fall upon those grieving women. They have not made this repulsive claim. They have my sympathy. To lose family to war is tragic. I do not mock their suffering.

No, my derision is for Clinton and those who agree with her. Women are not the primary victims of war. Those fighting on the front line are. Those who have charged the machine gun nest hoping their corpses will stop enough bullets for their brothers to prevail. Who have jumped on the wire to use their own bodies as bridges for their brothers. Who have have jumped on the grenade to spare their brothers. Those who have been shot, blown up, maimed, yet continue to fight because there is no other choice. Those whose bodies return home, but not their minds or their sanity, haunted by what they’ve seen or done. Those who charge into certain death, who sacrifice their lives that others may be spared the hell of war.

I can't answer for anybody else. I can only answer for myself. My son was in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom and that was in 2005 to 2006.

That entire year I worried and I knew my son was getting up when I was going to bed and I learned things such as when they tell you your loved one died they tell you at 6 a.m. So then I knew I didn't have to worry after work looking in my driveway being afraid to see the dark car. The war changed my son's life and he was the one who suffered the most.

He was hurt both physically and emotionally and he was standing right beside his Sergeant when he was killed by a sniper. If someone with a gun is on a roof you can't shoot them unless the gun is pointed at you but what happens if you know that's the sniper that just killed your Sargent?

By the way, not only does the military try to brainwash soldiers but they try to brainwash families. We had meetings with Jag and the higher-ups and they told us our loved ones would never be able to talk to us about what happened when they were at war and the only people they would be able to talk to was their fellow brothers in arms. They tried their best to put a rift between families and soldiers. I knew Jeremy could not be manipulated because he told me he would not be brainwashed even if to keep that from happening he had to do something as simple as wearing two different colors of socks.

When he told me about the sniper I told him that he did what I told him to do which is to come home alive and he said “but Mom, he had a family too.”

I remember all of the soldiers getting off of the airplane and it was different than what I expected. We were ready to applaud them and all they wanted to do was come home. Indiana Pennsylvania had planned a parade but the guys just went home. There was one man who was going to college for movie making so there is a movie out there that was shown in Jimmy Stewart's Hometown about my sons division, HHC 1/110th Infantry 2-28th BCT which by the way the National Guard fought alongside the Marines and they had many deaths. But back to the original subject there was a movie that was going to be shown in Indiana, Pennsylvania. I was given a copy of this movie. I can hear my son. I know he's in the movie. He did not want his name on the movie and I know why. My son did not want to glorify war not that he didn't think he did what our country asked him to do because he did. He was even told to kill the camps dog that they considered their pet. They did everything they could to try to brainwash our guys and they did everything they could to try to brainwash us, the family members. I have heard my son's brothers-in-arms say they wished they could have done more and perhaps if they would have been there longer things would have not went back to what they were like before.

My son's sergeant that was killed by a sniper? His name was Sgt McCauley. The people from that Kansas “Church” were across the road from the church where Sergeant McCauley's body laid in state. They held signs up that said things like Sergeant McCauley was in hell. Across the road lining the road on each side was the Patriot Guard Riders. They stood beside their motorcycles on both sides of the road going to the church that belonged to Sargent McCauley's uncle. Sergeant McCauley's uncle and his father were both pastors. Sergeant McCaulley's two sons sat across from the open casket. Sergeant McCauley's father and his mother who was in a wheelchair were across from the end of the casket where Sergeant McCauley's feet were under the casket blanket. Sergeant McCauley's father said his son fought for that Kansas City “church” right to free speech. When I finally was able to get to Sergeant McCauley's casket I spoke with his father and I thanked him for his son teaching my son how to stay alive in Iraq. Sergeant McCauley's father made me promise I would tell my son that he thanked him for helping his son. My son was in Iraq holding services for Sergeant McCauley at the same time we had visitation and services for Sergeant McCauley. Sergeant McCauley was buried at Alto Reste Park where they gave every Soldier a plot to be buried in if they wanted/or needed a plot. There's a picture that was at Jeremy's Sargent's funeral that Jeremy took where Sergeant McCauley was at the bottom of steps giving candy to children at the top of the steps. At the funeral home where people came in what seemed to be an endless succession of people there was in the middle in plexiglass, sand, a boot, a gun with the helmet resting on top of the gun along with the picture that Jeremy took of his Sgt giving the Iraqi children candy. This tableau was for the fallen soldier and because Sergeant Macaulay died in a country with sand on the ground that is why there was sand in the fallen soldiers Memorial. Sitting with Sergeant McCauley's two sons one of them held a little girl which would have been Sergeant McCauley's granddaughter and he never once got to see her or hold her. The Iraq people were allowed to have one semi-automatic rifle per house and that was one of the jobs that Jeremy and his brothers in arms performed is to go from house to house and make sure there are no more guns other than that one gun in each house. If a child accepts candy now, the child's entire family would be killed. Some of Jeremy's Brothers in Arms feel that they failed and if they just would have had more time then things would have been better for the Iraq people.

I am not saying I did not suffer and I saw the eyes of the Mothers who lost sons in the war, the gold star Mother's. They would answer as if by rhote. Their lives never the same because they lost their babies. No matter how old a woman's son, her son is always her baby. The parent's eyes reflected the pain they felt when they lost their sons in a foreign land. They still felt that their son fought for our country and out of respect we should remember that even though our soldiers are in a foreign land they are fighting for our country.

I bought a ceramic necklace that had Jeremy's name and then it had half of my heart is in Iraq. The people that came to talk to me when they saw that were always Vietnam Vets. They were the ones that supported our soldiers and they would come up to me and tell me their stories, where our Vietnam Veterans were fighting and our government was denying our soldiers were ever there. I worked at the largest Nursing Home in Pennsylvania and my employers were also my son's employers and if anyone thinks that the National Guard don't have active duty they should research it because yes it is true my son was fighting alongside Marines and we lost many soldiers that were also sons, fathers, grandfathers. A lot of people would say to me things such as if my son died it's his own fault because he signed. I understand why we don't have a draft because often times when there is a draft people that should never go to war when they are being evaluated they might only spend a day or two in the service for a lifetime of benefits because they might have mental health issues but at the same time not having a draft hurts the soldiers we have. People care more about their family members that are in a foreign land doing what our country asked them to do. By not having a draft we also ended up having a country of people that didn't really care much about our sons dying in Iraq or Afghanistan or any number of countries that we have fought with volunteer soldiers. Whenever they finally gave women the right to fight in a war, there were already women putting their lives on the line in the Sunni triangle and some were taking mail from Ramadi to Fallujah on the one road they had across the one bridge that was there but yet they were not allowed to carry a gun because they were not considered soldiers. When I heard that women were going to be considered soldiers finally, my first thought was they will have a gun to try to protect themselves in the worst part of the Sunni Triangle doing their jobs, one job was making sure our troops got their mail and they were driving on roads littered with IEDs. My son was thrown from a Humvee where he was the gunner. The IED was run over by the Humvee and the gun jammed into my son's back before he was thrown onto the road and became deafened with brain trauma. There were contractors that made so much more than our soldiers and I am talking well over $150,000. Cheney's contractors who sent over contaminated water that ruined our soldiers teeth. It is not like they could drink from the contaminated water of the Euphrates. Sometimes our soldiers would have to go to where the mail was sent to get their own mail. They had to drive over a road where there were unfriendly soldiers in order to get their mail Whenever there mail was not given to them by the women that were not yet considered soldiers and had nothing to protect themselves. There are some people in this world that don't understand common sense and think that this is some kind of new age garbage that women are now considered soldiers but they always were soldiers they just were not given the privileges that soldiers received and one of those privileges if you can call it a privilege was having some sort of way of trying to make sure they stayed alive and they were not allowed to carry a gun until they were considered a soldier. Soldiers risk their lives to make sure other soldiers get their mail.

By the way just a FYI although it is a very important FYI, you should not ever try to send mail to “any Soldier” because nobody will get that mail. You need a name of somebody over there to send mail to and you can give instructions inside the package to make sure the mail is shared with their fellow soldiers if that is what you want to have happen.

My son died in 2017 and it was because of the war. I learned that the year he was in Iraq wasn't when I should have worried. He died 11 years later but he started to die in Iraq.

I can't answer for anyone else but I know I'm waiting to see my son again. My son and his brothers in arms are the ones who suffered the most and I know my country tried to get me to not ask questions and also tried to make our soldiers believe their families would not be able to understand what happened so the families did suffer but our soldiers suffered more and some paid the ultimate sacrifice. When my son Sergeant died his Sargeant was standing right beside my son.

If you're interested and care about real news instead of the Kardashians then start learning the truth, look online for the Project for The New American Century. Inside this document look at the sequence of the wars that were planned and look at the names of the people that signed the document. Realize that your attention is being diverted away from the truth to keep you from finding out what the truth is. When Jag told us our loved ones would never be able to talk to us about what happened when they served in Iraq or Afghanistan they told our soldiers the same things that their families would never be able to understand and the only people that could understand were their fellow brothers in arms. Try to find independent news sources to find out the truth but never blame our soldiers who signed up and put their lives on the line to do what our country asked them to do.

When Jeremy was in Iraq and he was holding the memorial service for Sergeant McCauley, somehow I ended up on our local news and what I said I meant. No matter what your politics, remember that every one of our soldiers and their family members deserve respect, no matter if that soldier is a man or a woman, they are somebody's father or mother, son or daughter, sibling and yes, a soldier can even be a grandparent.

Major General Jessica L. Wright was my employer when I worked at the biggest Veterans Home in Pennsylvania and when I went to Sergeant McCauley's viewing and then his funeral. Major General Jessica Wright was able to change from a tough woman who headed up not only the Veterans Homes but also the National Guard. She was able to change from a tough Commander to a woman who is not only a wife but a mother in the blink of an eye. She is no longer the head of the National Guard and she no longer heads up all of our Veterans Homes in Pennsylvania because she retired but she was able to change from a tough Soldier to a mother who understood when she leaned over Sergeant McCauley's mother who happened to be in a wheelchair. Major General Jessica Wright showed how she could wear all the different hats necessary to do her job and part of her job was going to the funeral of those National Guardsmen she sent to war. She never shirked away from what was her job to do but she was there for the families and she accepted the responsibility of what she had to do with grace and strength. She may no longer be in service to our country because she retired but she gained my respect for life when she put her arms around the mother of a Veteran who died in service and whom she sent to another country to do what our country asked that Soldier to do and comforted the family of the Veteran she sent overseas to fight for our country. She was able to go back and forth between being tough when she had to be and on the other hand she could show the part of her that was a mother giving sympathy to another mother who lost her precious child. No matter how old your child is it doesn't matter because that Soldier is still your son or daughter and because of that will always be your child, your baby. To lose a child no matter how old is grieving in a way that you can't understand unless you also have lost a child to death and you know that if your child didn't go to war the chances weren't there for them to die but being in an active war zone you know your child can die and they do things and don't tell the families things that could help them while their child is deployed. The women that were wives would pass on information to those of us that didn't have the information such as the dark car that tells you that your loved one has been killed only comes at 6 a.m. So you don't have to worry about looking in your driveway for the dark car that tells you your child has been killed. There was a long time that I did not know that and I would look in my driveway with trepidation hoping that it wasn't me that would receive the notification that my child was dead. When I stay there should be some sort of rule book of things that family members need to know, I'm not kidding. A family's anxiety level would be decreased if we only knew the truth and it isn't right that on the news you hear from what outfit the person or people that died came from but then after that there is a blackout of communication so you are left hanging not knowing if your family member was the one who was killed. If you know that the families are only notified at 6 a.m. It can relieve some anxiety and I know it's at the expense of another soldier and another soldier's family but when it's your child that is serving overseas and you only have minimum information, you are left wondering whether it was your loved one that was killed. I think it's cruel to put out what infantry and battalion the soldier was in and then not give any additional information for 48 hours because there is a blackout of communication. All you want to know is that your child is alive and then you feel guilty for feeling that way. When you finally can breathe a sigh of relief you know it is at the expense of the soldier who was killed in the family that has to live with that death. There is no loss greater than the loss of a grown soldier who is your child who died out of turn.

Every time my son heard a soldier died of a suicide after coming home he would say the following types of things. He would say “I don't care if you're arguing with your old lady” (he was trying to sound like one of the guys and this is probably the way he talked when he was alone with his brothers in arms) “or if you feel that your life is not important” He would tell people “My mother says that suicide is a long-term solution to a short-term problem” and to come to him and he would shoot the shit with his brother in arms and if the soldier needed therapy then get it because there's no shame in that, actually it shows strength to reach out for help when it's needed.

My son died on May 27th, 2017 but wasn't found until May 30th, 2017 he had an arrhythmia caused by anxiety caused by PTSD and he was trimming his facial hair and had time to take one step backward and he went down dead. He was not given an autopsy because it was obvious what happened. He is no longer on this Earth but I know he wouldn't want anyone to kill themselves. No matter what happened in somebody's life, no matter if they got in trouble with the law, no matter if they're arguing with their wife or girlfriend or whoever they are romantically linked with, there is never a reason adequate enough to justify killing yourself because time passes and that's the one sure thing and life is that time does pass and with time passing, things change.

There was a memorial built in Iraq for the National Guardsmen who died while in active service, it's a deliberately rusted Cleopatra's Needle that has holes in it as if it was hit by an IED. At the base is the name of those soldiers that were killed in active duty and hanging from the top is the dog tags of those that were killed and it sounds like a wind chime.

In Pennsylvania in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania there is ground, buildings and memorials dedicated to the National Guards of Pennsylvania and you will find a copy of the memorial that was built in Iraq. My son was a hero of the week for wtaj news and if you would like to see him and hear him then Google WTAJ, hero of the week and his name, Jeremy Berkheimer. In that video he tells how many people were killed in active duty. He also talks about those who died from suicide. My son and I often talked about physics and science, stars and dimensions as well as alters of us in these different dimensions and we cannot see them or talk to them because then we would die.

I know that there is no specific reason he told me what he did, it's just the way we talked with each other because we were alike in a lot of ways, we were interested in the same things.

The last time I physically saw him he said to me I know how the future and present live together and I asked him how and he said “well Mom you know about dimensions and you know about our alters”. I said yeah and he said “in another dimension we're already dead, we're in the line to Heaven and you're right behind me”. He then said “in God's time Mom, In God's Time”.

There are some days that I would like to believe he had some sort of foreboding that he was going to die and this was something special that he told me but this honestly is the way that we spoke with one another and I almost forgot but he also told me that he was the same personality type that I am, that he was/is an INTJ in the Myers-Briggs test. He didn't sound happy about that. He asked me one time if I felt like I didn't fit in because I was intelligent and I said yes and that I went to a therapist one time who said that anybody that is different should have therapy whether that is someone who is less intelligent or more intelligent or has some special gift that other people don't have that makes them feel different and alone.

I know my son had a hard time dealing with death and killing someone and they made him kill the camps pet, a dog. I don't know why they would cause somebody to kill a dog and I think that's wrong and cruel but I didn't know about the dog in Iraq when he came home and one of my pets died. I had both a cat and a dog but my dog died, he had to be put down because he had cancer and my son told me he wanted to help me bury Binks. Jeremy felt was his dog as well. He helped me bury Binks and he sobbed the entire time. I didn't know they made him kill the dog that lived with them inside the wire in Habbaniyah, not then anyway and his younger brother told me things that I have no control over and that I'll never have answers and my youngest son, my only other child decided he did not want me in his life and people feel that that could be part of his grieving. I just want my son here on Earth to know I love him and I love his wife and I want both of them in my life. We could be there for each other during this time and also share good times as well.

Jeremy was intelligent and he was also a force of nature and teachers even said he was not a student, he was an equal.

One thing you can do as a parent is you can go in every year and sign papers that the military can't speak with your son or daughter or know where you live or your phone number and they can't speak with your child at their school because that's part of No Child Left Behind that the military recruiters will be able to speak with your children unless you sign that paper, that the military can't talk with them or know their phone number and address. As far as recruiters, what they have to do to get people to join could make them have PTSD. If the recruiter does not get his quota than he has to go over and fill a spot where somebody has been killed and that is going to be a very dangerous active war zone.

The recruiter then has to live with the fact that they chose to lie to somebody so they would sign up and by doing so protect the recruiter from going to a place where they very well could be killed.

I can't change the past but if you're reading this in the beginning I already answered the question because the primary victim of war is the soldier. Veterans who do their duty by this country suffer the most of anyone. Next would be the mother because of their child dying out of turn. I have never adopted a child and I know adopted children are loved just as much by their parents as mothers who have carried their children in their body but I remember Jeremy being inside me and me knowing I knew every move he was going to make before he made that move and that didn't change. When I gave birth to him a little bit of my blood went into his body and he would have died with that little bit of blood that is mine still in his body. A father would also grieve their son or daughter, I know that often times divorce will follow the loss of a child and I can't imagine two people trying to deal with the loss of a child who died at war but the most important thing is knowing that your child did die for this country. This isn't about politics.

Grieving for a child no matter the age is the worst kind of grieving there is and it hurts more than anything you can possibly imagine. I have so many “what ifs” but if I can educate people to sign that paper at school starting in 8th grade to not allow recruiters to talk to your child I might have saved somebody's life. If a person chooses to be in the military that's something that they should be proud of but it should not be because of somebody else's influence and possible untruths because they have an agenda and they don't care about that future soldier as much as the parents and family of the person that chooses to serve this country.

When a person signs up for the military it is an honorable choice but it should always be remembered to believe what is written and not what is said when they talk to the recruiter or anybody else that is talking to them about joining the military.

There was a lot of brainwashing that was attempted while my son served. The worst was when Jag told us, the family members that are loved one who is serving would not be able to talk to us about what happened while they were serving their country. They tell the soldiers the same thing but I knew they were wrong. My son did talk to me although it took time.

Last but not least I'm extremely proud of my son and he did die for this country. It just so happened that his death came as a consequence 11 years after he served.

This is a claim by Hillary Clinton that is sometimes repeated by feminists, and it is a great backhanded tribute to men’s contribution to women in daily life. Contrast this with Louis C. K.’s comment:

“How do women still go out with guys, when you consider that there is no greater threat to women than men? We’re the number one threat to women! Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women.”

Yet this claim is saying the opposite – that the number one threat to women is to lose the men in their family that they associate with. This is the greatest cause of female victimhood – the lack of men (actually, the greatest risk is unintentional falls, but let’s not let that get in the way of a good narrative). It’s even worse than going through the horrors of war yourself and seeing death all around you. It’s worse than being injured or killed yourself, or being left with profound PTSD. Worse than the experiences of all of those men who are tortured, raped and imprisoned. Still having mothers, wives and daughters is no consolation, because women are basically all helpless victims without men to look after them – which is actually getting kind of insulting to women.

Still though, it should be recognised that the harm done to men through war has a profound effect on communities and families who love and need them, even if we don’t consider the victims of disease, famine, lack of services and other problems. Particularly when we think of wars as more self-contained and discrete battles between identifiable armies in uniform, it is easy to think of the sacrifice being something that men bore. If the front line in a WWI battle was in the North Sea or a field in Flanders, the ones directly wounded and killed would be almost exclusively men. Modern conflicts like in Syria may be fought in urban environments and the status of a particular individual or target is a lot less clear. Women and even children may be used as combatants, or a hospital or school may be used as cover. After the conflict, those left behind or displaced continue to face suffering, hardship and danger. The loss of a significant part of the male population can have severe effects on some communities and their ability to rebuild. The lack of a proper infrastructure and services harms those who depend on it the most. Men who have been exposed to violence are more likely to suffer from PTSD and also more likely to commit domestic violence or be unable to support themselves and their families. Women may send the family’s main breadwinner to war, who returns as someone who struggles to function in normal society. The direct victims are overwhelmingly male, but women are seriously affected too.

Whether they are men or women and whether or not they were involved in the fighting themselves, the long-term victims of war and its secondary effects should be recognised when considering the human cost. On the other hand, this shouldn’t detract from those who are more directly affected, such as those who face violence, injury and death, or return to society without adequate support. We also shouldn’t forget that men and boys can also be victims of issues more commonly associated with women, such as sexual violence. Sexual violence against men (SVM) in conflicts, like in prisons, is an understudied problem that also has repercussions on family members of those men exposed to it. A recent UN study in Syria showed what has been seen in many other conflicts, that men and boys are exposed to high levels of abuse and are often not given the support that they need. Not only that, but they also suffer high levels of stigma and lack of support, which prevents them from speaking out or punishes them if they do.

Devastating, multi-faceted impacts of sexual violence on male survivors and their families were documented. Sexual violence, particularly sustained sexual torture, had profoundly debilitating and destabilising psychological consequences. Physically, rectal trauma, often due to sexual torture with the use of objects, in the form of anal fistulae and fissures was reported, resulting in ongoing pain and faecal leakage. Socially, male survivors were shunned and shamed, and some were threatened with death. Economically, adult male survivors faced numerous impediments to employment—under already highly competitive, often exploitative conditions—due to poor mental health, community marginalisation, or compromised physical health. Some boy survivors left school, jeopardising their education. Entire families were impacted: community ostracization, the onset of domestic violence, and poverty due to loss of livelihood were reported as direct results from the sexual victimisation of a husband, father, or son.

“The primary victims of pregnancy are men since they lose their wives, mothers and sisters.”

Take some time to think about how much you agree with that statement.

Thats EXACTLY how Clinton's statement sounds to me. Maybe its not a perfect analogy, maybe I've made a mistake in my semantics somewhere, but the effect is the same. It is Incendiary. It is dismissive of the individuals who will will face such life altering experiences.

The primary victims of war are both the individuals tasked with the execution of warfare and the civilians trapped within its immediate reach. The relatives who grieve are secondary victims. Their pain is very much real and incomprehensible, but I cant see it any other way than as a total dismissal and patronization of a soldiers human value in a statement like Clinton's, along with that of the males with equivalent personal connections to the soldiers.

Imagine sitting in a room with a boy whos about to go to war and every woman he knows. Then you announce to your audience that the women there-mother, sisters, whoever- are to be recognized as the true victims of the impending conflict. Forget the fathers and brothers, they don't matter. If he dies, well he cant feel pain anymore right? Nevermind the pain and fear he felt up to that point. If he lives, well great, no victims at all since he doesnt qualify as being a “primary victim”. How do you think the boy will feel? Now that's class A sexism.

Is it the survivors of war who suffer more, or the dead?

• Some would say the dead of war do not suffer anymore, so they are not the victims.
• However the dead gave their lives, the ultimate price.

I find this statement by Hillary Clinton absolutely one way to look at war, that the survivors suffer onward for years. Because not only do dead men tell no tales, they don’t suffer, either. Once dead, buried and now pushing daisies, you don’t give a crap and have no pain, no worries, no problems. Whereas the survivors of war have to push onward and carry on.

However this statement bothers me as it seems like a political maneuver, an appeal to emotion, and a type of “Who wins the Victim Olympics?” ploy. I don’t think Hillary Clinton is wrong, I just think she is using the sentiment for effect.

To me it is more truthful to say, “War is hell. The survivors can be scarred mentally, physically and emotionally and the dead husbands, fathers and sons are missed and grieved for. Nobody really “wins.” The survivors are often damaged, the dead are gone.

Everybody is a victim when war is involved -The dead, the survivors, the men, the women, the children, the people who stayed home, those who went to fight, the families, the land, the cities, the economics.

War can blow everything in a society apart, soak it all in blood-stained ruins and bone fragments and serve it out in a million tiny pieces of sorrow for years to come.

I always thought this quote was pretty useless. Mr. Barrett contextualised it pretty well in his answer, which helped explain why it was said. But I still hate it.

Boys and girls, the biggest victim of war in my experience and opinion is children, not adult men or women.

• They suffer the consequences made by their parents.
• They lose their fathers, older brothers, mothers, sisters, countless other family to the results of war. Tell me the little boy who hears about his father being blown up is somehow less a victim than his mother.
• They are the ones who have to inevitably clean up the mess and move along. To bury the dead, rebuild their homes, and continue on as a society.
• The amount of unsupervised orphans created by wars is disgusting. Children being sent from their homes because everybody is dead and their home is destroyed, or for their own safety. A chld worrying about what they will eat next or where they will sleep. It happens to this day in war zones. Seeing a child wander the streets like that afraid for the future is terrible.
• Children die for something they usually don’t understand. They get shot, blown up, raped, and beaten by scared/angry combatants, civilian raiders, insurgents, etc. Sometimes not even that, they get shot simply because you don’t know if some asshole strapped a bomb to them, or pulled the pin for a grenade they have hidng behind their back.
• They ultimately end up fighting many of these wars. Child soldiers are a reality. They either are kidnapped from their homes African warlord style and brainwashed, they get pulled into the fighting at an adolescent age by a dying cause, or simply pick up a weapon because everywhere is a death zone.

I will always be of the opinion that children suffer the heaviest consequences; the injustice being that they usually don’t understand the whys or whats of the conflict that is hurting them.

I agree with Murphy, soldiers matter. We aren’t some numbers you can just throw everywhere. We have lives too, and I know for certain that 98–99% have the goal of continuing to live.

I do not mean to deride women suffering either. The amount of rape, mass slaughter, and kidnapping of women in many war zones roday is absolutely disgusting. Having to tell your child that daddy isn’t coming home in a western country has always been bad enough, and still sucks.

But I think we kid ourselves with that saying one adult of one sex or the other suffers the greatest. Our sins as adults still effect our children, and I think they suffer the deepest scars. Followed closely by those men in combat itself.

The primary victims of war are the men and women who are willing to lay down their lives in order to protect the people they care about at home. No ifs, ands, or buts. Some perish on the battlefield, some return physically or mentally broken. How someone like Hillary can say they are not primary victims is beyond me.

To not mention that the people who have died fighting for their nation are primary victims is an absolute insult to their sacrifice. One can only imagine the emotional distress one must feel when they find out a person they cherish, whether it be a lover, spouse, child, relative, or family member loses their life on the battlefield, but the fact is, you are alive and they are not. Women who have lost someone to war would be secondary victims, and that is not to be interpreted as a sexist statement. That is the very definition of a secondary victim.

I think this was a very irrational statement made by Hillary Clinton. For someone who has such a large influence in our society, it is shameful that statements like this are said without a second thought.

Does losing their husbands, fathers, and sons in combat make women the primary victims of war?

[WARNING, FOLLOWING ANSWER CONTAINS DISTURBING PICTURES AND VIDEOS. PROCEED WITH CAUTION]

No, women are not primary victims of war. The real primary victim are them, men who sacrifice themself to protect their country. All gave some, some gave all. Some died, some wounded, some mentally broken. Saying that women are the primary victim of war is a complete insult to the soldiers and cannot be forgiven.