LETTER TO EDITOR: Palin and military women

My liberal friends have me confused again. Some are saying that Gov. Sarah Palin’s first responsibility is to her family and that she should not be running for vice president. What is confusing me is that my same friends have been fighting for years to get women to serve in combat and aboard ships in the military.

Now, many brave women are serving in the U.S. military in combat and in sea-duty military units. More than 100 courageous military women have died in Iraq since the war started. Our women in the military must leave their families for months, not just days at a time. I have no idea how many of the 100 women who were killed had children. Nor do I have any idea how many of them were single moms.

It is my understanding that there are no restrictions on whether military women have children. Like Mrs. Palin’s family, some of those military families probably have children with challenges. To the best of my knowledge, no woman or man is allowed to take along his or her children on ships or during deployment to war zones.

As the past two weeks have shown, life will not be easy for Mrs. Palin’s family if she becomes the next vice president and her family moves into a fishbowl.

However, if you compare what Mrs. Palin has to face with what our military families have to face, there is no comparison. The only attacks Mrs. Palin will be facing will be nasty comments from the media and the political left. (So far she has gutted and cleaned all her critics.)

Mrs. Palin will be receiving domestic help our military mothers can only dream about. Also, her husband, Todd Palin, will become a stay-at-home dad. (I do not envy him giving up his great Alaskan lifestyle for life in the Washington fishbowl.)

So, I ask my liberal friends: Can you really condemn Mrs. Palin for seeking the office of vice president and still support deploying U.S. military women away from their families?

RILEY MAYHALL

Germantown