"People who want to see higher levees and walls around New Orleans should go down there and build them themselves!"
"You want more hospital ships off the Gulf coast right now to treat the poor and displaced? Why don't you go down to the Navy recruiter and sign your sorry ass up?"
Are we still playing the "chickenhawk" game, or are we tired of that one yet? Let's keep playing for one more round, just long enough to give the purveyors of that fallacy one more chance to recognize how the ball looks in the other court.
The "chickenhawk meme" is a rhetorical stick in the spokes that has been flung at every supporter of the war to overthrow Saddam and establish a free Iraq. It's supposed to immediately shut us all up.
It usually looks something like this:This war is a waste of American lives, so if you think it's right, you should be the one to fight it. Go enlist or shut up.It's been flung at old ladies and even at war veterans (e.g. Baldilocks) who are told to re-enlist. It's been exposed as a dangerous and illogical trick again and again, but those who are wedded to it won't let it go. It is the rhetorical arm of the anti-war left's cry to bring back the draft, and thus establish a perfect equivalence with Vietnam.
Personally, I think it also ties in with the anti-war left's new focus on military recruiters as the sum of all evil. So many of the men and women who have volunteered for military service in recent years, or who are otherwise doing splendid work in Iraq, are children of anti-Vietnam War protesters of 35 years ago who still haven't gotten over their allergy to anything patriotic or duty-bound. Naturally the parents' wrath flows out in certain predictable channels.
So let's keep playing chickenhawk; let's apply it to another situation. "Don't advocate government actions that will involve sacrifice unless you're also putting yourself directly in the place of those who may be asked to sacrifice."
Don't call for more government action to help the poor people stranded in New Orleans unless you drove down there as soon as you heard the news and personally waded through the sewage and took some of them out of the Superdome and into your home. (Not impossible, some college kids did it).
Don't call for better canal walls and levees in New Orleans unless you are willing to take two years and go down there personally and build them.
Don't call for a more aggressive FEMA unless you've put in a job application there. Don't call for a quicker and more effective use of U.S. military resources in the disaster zone unless you've spent the last two years encouraging healthy young men and women to enlist, and supporting the Defense Department budget.
Looks stupid to me, too, but put up or shut up, chickenbeaver! Hey, your game, not mine.
In other news, Winds of Change today announced their planned merger with The Onion...
As a Canadian, I'm officially offended by the term "Chickenbeaver." Plus, there are other associations we won't get into here.
I hereby propose the politically correct and morally neutral term: "Flightless avian tertrapods," or FATs for short. Though I warn you, the Tetrapod Liberation Front might have a word...
We did consider a merger with the Onion, but I talked to Scrappleface a while back and he complained at length about the difficulty of remaining more ridiculous than the prevailing poliitical dialogue. The "Chickenhawk" charge (in which supposed liberals get to sound like junta fascists for a day) being an excellent example.
After considering his words and looking around for bit, therefore, we gave the idea up. Way too difficult.
We'll stick to the easy stuff instead, like al-Qaeda's order of battle and operating strategies, nuclear proliferation dynamics, etc.
oh, fer f***'s sake. Last time I was too intellectual, too ivory-towerish; and now I'm too low-brow and flippant. You people are impossible to please.
We did consider a merger with the Onion
WE ARE BORG, I mean WOC, you will be assimilated.
Resistance is futile – you will be assimilated.
Hitchens did a better job on this issue. You were not humourous either.
C. - it's impossible to please all of the people, all of the time.
It's hard enough just to stay true to the best in yourself.
The "Chickenhawk" charge (in which supposed liberals get to sound like junta fascists for a day) being an excellent example.
So, so true.
Yet there are chickenhawks and chickenhawks. Draft-dodgers (eg. Dubya, Clinton, Cheney, Rush) who become pro-war politicos should be reserved as a seperate category from those who support or advocate war and have not served outside of a draft.
SAO -- Supporting a war is not the same as supporting a draft. You'd be on solid ground if any of the names you mentioned supported involuntary conscription, but they don't (AFAIK), so it's not really relevant.
What's really funny is that movie, Groundhog Day, where every morning you wake up and you have to reargue the Vietnam War, again and again and again and again . . .
Matt-- In the case of Vietnam, supporting the war was the same as supporting the draft.
Yes, but I thought we were talking about Iraq. If they were also pro-Vietnam then that would indeed be a whole assload of hypocrisy (I'm not aware of any of their positions on it), but they can still support wars carried out by a voluntary military.
I does not matter whether or not they were or weren't "pro-Vietnam." The war and it's merits do not matter particularly.
In varying degrees they all shirked their duties to their country during a time of war. Now they emphasize this same duty in others, which is hypocrisy (although in Bush's case, I would hesitate to call it an "assload," No, I'd save that for Rush or Clinton if "Desert Fox" had blossomed into the full-blown conflict he no-doubt yearned for).
Does this confer some sort of perpetual shame and indignation that should forever confine our less-than-honourable commanders in chiefs to pacifism? Certainly not, but hopefully it should discourage them from prancing around in flight suits on carrier-decks or blithly proclaiming "bring it on!"
"Chickenhawk" has become the leftwing equivalent of "love it or leave it." Andf for the record, the latter sentiment, crude and silly as it was, has not been wholly abandoned. Not that I'd expect any sort of exposition on rightwing tendencies here, but "Chickenbeavers" is a start.
Can't we make some kind of a deal here? We can send military recruiters to Harvard and Columbia to round up a bunch of chickenhawks, and the chickenbeavers can donate Cindy Sheehan's tour bus to the relief effort.
On second thought, no dice. That old bastard Karl Rove will never agree to let us have Cindy's bus. He has big plans for it.
SAO,
You can make certain statements as often as you want, but repetition will not make them true.
"Draft-dodgers" as a common derogatory term does not strictly speaking apply to any of the four leaders you name: Bush, Clinton, Cheney, or Rush.
Of the four, George Bush is the least like the other three, who obtained draft deferments due to college. In that sense they "dodged" the draft, just as good preventive dental hygiene "dodges" cavities. (Yes, but think of all those poor people who didn't have access to good dental care. Point taken.)
George Bush, on the other hand, volunteered to join the National Guard. Noit that the people who make this argument care or want to correctly report in context, but among the many ways young people during Vietnam could improve their chances of avoiding Vietnam, or at least the risk of death, was to coopt any eventual draft by volunteering for service.
Some joined the Navy. Pretty safe choice, but involved sea deployments, boredom, and some risk. Air Force, again, fairly safe except maybe for pilots and crews, depending on type of aircraft. Training was as dangerous or more dangerous than actual duty.
National Guard could sometimes save you from overseas deployment, but not always; many Guard units were activated and sent to Vietnam.
George Bush ut int nearly two full years of Pilot training. The plane he was flying was of a type that was not typically used in Vietnam, but it had been. Flying the plane was more risky than most.
As with many legitimate, legal, and quite honorable choices during Vietnam, every choice involved degrees of risk, commitment, or certainty of avoiding least preferred outcomes.
For those opposed to the war themselves to describe these now as "draft dodging," is the height of hypocrisy and downright dishonesty. The charge of "Chicken Hawks?"
That's BS lefty rhetoric from some old and faded Marxist textbook, and just as discredited.
We are fighting an evil completely depraved that has no regard for human life at all. Those that think the fight is illusory, or that Iraq wasn't prepared to take up or wasn't already active in that fight have their heads deep in the sand (or elsewhere anatomical).
Chicken, as in not willing to fight? Who would those people be, those who support the war, or those make up everfy excuse under the sun why the war shouldn't be fought?
Callimachus,
Forget the critics. I love the post. You're a witty and funny guy. I've been trying to figure out an angle to work in how the "ChickenHawk" spewers could be compared with our leadership and military in this case, and you have done it so well, I will give up trying. Well done. Keep it up.
And DadManly, I appreciate your argument regarding who supports the war and who is a draft dodger. Well done, Top SGT. God Bless You and your men, and Press On. To Victory.
Subsunk
SAO,
"In varying degrees they all shirked their duties to their country during a time of war."
I reject that entirely. Draft dodging is not shirking any "duty" because nobody has the right to force you into indentured servitude. Supporting wars waged by a voluntary military is morally, qualitatively different from supporting wars waged by an involuntary one. Untill and unless any of them come out in support of a draft, there's no there there.