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Jewish World Review August 26, 2005 / 21 Av, 5765 The chicken-hawk charge By Rich Lowry
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Invariably, whenever columnists like myself write in support of
the Iraq War without having served in the military there, letters
flood in deriding us as "chicken hawks." How can writers support the
war without fighting in it themselves? these letter-writers ask,
although usually not so politely.
The Cindy Sheehan controversy has revived the long-running
chicken-hawk argument, since so much of her appeal has to do with
her unique standing to pronounce on the war given the sacrifice of
her son. Amazingly, after three years, President Bush critics still
write chicken-hawk letters as if they have arrived at something
clever and cutting, when they are really rehashing a
bottom-of-the-barrel ad hominem argument. The chicken-hawk line is
the "Oh, yeah? Your mama!" of anti-war arguments.
Its logic, if taken seriously, actually would boost the hawks.
If only members of the military — who are overwhelmingly
conservative — were considered competent to decide the nation's
posture on matters of war and peace, we would have an even more
forward-leaning foreign policy. I'm comfortable letting the 82nd
Airborne decide what we do about anti-American rogue states. Are
opponents of the war? I'm guessing that even if you let only mothers
of fallen soldiers in Iraq direct our Iraq policy, the result would
be stay-the-course rather than the immediate pullout favored by
Sheehan.
The chicken-hawk argument is nakedly partisan. During the Kosovo
War waged by Bill Clinton and supported by Democrats in 1999, a cry
didn't go up from the left that no one could support the war unless
they were willing to strap themselves into B-2 bombers for the
33-hour ride from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to Belgrade
and back to degrade Serbian infrastructure.
By the same token, we could say to proponents of leaving Saddam
Hussein in power: "That's an illegitimate position unless you
yourself are willing to move to Tikrit to live for the duration of
Saddam's regime." Or to supporters of "containing" Saddam: "You're a
hypocrite until you go help patrol the no-fly zone." Or to advocates
of inspections: "You can't support them unless you don a baby-blue
cap and sniff around his suspected chemical-weapons sites yourself."
Why should this line of argument be limited to Iraq? "You think
we should help fight AIDS in Africa? Well, go work in a clinic in
Lavumisa, Swaziland." "You oppose land mines? Go clear them from the
Korean DMZ." "You think there should be a new U.N. protocol in favor
of [insert fashionable cause here]? Then spend interminable hours
helping negotiate it yourself." "Support jobless benefits? Become a
clerk at an unemployment office."
The chicken-hawk argument is, of course, made in bad faith. If
anyone should be — and usually has been — in favor of rigorous
civilian control of the military, it is the left. Since when do
liberals favor government on the model of Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany,
with the military running amok since civilians don't have the
standing to direct it? Maybe Harry Truman was wrong to fire Douglas
MacArthur after all. Maybe no one should have contradicted Curtis
LeMay when he offered to bomb North Vietnam back into the Stone Age.
The Iraq War was arrived at through the democratic deliberation
of the American public, who — this is how it works — get to decide
all sort of questions, even if they are not experts or don't have
personal experience with whatever is at issue. The anti-war movement
would have a better chance of convincing the public of its position
if it weren't so fond of arguments that are juvenile, opportunistic
and irrelevant.
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© 2005 King Features Syndicate |
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