I'm late to the party on this one but I can't let it go by unnoted.

The 'Chicken Hawk' slur
By Jeff Jacoby

"It's touching that you're so concerned about the military in Iraq," a reader in Wyoming e-mails in response to one of my columns on the war. ``But I have a suspicion you're a phony. So tell me, what's your combat record? Ever serve?"

You hear a fair amount of that from the antiwar crowd if, like me, you support a war but have never seen combat yourself. That makes you a ``chicken hawk" -- one of those, as Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, defending John Kerry from his critics, put it during the 2004 presidential campaign, who ``shriek like a hawk, but have the backbone of a chicken." Kerry himself often played that card. ``I'd like to know what it is Republicans who didn't serve in Vietnam have against those of us who did," he would sniff, casting himself as the victim of unmanly hypocrites who never wore the uniform, yet had the gall to criticize him, a decorated veteran, for his stance on the war.

"Chicken hawk" isn't an argument. It is a slur -- a dishonest and incoherent slur. ...

[Read the whole thing. Helmet tip: Michelle]

There's not a Dog in the pack who hasn't donned a uniform expecting to go to war, and most of us got there. Personally, I've known some Senior and Chief Master Sergeants who had a damned site more sense than most of our congresscritters. Does that mean we don't think the civilians should be in charge? Not to me it doesn't, and don't get the impression it does to the rest of the pack either.  (Bark back at me, Dogs.)

***

Ed Morrissey:

[...]

In fact, Jacoby doesn't quite go far enough in his denunciations. People who toss around that slur mindlessly endorse the idea of military autocracy over a broad representative democracy. Only in juntas do we see societies where military experience is a prerequisite in determining the policies of a nation. The same people who sling this insult are the first to turn around and call their political opponents "fascists", exposing an intellectual shallowness that colors the rest of their writings.

[...]

Contributed by Bill Faith on July 25, 2006 at 08:04 AM in Bill Faith, Current Affairs | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: Rurik

Following the chickenhawk logic,none of us war veterans have a moral right to speak either because we didn't actualy die for our country.
There you have it. Only the dead have a right to speak. And they, only if they haven't been dead long enough that their views are outdated, and become "the dead hand of the past".

Posted by: Rurik | Jul 25, 2006 8:36:36 AM

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