The inimitible Quentin Riggins informs me that we've been "called out" by certain forces in the South Dakota blogosphere as being "chicken hawks" because we, generally speaking, support the war in Iraq but have not and do not serve in the military. I will defer to a great man of pure brilliance, Michael Kelly, to answer the charge. As readers may know, Kelly was a reporter/columnist for the Washington Post who lost his life in Iraq as an "imbedded" reporter. Kelly himself supported the war, although he had never served in the military. You can read his whole column on the subject here. Here, I think, is the pertinent part:
So it is with "chicken hawk." Its power lies in the simplicity that comes with being completely wrong. The central implication here is that only men who have professionally endured war have the moral standing and the experiential authority to advocate war. That is, in this country at least, a radical and ahistorical view. The Founders, who knew quite well the dangers of a military class supreme, were clear in their conviction that the judgment of professional warmakers must be subordinated to the command of ignorant amateurs -- civilian leaders who were in turn subordinated to the command of civilian voters. Such has given us the leadership in war of such notable "chicken hawks" as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Further, the inescapable logic of "chicken hawk"-calling is that only military men have standing to pronounce in any way on war -- to advocate it or to advocate against it. The decision not to go to war involves exactly the same issues of experiential and moral authority as does the decision to go to war. If a past of soldiering is required for one, it is required for the other. Chicken doves have no more standing than "chicken hawks." We must leave all the decisions to the generals and the veterans.
If those who have not served in the military have no right to call a war just, do those who have not served have any moral standing to say a war is unjust? Do I need to point out that the idea that only military veterans have the right to speak to the issues of the day, since they have put their life on the line, is the argument of Robert Heinlein's proto-fascist Starship Troopers. Perhaps that is not the company that the anti-war folks want to keep. FDR, of course, never served in the military, but was a great war president. Perhaps we should deride him as a chick hawk. Lincoln only had modest experience in the Black Hawk War of 1832. He would later make fun of his modest service in a speech supporting Zachary Taylor in 1848 against Lewis Cass of Michigan. Lincoln joked that he had lost alot of blood in the war, all of it to mosquitoes. So I guess Lincoln, who prosecuted the bloodiest war in American history, was also a chicken hawk. If one has arguments against the war, make them. The chicken hawk argument is an ad hominem, which, as we all know, is a kind of logical fallacy.
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