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~~Chickenhawk Vs. Chicken Little~~
Many Iraq Hawks Have Never Seen Military Service.
By: Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com staff writer.
Friday, September 6, 2002.
Perhaps it was only a matter of time. Given the way the military service issue dogged Bill Clinton throughout his presidency, it was inevitable that similar criticisms would be raised about President Bush and others in his administration.
For months, liberal Web sites and blogs have been buzzing about 'chickenhawks' in the Bush administration and among his supporters in Congress.
The term, in this instance anyway, refers to hawkish politicians who push war but never actually served in one.
It can refer to Republicans or Democrats. Numerous Web sites are devoting space to discussing the idea that the nation's most persistent voices in support of military attack on Iraq — Bush (who served with the Air National Guard in Houston during Vietnam,) Vice President Cheney, Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, among others — are people who never served in Vietnam or saw first hand the carnage that war produces.
Relegated to the fringes of the political debate for most of the year, this topic — fueled by escalating talk of war with Iraq — has picked up steam in recent weeks, with Newsweek, among others, examining the fissures within the GOP under the headline, 'Hawks, Doves and Dubya.'
The issue was not picked up by the mainstream press until some prominent GOP politicos began commenting on it.
In an interview with Newsweek, conservative Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said, 'It is interesting to me that many of those who want to rush this country into war and think it would be so quick and easy don't know anything about war.'
'They come at it from an intellectual perspective versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off. I try to speak for those ghosts of the past a little bit,' added Hagel, a Vietnam War Army infantryman with two Purple Hearts.
A few weeks ago, the Tampa Tribune reported on comments made by retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, the White House's special envoy to the Middle East, to the Economic Club of Florida in Tallahassee.
Zinni noted that the voices most urging caution on Iraq were people who knew war first hand, former generals Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft and Norman Schwarzkopf.
'It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way,' Zinni said. 'And all the others who have never fired a shot and are hot to go to war see it another way.'
Steve Fowle, the editor and publisher of the independent bimonthly New Hampshire Gazette, tracks the issue and keeps a compendium of hawkish politicians, media personalities and government bureaucrats called the 'Chickenhawk Database.' Fowle, a Vietnam veteran who said he is a registered independent, created the Web site earlier this year on a lark, after chatting with fellow veterans who developed a theory that war talk was being dominated in Washington by people who never served in the military.
'I sat down and did Google searches on people that I thought were conspicuously vocal on the subject, and I suspected didn't have military service,' said Fowle, arguing that his theory proved true. The list he came up with includes people who 'think war is the solution for whatever problem we've got.
Yet there's a conspicuous absence there in the late 1960s, of service among a lot of middle-aged guys now who tend to think war is fact the answer to every problem we've got.'
Fowle says he's received 120,000 visitors to the site since it went up on March 17. Daily visits to the Web page were less than 500 for much of the year, but in recent weeks, daily visits have spiked to between 6,000 and 7,000, 'a big number for a Web site that doesn't have much else to offer.' Fowle's database has received a lot of play also in far-flung places as Russia and Jordan, where reporters have been referencing it.
In an interview yesterday, Woody Powell, the national administrator of Veterans for Peace, echoed that point of view.
'I think if they had had the sobering experience of war — they don't even have to have been in combat, but if they had just walked around and looked at the bodies one time — they might have a little more perspective on the decisions that they are making,' said Powell, a veteran of the Korean war, who said he wasn't particularly fond of President Clinton — who 'fired missiles to distract' from his personal scandals. 'If they haven't smelled the scent of napalm, if they haven't heard the bullets going by them, they just really aren't acquainted with what they're dealing with in a visceral sense. They need to smell it, and it doesn't smell good.'
There are two sides to the argument, though. In an opinion column in The Washington Post Thursday, John Hopkins professor Eliot A. Cohen, cautions, among other things, against focusing more attention on generals than on policy makers and politicians elected to make decisions about war.
'The first variant is that the generals are all against war, and if they are, they must be right – particularly if their opponents are civilians who have not served. Does the same work in reverse? If the generals and admirals favored a preemptive attack on Cuba in 1962 – as many did – were they right then because they were flag officers? Of course not. The expertise of generals lies chiefly in the operational, not the strategic, sphere – how to wage war, not whether it should be fought.'
Former Republican National Committee communications director Cliff May, who now works at the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan anti-terrorism think tank, called the 'chickenhawk' theory a 'wrong and rather cheap argument. In the United States, we have civilian control of the military and that's probably a good idea. If you make the case that unless you have served you have no standing on this issue, then you could also argue that if you're not a police officer you have no standing no law enforcement issues. . . .
'Some of the best leaders we've had had little or no military experience: Abraham Lincoln comes to mind. If all the generals were in favor of a war does that mean we should necessarily engage? I don't think so. I think the debate over Iraq is not whether or not we should fight Saddam, but if we have to do it, are we better off doing it now or later. Or are we better off doing it before or after he has weapons of mass destruction. I don't think it's very fair argument to say stand down unless you have worn a uniform.'
Of course, some will dismiss the chickenhawk argument as the braying of whiny peaceniks, liberals and wimps. On the flip side of the 'Chickenhawk' debate is the 'Chicken Little' discussion – a reference to those afraid to use military force even when there is a strong reason to do so.
Ken Adelman, former U.N. ambassador and arms control director under President Reagan, wrote recently on the Fox News Web site:
'Many critics now focus on the administration's plans to rid the world of its No. 1 threat — the vile regime of Saddam Hussein. Cries are now being made that liberating Iraq would infuriate our closest allies, ignite that volatile Arab street, prove militarily daunting (if not over-stretching), and spark worldwide resentment, if not universal condemnation. They instead advocate 'more responsible' diplomatic and economic moves — presumably a diplomatic demarche or address to the U.N. General Assembly that would sorely embarrass Saddam, a loosening of economic sanctions to bring out his long-hidden statesmanship, or international inspectors to assure his responsible behavior.
Sometimes I wonder how many times such critics can resort to the same fear-mongering, which has proved wrong time and again, without losing their credibility. Yet learning curves in Washington, or on public policy generally, can be remarkably flat.'
Remarkably, the real debate over Iraq has not been so much between conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats as it has been between factions of the GOP, the old school guys — like Scowcroft, James Baker and Henry Kissinger vs. the neoconservatives (Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney, et al.)
Indeed until this week, Democrats have been mostly content to let Republicans fight it out among themselves.
In an interview this week, Sen John Kerry (D-Mass.), a highly decorated Naval officer in Vietnam, resisted the urge to take shots at decision makers who never served in the military. While he said it was 'interesting' that many of those clamoring for War with Iraq had not served, he stopped short of endorsing Hagel's comments.
'Certainly my experience affects what I do and my thinking,' Kerry said. 'But I'm not going to run around and point fingers at people who didn't serve. I do think it's a value, it's important and it can help you be aware of the consequences that may come to bear.
The consequences of your decisions of war are important, and having served helps you make that assessment.' But at the same time, he said he was not eager to revive the divisive Vietnam-era debates about the value of fighting in wars.
¿ 2002 Washington Post Newsweek Interactive
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Yasser, it's a whole new story when you have to put your hide at risk for your 'high' principals. As we see the CHICKEN HAWKS in the DIM BULB administration growling and snarling at Saddam Hussein; I just wonder how many of these low life draft dodger 'Cabrones' would take an M-16 and head out into the Iraqi desert in pursuit of justice and democracy for the people of Iraq.
~TheAZCowBoy~
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