Pretty amusing:
PASSAIC, NJ (Rooters)
Reader Interactions
18Comments
Comments are closed.
Trackbacks
-
Chickenhawk
I think I understand John Cole’s and others’ objection to the chickenhawk meme. But I don’t think they get the underlying meaning behind it, and I think that how our side is talking about it helps too much….
Jon H
I assume this is a gag, but…
Shawn
Rooters News Service is great with those public interest stories. AP should strive to be so good. (you had me til the last sentence!)
Axien
Damn, I was going to congratulate him, but then it turned out to be satire. Back to lurking for me then.
demimondian
What this shows is the value of framing. The chickenhawk meme isn’t effective if you can get it to be framed as “if you haven’t fought, then you can’t comment”. Yes, that’s how the Right has used veteran status over the years, but that’s not the basis of the newer meme.
Why is a College Republican’s life worth any more than that of a kid from a working class suburb of Seattle? Is he or she smarter? Probably not. Harder working? Possibly, but not very likely. Richer, and whiter? Errr…yes. But worth more? No.
The chickenhawk meme is based on the fact that a heck of a lot of rich white kids dodge service. It’s bad enough if they oppose military action at all, but it’s far worse for someone to say that they have “other priorities”. Most people have other priorities than dying.
Compuglobalhypermeganet
Of course, there are about 30 reasons why the chickenhawk meme is retar– well, let’s just say, rhetorically arid. I haven’t heard anyone mention this one, though.
Will the lefties even attempt to be intellectually honest enough for just one second to admit that supporting the war doesn’t mean that the war must be the biggest motivation in your entire life? It’s prima facie silly and logically wacky to suggest that, if a person thinks that we are doing the right thing in Iraq, then they MUST treat that single issue as the driving force in all their life decisions. War supporters must leave their schools, families and jobs because they like what Bush is doing for Iraq, or their views are meaningless, or worse, hypocritical? Nonsense. If I support drilling ANWR, do I have to leave my family to go drill for oil in Alaska to validate my opinion? If I’m a law-and-order guy, do I have to quit my job to join the cops? If I want more liberty and less censorship, must I leave my family and go to Chatsworth, Cah-lee-foo-awn-yah, and launch my prOn career? Hmmmmmmmmmmm. I DO loves me some liberty…
Anyway, I’m going to be a busy guy, I guess, because I care about a LOT of issues.
But I guess this ad hominem farce is what passes for liberal “thought” these days — no ideas, no logic, no discussion of issues — just jerking at the knees so hard that they all need ACL surgery.
smijer
I think I understand John’s and others’ objection to the chickenhawk meme. But I don’t think they get the underlying meaning behind it, and I think that how our side is talking about it helps too much.
First thing is this – and we are all too often not clear about this – you don’t have to fight the war to support it. That’s not what the CH meme should be about. You can support the war in plenty of ways. You can support the war, completely legitimately, with almost no effort or sacrifice. That’s how I support a lot of things. I like what NASA does. You could say I support it. I would be more likely to vote for a candidate who promises to fund NASA than one who doesn’t. No effort required. I might mention it casually in a conversation with a friend or family member, or as a disclaimer before I criticize some aspect of what NASA does that I don’t like. The only sacrifices I expect to make on behalf of NASA’s mission are whatever tradeoffs on other issues I make if I choose the pro-NASA candidate, whatever faults of NASA I must live with that I don’t have the clout to address, and despite which I choose to support them anyway, and whatever extra taxes I have to pay to help keep them on the budget. If NASA ever became a very controversial thing or demanded large sacrifices of many, I might have to choose to lower the pro-NASA stance on my priority list or to become much better acquainted with the value and the cost of their mission to myself and to others.
Had I been a more hawkish sort, I could conceivably have supported the war in Iraq in much the same way. As a voter who kept my opinions fairly close to my chest, I could have voted for Bush in 2004, and had friendly discussions where I privately shared my feelings about the Iraq war effort. But even that level of support would have made me feel an obligation to understand the costs and risks of the war much better than the costs and risks of NASA as it stands now. After all, if my vote counts, and someone is going to bear the cost – in lives, not pennies extra on my tax bill, if I get my way, I should certainly face that fact head on, and do my best to be as educated as possible about my position and its consequences.
If, as some apparently do, I was convinced that the Iraq war was a moral necessity, and required more active support, then my obligation would increase proportionately. If I felt it so important that I felt I would be doing a good service to help drum up political support for the war – or (as some have done) practically demand it, calling others weak appeasers or traitors for opposing it… well, then my obligation to making personal sacrifices on behalf of the war effort would be multiplied. If the war is so important and urgent that I feel I must strive to help bring it about, then I should not ask others to make all of the sacrifices. At the very least, I should be willing to see my tax bill go up substantially. And, if the results of the war I treated as such a moral imperative were that there were not enough others who were already willing to sacrifice and fight it, and if I were fit to do it, I should be willing to join. If I’m an entertainer, I should be willing to take my show on the road, and share the risk with the troops to help keep up their morale – not just on Turkee day either ;-).
All this doesn’t really cut to the heart of why “we” can’t give up the chickenhawk meme, though… because the real issue is a visceral, emotional one. I get angry when I see people sitting on the sidelines, unwilling to make the slightest sacrifice, calling vociferously, and with every effort at being convincing, using terms like “moral imperative”, for the sacrifice of tens or hundreds of thousands of others – lives, limbs, and whatever else, volunteer military or innocent civilian either way, to accomplish the noble task of completing this morally imperative mission. That emotion carries much further when the war we are talking about is done at our own option, on our own timetable, and without every effort for a peacable alternative. The greatest sacrifice someone like GWB could have made (aside from serving in combat 30 years ago, or asking his daughters to do so now) would have been to give every opportunity to the weapons inspectors to verify or dispute the intelligence he was acting on, and to give the military as much planning and support as possible to be sure that enough troops were deployed for any reasonable eventuality, that they were properly equipped, and that the post-invasion peace could be properly secured. What would this sacrifice? It would sacrifice the certainty of war. It would leave open the possibility that the weapons inspectors would leave Iraq satisfied and that public support for invasion would wane when no credible evidence of WMD was found. It would leave open the possibility that Americans, having the best possible understanding of the situation, would not support the war. For someone who wanted war, this was an impossible sacrifice to make. Bush was too afraid of the possibility that Americans wouldn’t support an invasion for him to make that sacrifice. Doing it the way he did, from the safety of the Oval Office, makes him a bona-fide chicken hawk. Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and many others helped so much in the propaganda campaign from the safety of their studios. They are chickenhawks. Preachers and pundits did more than their part (apologies to Rush) to make this war – allowing others to make the real sacrifices… not even having to worry about an extra few dollars in taxes. They are chickenhawks. On what basis should we take their “moral imperatives” seriously?
Sorry so long… but since it is, I’m going to cross-post to the old home page.
mac Buckets
That’s a relief, becuase it certainly isn’t a logical one.
Groan. Asking his daughters? Seriously, does the term “volunteer army” ring a bell? You and Mikey Moore must be the only two people alive who think that you can “send your kids to war” in America. At least MM was only grandstanding for the docu-tainment of his half-alert thralls — you seem to believe it for real.
12 years, 16 Resolutions, 10 months trying to get the UN to pass a 17th Resolution that would’ve stopped the war, direct appeals to Saddam which would’ve stopped the war, 9 international intel agencies and Clinton’s CIA Director telling them that Saddam had unaccounted-for WMD and/or WMD stockpiles. That doesn’t sound much like a “mad rush to unnecessary war” to me. Had 9/11 not happened, I’m sure the timetable would’ve been even more extended, but we’ll never know.
Ooooooooo. You had a fair-to-compelling post there, IMHO, until you went for one of the few clich
Kimmitt
Because I share your opinion on the latter question, I will live my entire life, however long I am granted, and I will never ever be a Republican.
toastah
It appears the chickenhawk comments have struck a nerve with some of the more hypocritical young goper’s. Following the steps of your great leader, you can always come up with some bizarro logic for why it’s absurd for you to have to consider military service. You say that just because you support a war doesn’t mean you enlist but look at the latest poll numbers, look at the army’s recruitment numbers, people DON’T support this war, and they DON’T believe it’s worth fighting for. If however you dedicated repubs still have faith in this horrific experiment why don’t you do as your commander-in-chief has pleaded and enlist?
Tony in C-bus
Hey macBuckets – Clinton would actually be the 5th biggest chicken hawk, right behind Bush, Cheney, Rove and YOU.
As an aside, equating 12 years of peaceful appeals to the Bush administration was laughable.
P.S. Been to Washington to protest. SIGN UP or SHUT UP
smijer
mac Buckets,
It’s hard to take your response seriously when you boil down my entire explanation to sum it up with reference to a caveat that I included in parentheses.
Whether or not you believe Bush would have started a war when the American people were against it, there is no doubt that it would have been a sacrifice for him to take the time to check his evidence, make a case based on the best available facts, and to properly prepare for the invasion and the possibilities of its aftermath, knowing that he risked allowing American sentiment to cool. Had he done those things, and Americans had decided they weren’t ready for a war based on unsubstantiable evidence about WMDs, he would have had to choose between abandoning his idea for war, or continuing with it and paying a huge political price that could conceivably cost him an election. He was unwilling to make that sacrifice.
You know, it would be easier to take your response seriously if you had chosen to compare the current war in Iraq with Kosovo – a war that Clinton chose for the U.S. There’s hardly a comparison between strategic airstrikes of military installations and a full scale invasion which risks life and limb of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Clinton’s strategic airstrikes were among the best alternatives to all-out war, and they were apparently effective.
You know, there are both logical and emotional elements to my point. The logical point is that, when the stakes are so high, consideration of one’s own contribution and potential sacrifice will allow potential war supporters to understand the costs of the war, and make a better and more informed decision about how to react to the possibility of an invasion.
The emotional side is about values. According to my values, it is cowardly and craven for a person to demand the sacrifices of life and limb for hundreds of thousands of others to a cause for which they are unwilling to sacrifice anything.
Yes, I supported the action in Afghanistan. I didn’t demand it. I didn’t try to drown opposition to it with pro-war cheerleading. But, I thought it was the right thing to do. But, if I was going to be a vocal enabler of that action – if I was going to try to drum up political support for it against those who asked us to consider the cost, then I would have felt an obligation to find a way to help share the sacrifices. Even as it was, with my support being kept a personal thing, if Uncle Sam was unable to support the occupation because of a troop shortage, I would have to give serious consideration to answering the call. If opponents of the action in Afghanistan asked me why I wasn’t there already… I would have to recognize their point and start asking my self seriously what I am willing to give up to have the security of knowing that Afghanistan was no longer harboring terrorists and their training camps. I certainly wouldn’t start out by trying to identify the least little straw of “hypocrisy” I could find in those opponent’s point of view.
mac Buckets
Yeah, I remember when I ordered military strikes abroad after I dodged the draft… oh, wait, that wasn’t me. Seriously, is “No, you are!” the best you’ve got? The intellectual depth of the lefties never ceases to amaze. Call me when you need help getting out of the sandbox.
LGM
MacNuggets is a hoot. But GOPstapo agent always are. I bet he even wears an eye patch and a long black leather coat at his Mac when conducting on-line special ops. He saw it in the first Indiana Jones movie. The Chickenhawk label and meme is really doing them in, because it’s true. They have no way to spin out of it. FDR is the biggest chickenhawk ever, a sickly child, like Teddy, in his youth, and in a wheelchair in 1921, and his work to expand the Navy as Wilson’s Secretary of the Navy, in the face of serious opposition from pacifists in Wilson’s administration, like Secretary of State William Jenning Bryan, certainly means he served his country. All four of his sons were officers in World War II and were decorated, on merit, for bravery. I don’t have to remind MacNuggets about Teddy, do I. He would be a Democrat today, and still kick your chicken MacNugget ass, nugget. How many decorated warriors in your family, Chicken MacNugget? Clinton had more balls than Bush. He was opposed to the war, avoided the draft, and never been a pussy about admitting it. He has the strength of his convictions, unlike that MacNugget, Bush. He did what he did as Preznit, and it would be fine with you if he did it as a Republican. Thing is, MacNugget, Clinton was the best Republican Preznit, you’ve had since Eisenhower. Not sure what the others have been. Disasters? Except for Carter, who was a Democrat, but no Chickenhawk.
mac Buckets
And so begins the insane ranting of someone clearly not in touch with recent election results…
We should all be so “sickly”, spending our youth rowing, riding, and engaging in the sporting life of the wealthy.
Teddy would be a Democrat? Sorry, he’s not gay, black, OR Jewish (joke). It’s far more likely that FDR would be a Republican today. Two words: internment camps.
I guess you missed the part where I said I agreed with Clinton about everything I mentioned, but that’s OK. You missed A LOT of parts. Rant on.
Sojourner
Check out the recent polls.
mac Buckets
The chickenhawk nonsense started LONG before the election. Did you hear who won that thing?
Are you saying that it’s only now having effects, even though it’s been around for 18 months? I see no evidence of that.
Most Americans see right through the dumb ad hominem rhetoric and trust the American VOLUNTEER army to win the peace like they won the war.
Sojourner
The chickenhawk stuff is picking up steam as the anger of the American public over this war grows. That’s pretty clear from the polls. Hang on to your hat!