Chickenhawk (politics)

For other uses, see Chickenhawk (disambiguation)

Chickenhawk is an epithet used in United States politics to criticize a politician, bureaucrat, or commentator who votes for war, supports war, commands a war, or develops war policy, but has not personally served in the military. Generally, it is not a label applied to essentially "dovish" leaders who support defensive wars, "humanitarian interventions," or UN operations.

The term is generally used in the ad hominem circumstantial context: since a supposed "chickenhawk" has not served in war, the implication is that the person is morally ill-equipped to support a war. On the contrary, implication is that any person who has served in a war will be less likely to support a war.

Contents

1 Origin 2 Political use 3 Chickenhawk counterarguments 4 External links

Origin

Chickenhawk is a compound of "chicken" as in "coward" and "hawk" as in "pro-war," thus a chickenhawk is someone who is in favor of a war as long as someone else does the fighting and dying. While the term may have been used as early as the WWII era, its use was revived circa 1992 in a newsgroup post and later in the printed media on November 15, 2000 article by journalist Richard Roeper in the Chicago Sun-Times. He criticised what, in his opinion, was George W. Bush's "chickenhawk stance on the Vietnam War." The term may have been used before that date during campaigning for the 2000 U.S. Presidential election—opponents of Dick Cheney, who never served in the United States armed forces, were upset by his criticism of the Clinton Administration's military policies. (Ironically, President Clinton also did not serve).

The term "chickenhawk" has also been used for decades in the homosexual community to refer to older gay men who cruise for very young gay men or gay boys. Given that it has a military and a homosexual context, when it is used to label non-veteran advocates of military action it has the capacity to be a vicious double entendre.

Previously, the term "war wimp" was used, most notably by former Congressman Andrew Jacobs (Democrat–Indiana), a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and the Korean War, who labeled whom he saw as "overzealous" supporters of the Cold War as "war wimps," if they had not served in the Korean War or the Vietnam War.[1] (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/vandeerlin/20020904-9999_1e4deerlin.html)

The association between chickenhawks and war may be related to the author Robert Mason's 1983 bestselling autobiography, Chickenhawk ISBN 0140072187, about his wartime service in Vietnam during which he flew 1,000 helicopter missions. Mason published a sequel in 1993, Chickenhawk: Back in the World ISBN 0670848352, covering his difficult return to civilian life.

Although he did not use the word "chickenhawk", Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman noted the phenomenon in his time:

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.

Political use

The term highlights that some of those who take interventionist (or militarist) policy positions have not themselves served in combat, or have used influence to avoid military service. Many politicians from the Baby Boomer generation, who avoided serving in Vietnam have faced this label.

The term entered popular vocabulary during the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which many of the most prominent supporters of war had no history of uniformed military service. Among those criticized included prominent neoconservatives and members of the Bush Administration:

• Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense under President George H. W. Bush, during which time he directed Operation Just Cause in Panama and Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, 1975–1977 and 2001–present (even though Rumsfeld was a naval aviator during the 1950s)
• United States Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
• Douglas Feith, member of Ronald Reagan's National Security Council and former deputy of to Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Richard Perle
• Right-wing radio entertainer Rush Limbaugh

Chickenhawk counterarguments

War supporters who have not served in the military, primarily but not exclusively American Conservatives and neoconservatives, have made a number of counterarguments that, they claim, expose fallacies in the chickenhawk argument. Among these points are

• The Founding Fathers explicitly designed the government of the United States of America so that the military would be subordinate to the will of the people through their elected representatives and the President of the United States of America who are answerable to the ordinary citizenry.[2] (http://slate.msn.com/?id=2073772),[3] (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michaelkelly/mk20021030.shtml)
• If only veterans can advocate war, then only veterans have the experience and moral standing to oppose war. This is ironically a militaristic argument made in the name of opposing militarism.
• That civilians who are explicitly targeted in war should have the right to voice their views on the conduct of war regardless of whether or not they have served. [4] (http://slate.msn.com/?id=2073772)
• That a majority of the voting public is ineligible or unlikely to serve in combat, as it includes women, the elderly, men over age 50, the disabled, and homosexuals. Using service as a litmus test for voicing a viewpoint would invalidate the views of most of the nation.[5] (http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/jonah080702.asp)
• That Presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt proved capable leaders of the military in times of national crisis, despite their lack of personal military service.
• That extending the Chickenhawk argument into other American political debates would mean that only women should comment on abortion, only crime victims on criminal justice, and so forth.
• The Chickenhawk argument does not, by its nature, respond to the substance of the hawks' arguments.

External links

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• Chickenhawk Database (http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=list&category=%20NEWS%3B%20Chickenhawks), profiles of alleged chickenhawks
• Chickenhawk? (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michaelkelly/mk20021030.shtml) by Michael Kelly
• "Armchair General" (http://slate.msn.com/?id=2073772) by Christopher Hitchens in Slate
• A fighting chance (http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/jonah080702.asp) by Jonah Goldberg
• article: "Brain of the Chickenhawk" (http://www.lewrockwell.com/wallace/wallace126.html), by Lew Rockwell