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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. 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 1988, its first confirmable appearance is in a newsgroup post from 1992. The first appearance in the printed media appears to be a 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). 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.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: 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 - 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 extending the Chickenhawk argument into other American political debates would mean that only women should comment on abortion, only crime victims on criminal justice, et al.
Chickenhawk quotations "We know who the chicken hawks are. They talk tough on national defense and military issues and cast aspersions on others," he said. "When it was their turn to serve where were they? AWOL, that's where they were...the lead chickenhawk against Sen. Kerry is the vice president of the United States, Vice President Cheney." United States Senator Frank Lautenberg, on the floor of the Senate, April 28, 2004 http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/28/lautenberg.kerry/ "The whole point of the present phase of conflict is that we are faced with tactics that are directed primarily at civilians ...my wife [who]was fighting her way across D.C., with the Pentagon in flames, to try and collect our daughter from a suddenly closed school, was attempting to deal with anthrax in our mailbox, was reading up on the pros and cons of smallpox vaccinations, and was coping with the consequences of a Muslim copycat loony who'd tried his hand as a suburban sniper...My wife is not of military age, and there is little chance of a draft for mothers. Are her views on Iraq therefore disqualified from utterance?" Columnist Christopher Hitchens in Slate. http://slate.msn.com/?id=2073772 External links *Jonah Goldberg http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/jonah080702.asp
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