[mobglob-discuss] Chickenhawks crow for war (fwd)

[Tom_Childs at Douglas.BC.CA]

  ----- Forwarded message: -----
Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2002 13:21:26 -0700
To: vana at watserv1.uwaterloo.ca, lifetoiraq_canada at egroups.com,
        abolition-caucus at egroups.com, abolition-caucus at egroups.com
From: David Morgan <dmorgan at web.net>
Subject: Chickenhawks crow for war

Greetings
This article is great but even better is the list of "chickenhawks" in the 
establishment from Bush on down through the administration & the media 
published in the New Hampshire Gazette whose website is in this article.  Go 
to it, it's a deadly attack on these armchair warriors.
regards,
David Morgan


******
Monday, Sep. 2, 2002. Page 8

Chickenhawks Crow for War

By Matt Bivens "A chickenhawk [describes] public persons -- generally male 
-- who
(1) tend to advocate, or are fervent supporters of those who advocate, 
military solutions to political problems, and who have personally
(2) declined to take advantage of a significant opportunity to serve in 
uniform during wartime."
--The New Hampshire Gazette

WASHINGTON -- We are being dragged toward war with Iraq by such 
chickenhawks. The loudest voices demanding war are those of men who once 
upon a time quietly skipped out on the fun in Vietnam.

Men like Dick Cheney, who famously explained, "I had other priorities in 
the '60s than military service."

Cheney received draft deferments as a college student until he got married 
in 1964; marriage removed him from the draft. But the next year, the 
government announced married men would be drafted, unless they were also 
fathers. Nine months and two days after that announcement, the Cheneys had 
their first child.

A list of chickenhawks -- including many who are eager for war with Iraq, 
yet who had "other priorities" when Vietnam came a-calling -- has been 
compiled by Steven Fowle, a Vietnam veteran who edits The New Hampshire 
Gazette. (It's at www.nhgazette.com/chickenhawks.html).

It starts with the president himself. George W. Bush waited out the war 
from a post with light duties in the Texas Air National Guard. And, 
apparently, even that cushy deal was too onerous: There's an unexplained 
one-year gap, from May 1972 to May 1973, in Bush's service record. That 
year he was supposed to have reported for duty at the Alabama Air National 
Guard, but apparently never showed. Bush's reply is that he was honorably 
discharged and is proud of his service -- but also that he can't recall the 
specifics.

Specifics are also in short supply for Defense Department Iraq hawks like 
Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle; for White House adviser Karl Rove; for 
professional blabbers George Will, William Kristol, Rush Limbaugh and Pat 
Buchanan; for Republican congressional leaders Trent Lott, Dennis Hastert, 
Dick Armey and Tom DeLay; and for many others -- right down to Rambo 
himself, Sylvester Stallone.

Some of the explanations offered by those who avoided Vietnam sound 
hilarious today. Pundit and politician Buchanan got out for "bad knees," 
but went on to become an avid jogger. DeLay, who was working as a pest 
exterminator during Vietnam, is reported to have complained that he would 
have served but all the places were taken up by black people. (Blacks in 
the 1960s had no "other priorities?")

And then there's rabid radio personality Limbaugh's excuse: "Anal cysts." 
As Matthew Engel noted in the Guardian, "It is not my custom to mock 
others' ailments, but anyone who has listened to Limbaugh's program can 
imagine the dripping scorn he would bring to the revelation that a 
prominent Democrat had skipped a war over something like that."

The poster boy for draft-dodging, to hear the media tell it, has long been 
Bill Clinton. But Clinton also organized anti-war protests in the late 
1960s, and years later, while running for office, was thoroughly grilled by 
the media and the public for his Vietnam-era conduct.

By contrast, the chickenhawks weaseled out of Vietnam while loudly 
proclaiming their support for it; they've never once been called to account 
for doing so; and now, they want to send a new generation of Americans into 
a Middle Eastern ground war.//



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