[iwar] [fc:Chicken.Hawks.Beating.the.War.Drums]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-08-20 07:23:23


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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 07:23:23 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Chicken.Hawks.Beating.the.War.Drums]
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Chicken hawks

Matthew Engel
The Guardian
August 20, 2002

Of all the many nonsenses affecting American aviation at present, the 
most absurd by far is the post-September 11 regulation imposed solely 
on flights to and from National Airport (or, as the Republicans try 
to insist, Reagan National) in Washington that bars anyone leaving 
their seat for the half-hour of flying time nearest the capital.

No matter that you are old, young, sick or simply bursting. No matter 
that half an hour in the air takes you hundreds of miles away. No 
matter that the rule does not apply at Washington's other airport, 
Dulles (about two minutes' flying time from National), nor at any of 
the hundreds of other American airports near potential terrorist 
targets. The flight path at National goes close to the centre of 
Washington and the leaders' safety is paramount. As we saw when the 
president's jet zigzagged across the country in the hours after the 
attacks, members of the ruling elite are concerned about the safety 
of all Americans, but somewhat more concerned about their own. This 
fits, to a startling extent, with their personal histories.

Traditionally, the left has always had an inferiority complex about 
military experience. In Britain, Ted Heath (a wartime artillery 
colonel) used to patronise Harold Wilson (who spent the war in 
Whitehall) on the subject. Here in 1996 Bob Dole (badly wounded in 
the second world war) played the same card against the unheroic Bill 
Clinton. But as the Bush administration paints itself into an 
ever-tighter corner with its Iraq rhetoric, it is instructive to note 
the astonishing extent to which those so anxious to stage the next 
war managed to be absent from the last one.

The US is now mainly governed by men in their mid-50s, ie the Vietnam
generation - except that this lot missed being the Vietnam generation. 
The enterprisingly original New Hampshire Gazette (<a
href="http://www.nhgazette.com">http://www.nhgazette.com>) maintains
a "Chickenhawks" database to tell their stories.  Most of the
allegations fit with facts recorded elsewhere. 

Not everyone is implicated: Colin Powell's military record is solid, 
of course, which may help explain his distaste for fighting; and 
Donald Rumsfeld, an older man, was a naval aviator, albeit in the 
undramatic mid-50s. Otherwise, it starts with the president, who 
missed Vietnam by securing a cushy number in the Texas air national 
guard after (so everyone assumes) his congressman father pulled 
strings to get him in. It is less well-known that Dick Cheney avoided 
the draft by getting deferments, first because he was a student, then 
because he was married. "I had other priorities in the 60s than 
military service," he has said. Fine. Me too, Dick. Some people have 
got other priorities now. How about you?

Consider Washington's two most prominent superhawks: Paul Wolfowitz 
(Rumsfeld's deputy) and his adviser Richard Perle. Who's Who in 
America is curiously vague about their precise whereabouts in the 
late 1960s, though it is fairly clear where they were not. As the 
shrewd and sceptical Republican senator Chuck Hagel said last week: 
"Maybe Mr Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go 
into Baghdad."

The two Democrat leaders in Congress, Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle, 
served; their Republican counterparts, Trent Lott and Dick Armey, did 
not. Tom DeLay, the most powerful hawk in the House of 
Representatives, missed Vietnam too: he was working as a pest 
exterminator. Reportedly, he once complained that he would have 
served; but, he said, all the places were taken up by ethnic 
minorities.

There are similar stories about almost every other prominent 
rightwing Republican of recent vintage. Newt Gingrich, ex-Speaker of 
the House, went the Cheney route; Kenneth Starr, Clinton's legal 
nemesis, had psoriasis; Jack Kemp, Dole's running mate in 1996, was 
unfit because of a knee injury, though he heroically continued as a 
National Football League quarterback for another eight years; Pat 
Buchanan had arthritis in his knees, though he soon became an avid 
jogger.

The best story concerns Rush Limbaugh, the ferociously bellicose 
radio personality, who allegedly had either "anal cysts" or an 
"ingrown hair follicle on his bottom". It is not my custom to mock 
others' ailments, but anyone who has listened to Limbaugh's programme 
can imagine the dripping scorn he would bring to the revelation that 
a prominent Democrat had skipped a war over something like that. 
Also, in his case, a pain in the arse is peculiarly appropriate.

Admission: I did not serve in Vietnam either. My country was not 
there, and did not ask me, or anyone else. Like those named above, I 
was unenthusiastic about that war. Unlike most of them, I am 
profoundly alarmed about the one now being plotted.

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