Chickenhawks lead the cheers for Iraq war

It appears my use of the word Chickenhawk has stirred up some of the folks who think the only way to honor the dead in Iraq is to add to the numbers, instead of bringing the troops home. Good. The super-patriots could use a little shaking up.

What is a chickenhawk?

Chickenhawk n. A person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it; particularly when that enthusiasm is undimmed by personal experience with war; most emphatically when that lack of experience came in spite of ample opportunity in that person's youth.

That from the New Hampshire Gazette, which finds these personnel at Chickenhawk Headquarters:

Name: George W. Bush (R-TX)
Born: 1946
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: You know when a guy walks away from a National Guard obligation during wartime and gets away with it, he must come from "a good family." Not that his daddy had anything to do with his getting a Guard slot in the first place - oh, no ...

Name: Richard "Dick" Cheney (R-WY)
Born: 1942
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Says he had "other priorities." You bet he had other priorities. Imagine how early in life you must begin scheming to get away with what this guy has. He was too busy thinking about Halliburton to go fight Charlie.

Name: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Born: 1950±
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: I. Lewis "Scooter' Libby is Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff. He's had a string of no-doubt well-paying government jobs in State and Defense. He's also practiced law. In fact, he was Marc Richs lawyer for years. Yes -- the Marc Rich whose pardon from President Clinton was excoriated by so many high and mighty Republicans. Maybe if Scooter had been a better lawyer, his client wouldn't have needed that pardon. Speaking of legal questions, "Scooter"is alleged by some to have traded energy stocks while helping his buddy Dick Cheney cook up a new energy policy in secret. He's also suspected of having inserted the bogus "Niger yellowcake" reference into the President's State of the Union address. As if all that weren't enough, he's also a top suspect in the outing of CIA operative Valeria Plame. Clearly "Scooter" is a ballsy kind of guy, so it's a complete mystery to us why, when he graduated from Phillips Andover in 1968, he didn't enlist in the Marines or go Airborne instead of going to Yale.

Name: Karl Rove
Born: 1950
Employer: Baal
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: This little cherub was born on Christmas Day, 1950. Karl "Bush's Brain" Rove ran George W's campaign, right down to the tiny detail of deciding Bush was going to run. The hardest part was convincing a horde of Republican skeptics that it could be done.

He is said to have said of his boss, he's "the kind of candidate and officeholder political hacks like me wait a lifetime to be associated with."

Now Karl's Senior White House advisor. If he really is "Bush's Brain,"and if the fondest wishes of former US Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV come true, one fine day Karl will be "frogmarched out of the White House in handcuffs.

Will history record that event as "Bush's Lobotomy?"

Name: Donald "The Don" Rumsfeld
Born: 1932
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Korea
Notes: When the shooting started in Korea Rummy here was either 18, or about to turn 18. Not to worry for him, though -- he spent the war at Princeton, wearing a ROTC uniform. Once the war was over he flew jets for the Navy for a few years. Defenders of Rumsfeld will say he's no chickenhawk -- he served, and it's not his fault the war ended before he got his commission. To which others answer, "plenty of farmers and mechanics and kids just out of high school served. Anyone as full of whatever that stuffing in him is, could have tried out for a battlefield commission."

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My own nominee:

Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis., who served five days in the military before deciding he wasn't cut our for it and law school might be more fun and more profitable. Now a candidate for governor, he founded the Victory in Iraq caucus in Congress, supports total victory there, whatever that is, and periodically visits Iraq to report that everything is swell and morale is terrific. More about Green's military career.

The chickenhawks I mentioned in an earlier post -- Charlie Sykes, Michelle Malkin, the Madison Freedom Fighter -- clearly are not at the same level as Bush and his buddies. They are simply cheerleaders, while others orchestrate the killing.

But they also serve who only stand and cheer.

I don't mean to suggest that everyone who supports the war in Iraq is a chickenhawk. Far from it. Many veterans and their families still support it, although the numbers are dwindling. But those who seem to be the most enthusiastic and the most vocal about why we should continue the killing, more often than not seem to be of the Chickenhawk persuasion.