In response to some of the angry commentary to my post on the chickenhawk slur, Reader DebK offered a comment that I thought was so good I republish it on our front page (with her permission):
Please stop this ridiculous argument. I served for 8 years, my husband is currently active duty and if I didn’t have 2 kids under the age of 5 I would sign up today to serve again. This chickenhawk accusation is completely illogical. Let me just say this – I’ll denounce all those who support the war but haven’t signed up to serve when those who keep throwing out the chickenhawk accusation denounce all those who attack the war and the military (and YES they do attack the military …) and who have never served themselves. (What could they possibly know about war when they themselves have never served, right??) Guess that would mean denouncing Michael Moore, most of Hollywood and the entertainment industry, the vast majority of anti-war activists, and perhaps some of the chickenhawk accusers on this blog!
If you accusers were genuinely concerned for the troops overseas, you’d spend some time learning how they think and what they think about this war. What you would find is that, though many in the military may have criticisms about specific aspects of how the actual operations on the ground have been run, the vast majority of them support what we are doing in Iraq, recognize the inherent morality of the mission, and would serve again. My husband is a perfect example. He served for 7 months and moved on to a different command. He has a lot of issues with specific items related to how the war has been run, but he will go back to Iraq in a heartbeat if the opportunity arises again. If people in the military don’t mind that people who haven’t served and aren’t planning on serving still support the war, why do you anti-war folks spend so much time and energy squawking about it! Get over it and start using your brains to really think about the issues at hand. If you don’t like the war, fine – come up with a better way to handle the foreign policy issues of the day. But spare all of us the sad chickenhawk accusations. Please.
In a private e-mail to me (& reproduced with her permission), she added:
The sad thing is that those folks [i.e., those who use the chickenhawk slur] (by the way, I truly believe it is just a vocal minority of the left) simply can’t believe that anyone would be willing to risk their life for their country, or for a cause greater than themselves. Cliché yes, but still the truth.