The Chicken Hawk's War
Saul Landau
Radio Progreso Weekly 10 October 2002
A journalist asked President Bush what had priority, the war against terrorism or the war against Iraq . Bush, with that revealing look of bewilderment on his face, answered, "well, uh, hm, er, gosh, I’m trying to think of something funny to say". (Broadcast on CNN’s "Crossfire" on Sept. 27, 2002 )
What’s funny, if one has a very droll sense of humor, is that Bush’s advisors have convinced him that war against Iraq is not only divinely ordained, but politically opportune as well. As several observers have noted, these advisers have one thing in common: they have not been in military combat. Thus, they are described in Washington as Chicken Hawks.
The New Hamsphire Gazette defines chicken hawk as "a term often applied to public persons-generally male-who (1) tend to 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 President of the United States has all but sworn to God that he will commit our armed forces to war against Iraq in the near future. He has asked Congress for sweeping powers that should merit the most deliberate and cautious debate even to a president who is not so obviously intellectually challenged as ours.
Two years ago, W barely knew where Iraq was; even today he cannot articulate a fact to support his crusade. One reporter asked him if this campaign was a personal crusade against Saddam whoW said "tried to kill my dad". This charge has persisted over an alleged plot to kill Bush 41 on a 1993 visit to Kuwait , although US intelligence agencies have not revealed clear evidence to support the allegation. Nevertheless, those who draw the context around the box of debate have triumphed. People who have been rightly labeled as chicken hawks have successfully manipulated the very question at issue from: "Is Saddam Hussein a viable threat to US security" into "How best to deal with this urgent threat to US security?"
They have done this by repeating accusations that contain no facts, much less evidence that Saddam Hussein in Iraq has accumulated weapons of mass destruction that constitute a direct threat to US security and that Saddam’s regime enjoys close links to the terrorist network, Al Qaeda, thus linking the Iraqi dictator to the fiendish acts of 9/11.
In the course of this transition, officials of the Bush Administration and its lap dog, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have repeated the claims but have yet to present the public with a single fact.
They have made accusations and moral judgments. Bush accused in his September 12 UN address and Blair, in his "Dossier" of evidence presented to Parliament last month, used lots of "probablies" and likelies". But careful reading shows that all of the solemn accusations come down to the equivalent of the Mexican bandit chief in the film, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre". When Humphrey Bogart questions his credibility as a lawman and asks to see his badge, the criminal replies: "I don’t got to show you no stinkin’ badge". In this case substitute evidence for badge. When I asked a national security to official to show me evidence of Al Qaeda-Iraq links, he declared, predictably, that "that’s classified". Does that mean that only the national security elite and Saddam Hussein can share the secret? That the US public can’t know what our supposed mortal enemy knows?
Listening to the AM radio talk shows, one could conclude that Saddam Hussein constitutes an immediate peril to US security and that any hesitation about sending bombs and troops to Iraq constitutes liberal cowardice if not downright treason.
Yet, if one looks at the war records of the leading hawks one sees nothing but poultry feathers. I can well imagine that talk show charlatans and senior officials in the Bush Administration falling asleep every night dreaming about combat and they carry memories of these glorious fantasies into work the next day. That’s as close as most of these neo cons pushing sixty on one side or another have gotten to real battle. Like the President himself, who managed to enlist in the safe Texas National Guard, the sons of the rich, famous and powerful avoided any dangerous postings.
In the 1960s, as Jim Lobe dramatizes in "Chicken Hawks as Cheer Leaders", (The Project Against the Present Danger, September 6, 2002 ) Dick Cheney ducked military service as he told one reporter because he "had other priorities". Donald Rumsfeld did his Navy years between wars no combat. Only Colin Powell, thought of as the dove of the Cabinet, knows war firsthand.
Cheney’s chief assistant, the feisty "Scooter" Libby, took student deferments during the Vietnam War. Paul Wolfowitz and Peter Rodman, Defense Intellectuals and Rumsfeld cheerleaders, have likewise never seen combat.
The closest National Security staffer Elliott Abrams came to a uniform someone remarked was to get his mouth close to the seat of Ollie North’s Marine Corps trousers in a kissing position. This pugnacious prevaricator who was convicted of lying to Congress over Irangate in the 1980s when he served in the Reagan White House assiduously avoided danger while advocating that others fight and die. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Strategy John Bolton, Lobe discovers, had "medical problems" to keep him out of the Vietnam War.
Most of those that have taken the most strident pro war positions not only have never worn a military uniform; indeed, most have never even had a fist fight. These cowards want the US military to knock over Iraq , Iran , Syria and Lebanon .
The baby-faced Richard Perle, who chairs the Defense Policy Board, waited out the Vietnam War at the University of Chicago . He then joined pro-Vietnam War Senator Henry Scoop Jackson’s staff and made his reputation as one of the youngest of the Defense Intellectuals. Like Jackson , Perle made pro Israeli policy an axiom of his discourse. Perle has become ubiquitous for his aggressive mouth on TV talk shows, contradicting the flaccidity of his physical demeanor, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb) singled Perle out sarcastically as one of those who "would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad ". Hagel described the Chicken Hawks, as having "an intellectual perspective versus having sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off".
I once debated on TV Frank Gaffney, who runs the Center for Security Policy. Frank drove me home, told me he was a family man who had managed to stay out of Vietnam . Gaffney, like others in the show business side of politics where they appear on TV and radio shows as part of their job, has made his profession as a certified hawk. He knows that by articulating that position he assures his comfortable salary.
Ironically, we have watched three former chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff state their dire misgivings at Congressional hearings. Gulf War commander Gen. "Stormin" Norman Schwarzkopf and former Central Command head Gen. Anthony Zinni, have expressed their serious doubts on Bush’s war plans. The right wing intellectuals who occupy high posts and have both ears of the president have drawn a scenario whereby US forces quickly and easily "liberate" Iraq, get rid of Saddam and return control of the country to its happy people who adopt a US style democracy and live happily ever after as part of the globalized world of production and shopping. They imprudently equate the "liberation" of Afghanistan as the surefire method for solving the Iraqi problem.
They scoff at notions that US troops might have to occupy Iraq for 25 years or more, they belittle notions that ethnic and religious groups in Iraq Sunni and Shia Muslims and different Christian sects some of whom have centuries-old traditions of hating and killing each other would resume their old patterns, as they did in the former Yugoslavia .
The chicken hawks have declared the Vietnam War syndrome over. No longer will we refuse to fight anyone who fights back. No longer will fear of losses prevent us from exporting our imperial democratic package as part of our overall exports, of course.
The chicken hawks mock the generals as knowing nothing about war, as compared with themselves who have not only read about war in serious books but have watched it on TV. These non-elected defense intellectuals, like puppet masters for the inarticulate president, have successfully obliterated all the real issues that the public faces and have imposed their invented one at the center of the political debate. Moreover, they have cast the "chilling effect" net over opponents of making instant war. As Members of Congress recently returned from Iraq sought to widen the debate, Republican Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma , another non-combatant, said they "sounded like spokesmen for the Iraqi government".
Such statements indeed help to keep the real issues, corporate scandals, the weaknesses of the economy, which include growing poverty and unemployment, the health care crisis and the very real issue of terrorism, from taking the front seat. The war against Iraq now requires nothing more than a Tonkin Gulf resolution or an incident like the explosion of the Maine to set the world on yet another deadly course.
The US public needs to parse carefully the phrases of these chicken hawks, led by the Boy Emperor as the NY Times’ Maureen Dowd has labeled George W., and see if they can find a single fact that could conceivably present itself as a cause for us to go to war.
Copyright 2002 Radio Progreso
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