Roger,
I have also been amused by the chickenhawk argument which, of all the Left's tropes, I think is among the least logical. The argument is that only those who have served or are currently serving on the front lines have the moral authority to support a war. By that reasoning, the only people who would be able to send troops into battle would be those among the president and members of congress who are actually combat veterans. The presidency and congress would naturally have to be shut to non-veterans, since declaring war is a fairly important function of Congress, and conducting a war is a somewhat significant duty of the president. Aside from decimating the entire idea of civilian control over the military, this concept would have precluded some rather important figures in American history from serving their country-President Lincoln, for example, would rank among the moral pygmies without the authority to support a war.
The purveyors of the chickenhawk argument also fail to realize how inherently sexist, heterosexualist, and ableist this argument is - since women, homosexuals, and the handicapped cannot serve in the front lines, none of these people apparently ever have the moral authority to support a war. Thus, believers in the Chickenhawk concept mix the ultra-militarist notion of removing civilians from the top echelons of our government with extremely prejudiced views of the most disadvantaged groups of our society. How shockingly unprogressive.
