{"id":3409,"date":"2005-06-29T13:44:21","date_gmt":"2005-06-29T21:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/2005\/06\/29\/military-reacts-to-speech\/"},"modified":"2005-06-29T13:44:21","modified_gmt":"2005-06-29T21:44:21","slug":"military-reacts-to-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2005\/06\/29\/military-reacts-to-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Military reacts to speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tPolitech relates some military reaction to the speech,<\/a> all of it positive. Which leads him to this:<\/p>\n

\n

Memo to the left wingnuts who\u2019ve been telling those who believe in the war (as an alternative to just leaving Saddam in power) that the chickenhawks need to join the military: it\u2019s good to see that so many servicemembers and their families see the war as the president does. Now won\u2019t you wackjobs please shut up?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

May I propose that all who opposed the liberation<\/a> of Iraq and called its civilian supporters “chickenhawks” please remove themselves to someplace like North Korea where they can experience the kind of life the Iraqis had under Saddam? Otherwise I may have to call them “terrorchickens”.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Mr. Goldstein is annoyed with the infantile name-calling<\/a> as well:<\/p>\n

\n

One of the silliest arguments confronting pro-war supporters is the infantile \u201cchickenhawk\u201d accusation frequently floated by those swimming in the shallow end of the anti-war pool\u2014the idea being, in theory, that if you aren\u2019t a member of the military, you aren\u2019t entitled to express a public opinion on the Iraqi war. Of course, in practice, non-military personnel such as those who are quick to use the chickenhawk argument are themselves permitted to express an opinion on the war\u2014provided it\u2019s the correct opinion, namely, that the war is illegal and immoral, and that Bush and his cronies are evil lying scum…<\/p>\n

The idea that one need volunteer for military service in order to speak publicly in favor of the war creates any number of crazy analogues (for instance, is it okay to speak out against slavery if you\u2019ve never owned or been a slave?)\u2014not to mention presumes a commitment on the part of those anti-war speakers who invoke the chickenhawk argument to join the insurgency, should they wish to argue against the need for war.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the chickenhawk argument, though logically puerile, can prove quite rhetorically effective\u2014in the same sense that charges of homophobia and racism have proven effective in debates over gay marriage and government funded affirmative action programs: such charges, cynically delivered, tend to stifle substantive discourse, forcing one side of the argument onto the defensive by changing the focus of the debate from the issues themselves to the character of certain professors of those issues\u2014and in that regard, they help to sustain the status quo. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politech relates some military reaction to the speech, all of it positive. Which leads him to this: Memo to the left wingnuts who\u2019ve been telling those who believe in the war (as an alternative to just leaving Saddam in power) that the chickenhawks need to join the military: it\u2019s good to see that so many … Continue reading “Military reacts to speech”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-SZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}