Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Chickenhawk

A definition.

Some examples (most seem to have snagged deferments and such, some just said to have "avoided" wars).



6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Winston,

Here's a bigger list of servers and non-servers. Classify as chickenhawk or not as you will.

7:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oops. Forgot to give address:

http://www.awolbush.com/whoserved.html

7:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Does this post qualify as an example of the "Chickenhawk Falacy" in your previous?

8:16 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Well, I got bored looking into this, but I think the definition above is a pretty good one. it's vague in the right ways, but the overall tone is consistent with Rilkefan's claim about the definition.

11:05 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think the relevance of the chickenhawk claim lies in two things:

(i) When people who are planning a war have never been a member of the military, their judgement on military issues (e.g. justification for invasion, required numbers of troops given an objective) can be legitimately called into question.

(ii) If a person who actively avoided combat duty is evaluated in comparision to another who performed combat duty (e.g. Bush and Kerry in the last election), and the former endorses, authorizes, or tacitly encourages criticism of the quality of the latters military service (e.g. the 'swift-boating' of Kerry).

12:59 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Agreed.

2:36 PM  

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