{"id":12150,"date":"2009-07-01T11:36:04","date_gmt":"2009-07-01T16:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=12150"},"modified":"2009-07-01T11:36:04","modified_gmt":"2009-07-01T16:36:04","slug":"of-chickenhawks-and-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=12150","title":{"rendered":"Of Chickenhawks and War."},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day Carissa from VV came over here, and one comment she made really pissed me off<\/a>, and I wanted to delve into it a bit further:<\/p>\n

I am not anti-war, but I believe in fighting SELECTIVELY. I believe there is a difference between patriotism and nationalism. Being anti-IRAQ war does not = being anti-war overall. <\/p>\n

I have a problem with pro-war Republicans who have not served in the military and\/or neither are their children. I have a problem with hypocrisy<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the time I responded with the following:<\/p>\n

Also, for clarification, \u201cPro-war\u201d republicans with no service are not allowed to back it, what about Anti-business Democrats being allowed to vote on bills which impact small businesses if they never owned one? Is that okay? What about any Rep who is not a doctor voting on health care issues? For that matter, what about tax cheats voting on Tax bills? Or are Republicans the only ones exempted under your form of representative democracy?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019d like to look at that some more, but from a slightly different perspective. Imagine if you will a group of citizens who band together. Largely they are significantly more wealthy and more educated that the populace at large. Less than 4% of this group has served in the military, and yet, on behalf of the entire populace, these people declared war. Carissa would apparently not espouse the belief that they had political authority to do so, nor that they had any moral authority whatsoever to do so. And yet, that is in fact what they did. Because I had a friend of mine research it for me today, and of the 56 signers to the Declaration of Independence, only 2 (Matthew Thornton & Oliver Wolcott) had served in the military prior to serving in the Continental Congress.<\/p>\n

Now, many of them did serve during the war, but that is impracticable during today\u2019s conflicts, as the ages of the Members of Congress back then were significantly more youthful than today. Clearly Carissa meant something different, or at least I assume she did. But looking at the analogy further, I find it interesting that a further complaint of Ms. Picard\u2019s was that:<\/p>\n

My issue with most Republicans is that they want to overfund military actions while underfunding veterans care. I believe if you send our men and women to war, you have to take care of them accordingly when they return if they are suffering the effects of that war. Period.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My assistant, Siggurdson also sent along this Wiki Page, recounting the Newburgh Conspiracy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

With the end of the war and dissolution of the Continental Army approaching, soldiers, many of whom were now deeply in debt due to their pro bono service, imagined that Congress would not meet previous promises concerning back pay and pensions. Congress, at the mercy of the states for all revenue, did not seem to have any way of paying more than a fraction of the money owed. The result was that, by March 1783, many officers were talking of launching a coup and setting up martial law to secure what had been promised to them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I don’t mean to say that we *can’t* take care of veterans. Hell, I spend all day pointing out how much money we waste on stuff, and how it would be better spent caring for veterans. But unlike Carissa, I don’t believe that helping veterans is the sole provenance of either political party. There are DEMs and GOPs who are good on veterans issues, there are DEMs and GOPs who suck on veterans issues. But these groups just sow confusion by citing to votes that aren’t so clear cut. Beware scorecards on veterans issues, because as I showed with the IAVA scorecard, not all votes are as they appear.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the whole Chickenhawk meme thing pisses me off. It seems like it is some mantra of the left to ward of evil spirits or something. No matter what the issue I get to hear about the phantasmagorical boil on Rush Limbaugh\u2019s ass, or Dick Cheney\u2019s deferments, regardless of whether either of those have any bearing. We live in a representative democracy, wherein we elect people to espouse our views on Capitol Hill. On selective issues, like the various venues in the Global War on Terror, Carissa and the others in the \u201cGOP as Chickenhawks\u201d brigade would try to rob those representatives of their voice to speak for us. I never really understood the logic of that before, and in looking at it through the lens of the revolutionary war it makes even less sense to me. <\/p>\n

I had hoped Carissa would come back to respond to my follow up questions, but she seems to have disappeared on us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day Carissa from VV came over here, and one comment she made really pissed … Of Chickenhawks and War.<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}