Tax Lawyer's Blog

One of the pet slanders of the radical left is that Republicans like George W. Bush are hypocritical cowards because they favor a specific military action or general increase in national defense spending when they themselves have never served in the military.

“Chickenhawks”, they call them.

The idea behind this silliness is that if a politician has never seen combat himself and proposes that others see combat, he must be a coward who demands that others be brave for him.

But here comes President Obama, a man with even less military experience than Mr. Bush, first ratcheting up the conflict in Afghanistan and now proposing the largest defense budget since World War II:

The Pentagon released its budget for fiscal year 2011 this afternoon, and it is enormous—much larger, even adjusting for inflation, than any budget since World War II. What’s more, some numbers buried within the budget suggest that it’s set to grow larger still in the coming years—to a greater extent than the White House or the Defense Department acknowledges.

If Bush was a chickenhawk, than Mr. Obama surely must be.

But, alas, there is an additional criterion for the label: Republicanism. Only Republican Presidents who never served in the military and have sent our troops to war are “chickenhawks.”

You won’t be hearing Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore and Al Franken calling His Holiness the Dali Obama a chickenhawk anytime soon.

So the label is simply a political pejorative used by the left to diminish in the eyes of the public Republicans with whom it idealogically disagrees. It is not a serious charge and should not be taken seriously.¹

Of course there will be times when the President as Commander-in-Chief must send soldiers into harms way. To suggest that because the President himself has not served in the military he should abdicate his responsibility and decline to make military decisions is utterly dense.

That a particular President did not personally serve in the armed forces in no way relieves him of his duty to command. Most, if not all, of our future Presidents will not have served in the armed forces. They nevertheless will have to decide when and where American troops will confront America’s enemies.

For kicks, here’s a partial list of Presidents who never served in either the military or the National Guard:

• Thomas Jefferson
• John Adams
• Woodrow Wilson
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• Bill Clinton
• Barrack Obama

Footnotes:

¹  If I am wrong and the left is serious about chickenhawk syndrome, it should support an amendment to the Constitution that makes it a requirement that all future President’s have had prior military experience. Liberals should first think through the unintended consequences of such an amendment.  For instance, it would greatly diminish the chances of electing our first woman Commander-in-Chief anytime in the near future.

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