Chickenhawk

They so proudly wear this insignia.

"Operation Chickenhawk" illustration (by William Bramhall), from Al Franken's Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (1996)

A chickenhawk is a person in a position of public prominence or power who displays two traits:

• Aggressive support for military force as a primary instrument of foreign policy.
• A documentable lack of combat experience.

Currently, the U.S. Administration has an abundance of these creatures. Indeed, since the resignation of Colin Powell, there is no-one with genuine combat experience in any prominent executive position. This can lead to policies based on dangerously abstracted notions of the nature and efficacy of war.

Those who have seen the horrors of war first-hand tend to be cautious about wilfully unleashing such havoc again, no matter how remote or foreign the field. As well as not appreciating the full human costs of their decisions, there remains the uncomfortable suspicion that chickenhawks are prepared to send others to risk their lives in ways that chickenhawks would never risk their own.

Prominent chickenhawks

Here is a short list of prominent chickenhawks:

• George W. "glug, glug, snort, snort" Bush
• Dick "Dick" Cheney
• Sean "Tough Guy" Hannity
• William "Bill" Kristol
• I Lewis "Scooter" Libby
• Joe "nuke Tehran" Lieberman
• Rush "Rush" Limbaugh
• Bill "Bore" O'Reilly
• Karl "Talking Points" Rove
• Paul Wolfowitz
• Ronald Reagan
• Dan "Potatoe" Quayle
• Larry "Uncle Tom" Elder
• Every Representative and Senator who voted for the Iraq War but avoided serving if and when it was possible for them^{[more detail please]}

See also

• Iraq War
• A reconstruction of the lost database that was at the New Hampshire Gazette website.

External links and sources

• The New Hampshire Gazette ("the nation's oldest newspaper") is the home of the original Chickenhawk Database (bad link!). Archived here.
• Chickenhawk Playing Cards. Of course - it's not real unless someone makes a deck of cards to commemorate it.
• Chickenhawks at communist Michael Moore's web site.
• Sourcewatch also reports on the phenomenon, but they include Pat Buchanan on their list which is ridiculous since Buchanan has opposed every war since the Berlin Wall came down.
• Flight of the ChickenHawks from toostupidtobepresident.com.