I didn't like that part of what Cole said either, although it's a damn good rhetorical move. I don't really understand what Ted means by "epistemic," but what I would say is, the fact that someone is an incredible fucking hypocrite does not, in and of itself, make them wrong. It may make them a very poor spokesperson for the cause, but it doesn't reveal that they don't really believe what they say they believe. That's about rhetoric, though, and not the actual content of their argument. I agree with you that, on the level of individual conscience, examining one's unwillingness to fight a war should be taken into account in asking oneself whether one *really* supports it, but in the end, hypocrisy doesn't negate the validity of someone's argument, just their character.
The "chickenhawk" argument seems to be similar to the tendency to refer to "voters" or "taxpayers" rather than citizens. If the use of "chickenhawk" arguments ends up hurting politicians to whom I am opposed, I am in favor of using such arguments; but since they don't seem to make any difference, I think they should be dropped, also for philosophical reasons. If we're going to be living in a political unit, in which we supposedly collaborately make decisions in some way (democracy, or representative republicanism), then we have to include everyone in the discussion, in principle. There are many people who cannot fight for any number of reasons and who should not be made to fight, but they should still be part of the discussion, because war, the ultimate political decision, is a decision that we are making about our "life together," and we should all take part in some way in making that decision.
If followed out to its logical conclusion, no president or members of congress could possibly ever make a decision about whether to go to war unless they were going to command troops in the field or get down in the trenches.
And I say this as someone who generally thinks that the US basically has no need to go to war, ever, and that the Iraq war was a horrible idea that should never have happened.
In fact, I think that all US troops should be withdrawn within the borders of the US, with military spending and troop levels cut to levels necessary to defend US territory from Mexico and Canada. How do I show my support for that?
Well of course you can support a war and not fight in it. In the case of Iraq, however, there exists a pretty goddamn big asterisk: Iraq has never attacked us, nor ever threatened to attack us, nor ever had the capability of attacking us. Even if they had possessed the entire list of nasty substances Bush accused them of possessing, they wouldn't be able to attack the United States. We attacked them. Twice. It's one thing for Iran or Saudi Arabia or Israel to attack Iraq. Regional wars happen, but we're just over there electively.
So let's leave aside defensive wars and let's even leave aside border wars. What we are discussing here is a decision to wage an offensive war, thousands of miles outside of our borders, including high-altitude bombing of urban areas. The larger philosophical question that should be answered is this: the matter over which you feel this war should be waged, are you willing to kill your children - or even your neighbors' children - for it? Not send them overseas and take the chance, but actually put a gun to their head and kill them. Because we'll be doing it to somebody's child. We'll be doing it to many, many somebodies' children. Is this cause so important to you that you will murder people you know for it?
If the answer is no, then I will absolutely consider you a hypocrite and a coward unless you have some really, really convincing argument that I have yet to hear.
I have too much to do tonight to give this the care it deserves, but soon, probably tomorrow, I'll give it some thought. I loves me the epistemic/prudential split as much as anyone, but I think I'm going to take issue with Ted. Hard questions, though.
Ogged,
Thanks for turning my comment into a post, replying, and generating some discussion. I'll reply in turn after dinner.
In the meantime I'll point out that I've posted a somewhat cleaner version of the comment on my new totally non-anonymous and supposedly apolitical blog here.
(Clicking on my name below should take you there if the link on 'here' doesn't stick.)
This is interesting, I think this is the first time you've all been so wrong I've disagreed with so many of you.
I think Ted actually defeats his own argument by stating at the end that a person who actively refuses to fight, by say, running to Canada, cannot support the war. Why the distinction between active and passive refusal?
In most instances, I agree there is no difficulty in supporting something you don't actively do. I can support soccer, but not play. That's fine. But in war, I'm asking someone else to die, and there's no getting around that. You can just say, "I believe the world is better if the war occurs." It has to be, "I am willing to sacrifice You for these results." And I don't believe there are many positions from which you can sacrifice another human being.
The first is that not only are you willing to sacrifice yourself as well, but you actively are willing to sacrifice yourself for and before everyone else. This is the only moral position.
There is one other position which I see as acceptable, but not a moral one. If you cannot fight, either because you're doing something more important for the war effort and its goals in a noncombat activety, or because you're disabled, mentally, physicall, or by old age, then, I have no qualms with you supporting the war but not fighting it.
Jonah, of course, is not disabled by age nor doing anything important for the war effort. His position, pro-war but not willing to do anything for it, is immoral.
If followed out to its logical conclusion, no president or members of congress could possibly ever make a decision about whether to go to war unless they were going to command troops in the field or get down in the trenches.
Well, at least their children should be drafted if they support the war. Yes, I'm serious about that. They should not be willing to send other people's children to die in a war if they wouldn't send their own children. That is about the only thing that I'm OK about with Ashcroft -- his son is active duty. Of course, Ashcroft apparently thinks that the torture at Gitmo has gone too far, also.
As far as Goldberg, it's one thing to be an ordinary citizen who thinks that War X is a good idea and quite another to be a pundit who touts War X as a good idea and tries to get everyone else to agree. If Goldberg thinks that War X is such a great goddamn idea and he wants to spend a lot of his time and energy beating the drums for War X, then he needs to put his ass on the line. Barlow's wrong when it comes to Goldberg. Period.
paperweight, sorry, I have to disagree with you about the President thing, because I don't believe that it's makes practical sense to require a moral President. The President should be interested in the good of the country, not his own consistency. The line of reasoning you purpose, that the President personally experience the effects of his policies, could be extended to just about everything the President does, from drug laws to tax reforms.
I think I should clarify my own position a little bit. The issue here as I see it is passive support. My contention is that you cannot passively support war (allowing exceptions) because supporting war is actively calling for the sacrifice of another. You can only call for the sacrifice of yourself, and then secretly hope others join in. The support of war, an active call, cannot take place in a passive mode.
It might be clearer if I try and seperate this case of war from the case of supporting a football team. On the sidelines, I can cheer on the team, hope for their victory (I don't actually do this, but I hear tell some people do, and I see nothing wrong with this). My hypothetical self is quite passive, and calling for the team to actively compete, risking injury. However, the team is not competing for me, in my stead. There is no call, not even a silent one, for me to join the team. Further, were the team not there, the goal, winning, would evaporate. This is not true of a just war, whose goals go beyond merely defeating the opposing "team."
Here are a few replies to this good discussion.
1. There's a lot of slipping and sliding here between two senses of 'willing.' 'I'm not willing to fight' might mean (a) 'If the draft were reinstated and I got drafted, I'd refuse to go.' Or it might mean (b) 'I choose not to enlist, though I'd go if I got drafted.' Obviously, supporting a war and being 'unwilling' to fight in the (a)-sense is wrong, since in endorsing the war you're committed to endorsing any actual or possiblel draft (unless you make further argument that the draft in question is unfair or something), but it's wrong to endorse a draft without being willing to be drafted yourself (or if you're too old, being willing to see your children or other loved ones drafted). This is wrong because it's wrong to treat yourself as an exception to normative requirements imposed by an institution that you endorse (or are committed to endorsing by other things you endorse).
2. But supporting a war and being 'unwilling' to fight in the (b)-sense is different. Here, you're not unwilling to fight; you're merely not actively seeking to fight. I admit that without a draft this may seem a distinction without a difference. So I'll say that you'd need to do something to show your acknowledgment of the costs of the war that you support. Again, the key is that you not make an exception of yourself: in supporting the war you endorse a number of institutions, and you've got to be willing to contribute to supporting those institutions.
3. I repeat that every American had an obligation to decide whether to support the Iraq War (as with every other war one's country fights during one's life). So the question is whether one's willingness to fight -- in the (b)-sense (that is, one's deciding to enlist) -- should weigh in this decision, and if so how. Dr. Bitch claims that "on the level of individual conscience, examining one's unwillingness to fight a war should be taken into account in asking oneself whether one *really* supports it," which nicely summarizes an idea that must seem plausible to many who make chickenhawk arguments: non-fighting war 'supporters' don't really support the war, since assessing whether one supports a war and assessing whether to go fight it go hand in hand. But that is not at all plausible. In asking whether my country should fight a war in Iraq, I'm not at all asking a question about me -- about my fighting abilities, my suitability for a military life, etc. True, as I conceded under (1), if I decide that my country should fight the war then I commit myself to institutions that I must do my part to uphold. So I'm not claiming that my supporting the war has no implications for my conduct -- it does have these don't-make-an-exception-of-yourself implications. But I would not be living up to my epistemic obligations if I formed my belief about the justice or advisability of a war by appealing to considerations concerning my dispositions to fight it myself.
4. That said, however, if I decide that the war does deserve my support, I now have a reason to participate actively in it. So if Goldberg or others have nothing to explain why they don't enlist besides 'I don't feel like enlisting,' then they can be accused of inconsistency -- of failing to acknowledge this reason that their own support for the war gives them to enlist. But if they do have reasons for not enlisting, reasons that they argue outweigh the reason their support gives them for enlisting, then I don't think they can be criticized on this score.
5. Fontana suggests that I'm placing too much weight on the distinction between epistemic and practical reasons. I am. What I'm calling an epistemic reason is a reason to believe a normative proposition: that my country should go (or should have gone) to war. So it's a reason to believe that there are practical reasons for my country to act. I could acknowledge this, however, and reformulate my argument using the distinction between joint deliberation and individual deliberation instead. 'Should my country go to war?' is a joint-deliberative question. 'Should I enlist?' is a question that I deliberate on my own. My point is merely that these two deliberations -- the one I conduct in the public square about the whether we should collectively go to war and the one I conduct in foro interno about whether I should enlist -- are very different and need to be kept separate along the lines sketched above.
6. Finally there's the question of how to support the war. It may be okay to believe that the war is justified without enlisting, many seem to think, but it's not okay to argue for the war without enlisting -- especially if you write for the National Review and have the ear of the administration. This I don't simply don't get. I'm of course completely sympathetic to the charge that Goldberg and others made bad arguments for the war, or that they did other bad things while making their arguments (such as accuse their opponents of treason). But that has nothing to do with the present issue, since their enlisting wouldn't make those arguments better or make the other bad things any less bad. (Are you any more willing to be called a traitor by someone in uniform?) So this strikes me as just a red herring. People hate Goldberg and his ilk for stuff they do while supporting the war. We can talk about that if you want. But I'm trying to stay focused on implications of the support itself.
I feel like I'm crashing a private party here, so excuse me, but I've been reading about the Cole/Goldberg bust-up all day and happen to have been thinking about this particular aspect of it to distraction, so must comment.
It seems to me that there are all sorts of extraordinarily dangerous jobs that we require others to do, which we don't think about very often. Mining, construction, firefighting, to name a few. I happen to think about these jobs and their consequences a lot, because my father died while doing a very dangerous construction job. But I don't think everyone else who has benefitted from my father's work (everyone drinking water in NYC) must think, oh, maybe I should volunteer to work on the city water tunnel because people have died doing this for me.
My house may catch fire one day, and I may be saved by firefighters - does this mean I should volunteer at my local fire house?
I mean, it's a question of specialization and professionalism, isn't it? It's a question of class, too, obviously - for the most part it's working class people who go into the military, as well as construction or mining. But I don't think that negates the fact that it's a choice. Some people are suited to a particular profession, which is one reason why they choose it in the first place. There are military families, just as there police families, or construction families. Some people are brought up with that particular profession as a goal, and they understand its demands well and are attracted to its ethos. Jonah Goldberg happens not to be one of those people.
Since we're not in a national emergency of the proportions of WWII, or even Vietnam, and (so far) there is no draft, I don't see what's so wrong with not seeing it as your duty to enlist, just because you supported the war. Dodging a draft for a war you support is another matter.
It's not private at all, ac, thanks for commenting. Special thanks because I don't think Ted's argument can work without the kind of argument you make in defense of the institutions involved. More later from me...
Deciding to oppose a war that it is within the ability of one's country to fight has as many moral consequences as does supporting such a war, does it not? (Pick your example; conveniently simple ones would involve choosing to not stop a genocide; Rwanda, say?)
What conditions are necessary to fulfill to be morally responsible and not support a war?
ok, i can't do scholarly deep thinking and all, but i think this is an important point that's being missed. people who encourage the war believe that it is not only justified, but also winnable, with "the army you've got". so goldberg prolly doesn't see that his active participation would make any difference to the effort, while his noisemaking serves to keep the troops there, there.
he's still immoral, evil and snotty, but i wonder what he'd say about his willingness to fight should he open his eyes one day and realize it's not a winnable war without a way much larger army.
I'm getting increasingly confused; I'm not sure where "justified" sits in comparison to "support" in this discussion. It seems reasonable to believe that you could find that war X was justified contingent on any number of factors - that we obey norms of warfare, that we do only so much as necessary to remove a regime, etc. - including that we be able to win the war soley by use of our voluntary forces. To that end, your support would also be contingent. When people get upset with Goldberg, it seems likely that it's because we suspect that there are all sorts of conditions that he has in place that he hasn't explicitly mentioned for fear that it would kill national support for the war. I'm not sure where the rest of the discussion fits in, except as a fairly abstruse way of acknowledging that varied willingness to risk oneself could be a pretty could governor of martial ambition.
paperweight, sorry, I have to disagree with you about the President thing, because I don't believe that it's makes practical sense to require a moral President.
Don't be sorry. I know it's an odd position.
The President should be interested in the good of the country, not his own consistency. The line of reasoning you purpose, that the President personally experience the effects of his policies, could be extended to just about everything the President does, from drug laws to tax reforms.
Yes. And I accept my complicity in killing an animal every time I eat meat. It creates a profound moral problem for me, and I suspect I fail that test I set myself.
I note that given the class from which we draw our politicians, the President in many ways is insulated from most of the decisions he may make. For example, there's not really any serious debate that wealthy politically connected individuals who have drug problems are treated differently from poor individuals who can't call on a Senator to bail them out. But in theory at least, when the stakes are as high as war, I think one ought to demand that the people making the decision have a personal stake in the matter. There's some moral hazard there, but not as much as "Hey, they volunteered, so I can use them as I like."
There's more here, all along the abstruse lines of specialization and whether the external public debate and the internal public debate are the same thing. These are all good points and interesting, but the core point is simple.
Goldberg actively pushes for an unnecessary war that he knows will get people killed, and he actively pushes for public policy which insulates him and people who pay him from the negative consequences of that decision, and externalizes all of those costs to others.
As a writer for NRO and active movement conservative, he is entirely unwilling to bear any of the costs (taxes, enlisting, whatever) of the decisions he advocates people make, and actively pushes to externalize those costs on others. (Like keeping taxes low while destroying the social safety net in theoretically in order to finance the war he wanted us to fight in the first place.)
That is profoundly immoral, and while the deep philosophical reasoning is interesting (and in a former life, I would have dived into it without missing a beat), the bottom line remains: if he won't put any of his money where his considerable mouth is, he's blown all of his credibility.
Rereading my reply/comment the next morning, I see that I could have been clearer in point 6. The point is that obnoxiousness in expressing support for the war is quite obviously not going to be remedied by enlisting -- no one would think that. So this isn't like the present issue, which I assume isn't obvious and therefore needs to be argued.
It does seem that people are more inclined to make the chickenhawk argument when the 'chickenhawk' in question is an obnoxious hawk. That's understandable, since obnoxiousness leads one to want to fire back every weapon that one has. Still, the logic of the chickenhawk argument requires that the fault not be the obnoxiousness of the support but the support itself.
Oh, and Gary's question is a good one too.
Again, I think the crux of this argument oughtn't be whether one can support *a* war blah blah blah, but rather one can support *this* war blah blah blah. We can all come up with hypothetical or historical situations to bolster or undermine one side or the other of this debate.
Ogged, you have amazing comments. Do you spend half your life deleting the bullshit and spam?
Thanks, cw. I don't delete anything that's not spam, if that's what you're asking. For some reason, we just don't get a lot of idiots. And MT-Blacklist takes care of most of the spam.
For some reason
I suspect a lot of it is that folks here grin and pat idiots on the head rather than exploding in flaming, angry righteousness, and that probably robs trolling of most of its fun.
Ted, let me put this another way. We can decide that an end is desirable without considering the cost of attaining it. We can also decide whether an end is desirable given the cost. The heart of the chickenhawk argument is that trying to weigh the cost of a war without considering whether you're willing to die in it is like trying to decide to buy something without being able to see the price. Human empathy just doesn't extend that far; you will, despite your best intentions and rational compensations, always underestimate the price. That's why you can't separate the question "about you" from the question of public policy.
Oh, and cw, I take it back: I have, on a few occasions, deleted something I thought was over the line. And I think the apostropher is right, it's just no fun being a troll around here.
Gary,
I don't know what the most moral thing is, but as we know, Americans distrust the government on almost every front. It seems like the most American thing to do would be to assume that those douche-bags in Washington are trying to screw us over with some stupid war again, and therefore to default to opposing any war on offer. The burden of proof is on the person who supports the war.
I'm late to this party, but doesn't the question boil down to what one means by "support."
Everyone seems to be taking a binary position on that question. You either "support" something or you don't, but is that really the case?
I support the war as long as it doesn't affect me in any way.
I support the war as long as I simply have to buy a three dollar ribbon magnet for my car.
. . .
All the way up to:
I support the war so strongly I am willing to die for it.
Clearly there are degrees of support. Does "war" require the absolute greatest amount of support or none at all?
I don't see it. Many many people "supported" the Viet Nam war until the cost got too high.
Common usage of the word "support" does not imply the willingness to die and sacrifice everything.
Ogged,
I agree that one must consider the cost of the war, and that one good way to consider the cost is by imagining what it would be like to fight it. Since the latter is empathetic imagination, I agree that a hawk should empathize with the plight of those who will fight.
But I can empathize without thinking that I should fight. One point here is that while in empathizing I imagine myself as a soldier, in imagining myself as a soldier I don't imagine that one of soldiers is me. (This is a familiar point from the philosophical literature on imagination. In imagining myself as Napolean, I don't imagine that I'm identical with Napolean, since that would absurdly entail, among other things, that Napolean comments on Unfogged.)
So what do I imagine? In imagining myself as a soldier, I imagine the war from the perspective of a soldier. What I imagine is about the war as seen from this perspective. I can do this without believing that that perspective should ever be my perspective.
So I agree the empathy is important. And perhaps some Iraqs hawks can be fairly accused of failures of empathy. But I don't see the connection between empathy and deciding to enlist.
Tripp,
All support is conditional, just as all decisions are. (Each is a commitment undertaken against background expectations such that the falsity of some of the expectations would cause the commitment simply to lapse.)
Some of the background expectations that you list entail that the supporter regards himself as an exception in the way that I completely concede is wrong. "As long as it doesn't affect me negatively" is a really despicable instance of regarding oneself as an exception to what one endorses in supporting the war.
Do all of these arguments assume that there is no truth of the matter for statements like, "Going to war in Iraq, in the manner in which we will actually wage that war, is a bad (or good) idea/ will make the world better (or worse) place." If there was a truth of the matter for such a statement, it couldn't be dependent on who was saying it. Is there meaningfully more to being a war supporter than believing that the positive version of the above statement is true and announcing that belief repeatedly?
Ted H,
So is the question really "At what point does it become 'not despicable' to say one supports a war?"
In other words, conditional support of war is possible but may be despicable?
Well, at this point I feel like Ted and I are talking past each, and I'll wait for someone to try to clear it up, and there are lots of other good points here I don't want to ignore...damn work at the moment...more later, again...
Here's another angle on it. If I say (as I would) that I am uncategorically unwilling to fight in any war I can imagine, period, does that make me a pacifist? Is pacifism the only defensible ideology for cowards or people who can't imagine killing? What about, say, someone who is willing to be a medic, but not a gunner? What about someone who, because they have children, is willing to build munitions, but not to go to the front lines? Or someone who, upon having children, leaves the military?
I think the distinction being made is too gross: I think Michael's point about the distinction between active and passive support is a good one, but I would say that the only logical consequence of it is pacifism (which may be all well and good) because no one wants to die. You may be willing to *risk* your life, but you are hoping that you will be spared, even if you know others won't. For me, my problem with the chickenhawks is not the "chicken" part, it's the "hawk" part. Not serving is one thing; failing to acknowledge the seriousness of war is another, including using war or war rhetoric to score points against political opponents by implying that they are traitors, etc.
ac, you make some good points, and tough ones for those of us who support the "chickenhawk" argument.
Let me see if I can draw a relevant distinction between the soldier and the construction worker. First, at a certain level of abstraction, the two perform the same task. The construction worker performs a dangerous job which benefits society; the same could be said of the soldier. However, at a more concrete level, I find two disctions which I believe to be important.
First, the job of the construction worker is difficult, but it is not inherently terrible, or harrowing. The job of the soldier, killing another person, is. (This may not be true of some soldiers, but it is unfair to assume that of all soldiers. When calling for war, one is obliged to take on the responsibility of the worst results of the war, and one of those results has to be a soldier, killing another person, and being deeply disturbed by it.)
Second, the death of the construction worker, while tragic, is accidental. The death of the solider is not; he is killed by his enemy, whom he deliberatly went to face. (I'm not claiming this is universally true, only that it will be true in many instances whenever there is a war, and that a supporter of the war must take on responsibility for these instances.)
Dr. Bitch, you're quite right that my philosophy is nearly a pacisifism, but I do believe it leaves open the option of supporting a just war. It does make supporting a war very difficult. I wouldn't accept any philosophy that did otherwise.
Ted, that's a difficult point you make about empathy. However, I don't understand how it is even theoretically possible to empathize with a soldier fighting a war. The mental and bodily states of the soldier are, as far as I can tell, so alien from my everydayness that I couldn't experience them solely through a thought experiment. For me to do so, to truly empathize, would I not have that empathetic experience result in me the same adverse effects soldiers experience? Post-traumatic stress disorder and the like.
Dr. Bitch, I forgot to address your point about the medic. (maybe I subconciously wanted to avoid it)
It is not actually necessary that a medic (nor a soldier) support the war they find themselves immersed in. But, what about a supporter of the war who goes over not to fight, but to be a medic? I have to maintain that such is not a moral action. However, under the exceptions I listed above (one of which was a person performing a role necessary for the war goals), I do believe it is an acceptable action. That is, I don't find it to be immoral.
This leads to another problem; in my view is a moral position required to proselytize for the war, or is the third, amoral position sufficient? It is obviously necessary that the answer is the amoral position is sufficient, because we have found it prudent to leave the power to start wars in the hands of civilians. These people in this sort of third position (politicians, medics, generals), the achievement of the war goals is their duty. They are bound up in it; they interrelate. What relation does someone like Goldberg have to the war? Nothing. Even were he to donate money, it would still not be an interrelation.
I'm not enitrely happy with my answer here, but it's the best I can do at the moment.
It was just pointed out to me that the "chickenhawk" argument is really the same as (a weaker version of) the "Starship Troopers" argument, if you want to change the political coloration of the players around.
I think we've gotten a little too separated from the costs and consequences of war, and that gives the required empathy a weaker voice than it needs; that's a different question than the ethics of maintaining and using a volunteer army.
Asking the army to do things on your behalf while treating them poorly is bad. Pretending that your willingness to have them fight fills *you* full of all sorts of martial virtues is even worse. I'm somewhat torn about everything in the middle: how much do you have to support the army before it's okay to have it employed on your behalf? Which is I guess what Tripp was saying.
I'm not sure exactly what the "Starship Troopers" argument is, but I will admit that if Iraqis were all giant insects, I'd back Jonah without reservation.
Even if they were friendly giant insects?
Or maybe you'd be behind Goldberg, yelling "Eat this one! Eat this one!"
Sadly, chickenhawks can get off pretty easily by saying that they are contributing to the goals of the war in other ways. Think diplomats, arms manufacturers and civilian intelligence analysts. Pundits can claim that they are contributing to the propaganda effort needed to mobilize the country to fight a way they deem necessary.
Of course, I happen to believe that Goldberg himself is a snot-nosed hypocrite and an A-1 coward. He does just want someone else to do the dying for him. But I could be wrong.
I meant fight a "war." Sorry. Will preview next time.
Here's the quote dude plied me with; Heinlein's postulating a society in which only discharged veterans are allowed to vote:
Since sovereign franchise is the ultimate in human authority, we insure that all who wield it accept the ultimate in social responsibility--we require each person who wishes to exert control over the state to wager his own life--and lose it, if need be--to save the life of the state. The maximum responsibility a human can accept is thus equated to the ultimate authority a human can exert. Yin and Yang, perfect and equal.
To address Michael's distinctions - I was comparing soldiers and construction workers, but maybe a better one is between soldiers and the police? That at least begins to address the harrowing/killing people points.
How chickenhawk the believer in the war who supports the killing and dying only as long as it is not them or their's doing the killing and dying.
Let me add some points I don't think I've seen made yet:
If we accept the proposition that "you can only support the war if you would fight in it", then by extension, people who would never agree to fight in any war -- and there are plenty of them -- must have their voices excluded from the debate.
Obviously, someone who consistently refuses to fight is not considering the costs and benefits of entering into any particular war, and his opinion should therefore be ignored.
Also, another pitfall seems to be that we would be obliged to weigh the opinions of men more heavily than women, since men are liable to be placed in more dangerous roles (front line infantry, etc.) should they actually join up.
Finally, requiring willingness to fight as a prerequisite for supporting the war slants the rules against war supporters: You can only support a war at great personal cost to yourself (i.e., by being willing to fight it), but you can oppose it at no cost to yourself. To be fair, we would have to say that only those people who would be willing to fight in a war, if our government asked them to, are entitled to express an opinion either for or against it.
For those reasons, and others, I think Ted got it right.
I think the issue here is the difficulty of supporting a colonial-type "little war" in what is at least supposed to be a republic.
It is acceptable, even traditional, for members of imperial societies to encourage the actions of their volunteer soldiery overseas. Few Imperial Britons (or Romans, or Chinese...) would have been accused by their peers of anything unseemly for cheering on their soldiers in a bit of "wog-bashing". That's what we pay 'em for, dont'cha know?
An American is in a different position. Our armed forces are supposed to "support and defend" our Constitution. We are, I believe, supposed to imitate the Greek or republican Roman tradition, where we are supposed to march out with the other hoplites to defend the city. To a republican the idea of encouraging a war without at least trying to push oneself into the clatter of pikeshafts would seem uncouth at best and craven at worst. The "course of honor" of republican Rome that qualified a patrician to speak with authority on matters of policy demanded field service with the legions. So I suspect that our discomfort for this kind of "war-cheerleading" can be, at least in part, traced back to this republican tradition.
The other factor may well be our discomfort with the "colonial" aspect of this war. Plump civilians safely before their laptops pounding out bloodthirsty prowar screeds reminds us uncomfortably of the Briton and the Roman and the other brutal realities that intrude when a larger, stronger nation beats up a smaller one for reasons other than immediate self defense. It seems so...crass and unsporting, like admitting liking boxing because of the blood and violence.
Let me make clear a distinction here, which I should have made earlier. I see a difference between supporting and advocating a war. In my first posts, I was using "support" with a pre-war temporality in mind, which really means being in favor of going to war.
Once the war has started, there is a certain sense in which one can support the war, yet not be in favor of it. There are things I could do, such as donate, that would certainly support a war, or those fighting a war, which I'm not in favor of. Or, merely hoping that we win is a certain mode of supporting the war. Yet, again, it is not a mode of being in favor of the war.
Put yet another way: if the ultimate necessity to support a war is to volunteer for it, put one's life at risk -- and then truly ultimately, act in a way that entitles one to the Medal of Honor, voluntarily sacrificing one's life heroically for the benefit of others -- than would not the ultimate necessity of opposing a war be to not just demonstrate against it, and speak against it, but to voluntarily put one's life at risk in such opposition, and truly ultimately, sacrifice one's self in a gesture of opposition, such as by publically burning one's self to death?
It's entirely possible I'm only asking this because of a considerable number of medications it's been necessary for me to take in the past few hours, to be sure. And I think it's obvious that I've neither volunteered for the Medal of Honor or an equivalent medal of peace.
There's a significant asymmetry there, Gary.
A. You support a policy of killing others, so you should be willing to die for it.
versus
B. You oppose a policy of killing others, so you should be willing to die for it.
Juan Cole's position is enitirely reasonable and fair in the context
of the whole argument. He starts with the complaint that
Goldberg makes improbable statements and predictions about
Iraq apparently based on zero knowledge - he doesn't speak
Arabic, he's never lived in the region, and it seems likely that
he's never even read any books about Iraq! So he's pontificating
about Iraq without having made even the slightest effort to
acquire any useful knowledge of the subject. And similarly,
he's pontificating about war, and its necessity and value, once
again without making the slightest effort to do any actual work.
It may or may not be immoral; but it's certainly shockingly
lazy.
On the general chickenhawk argument, let's not paint this as
black and white, it's all shades of gray. Almost all of us
demand sacrifices from others that we would be unwilling to
give ourselves, whether it's collecting garbage, teaching a
class of 30 kids, or fighting a foreign war. But still those who
put their lives on the line in combat, such as John McCain and
Max Cleland, surely deserve our respect - and those who
took active steps to avoid such risks, such as Cheney and
Bush, must forever have their courage and judgment of such
serious matters be questioned. In this respect I would also
mention the unprecedented and massively expensive security
precautions which protect Bush wherever he goes - he tells
us we're in a war, he tells us Cheney is fully qualified to be
President - so why exactly is he so loath to expose himself
to even the slightest danger ? To spend millions of dollars
on his personal security is at least unseemly when troops are
dying daily in unarmored Humvees.
Richard, you touch upon the point I've been thinking about.
This discussion is very interesting (and useful) in terms of the philosophical implications of the charge of being a chickenhawk.
From a practical standpoint though, this is the point that matters to me: if you are not physically fighting in a war that you support, then you forfeit the right to accuse people who oppose the war of being driven by cowardice, lack of patriotism, etc.
Simply because your support of the war does not entitle YOU to any assumption of courage, patriotism, etc.
Whatever the philosphical truths to all this are, it's exactly that kind of behavior among certain war supporters that has given rise to the "chickenhawk" charge, and I think it's very apt within at least that strict framework.
if you are not physically fighting in a war that you support, then you forfeit the right to accuse people who oppose the war of being driven by cowardice, lack of patriotism, etc.
Nicely put, Rufus.
I'd like to add this corollary: if you accuse me of cowardice based on a foreign policy disagreement, you forfeit the right to decline the fistfight I'm quite likely to challenge you to immediately thereafter.
I actually agree with most of the people here, but I'm willing to take it one step further, Heinlein style. I propose that:
You cannot vote unless you've served in the military.
That REALLY puts the issue into perspective, right? Why should you have a say in the direction of your country unless you are willing to kill and die for it? I'm being serious here. Why shouldn't people who are willing to put their lives on the line for America have a greater say in what happens to America than those who are unwilling?
The tactical problem for the left with the above argument is the same one that faces the chickenhawk argument, which is that the military tends to be overwhelmingly Republican.
If put to a plebiscite in the military, pre-Iraq war...if ONLY those who would be shot at would have decided...you would probably have seen 70-80% support for war, considerably higher than the population at large.
That is something to think about if you think the chickenhawk argument is an *anti*war argument. In fact, it is not. It means that courage and martial virtues and loyalty to country are *good things*, which is a very different direction for the left (not meant as a bash on the left, just saying).
The military is a tool and can be used appropriately or inappropriately, which is to say that courage, martial virtues and loyalty to country are *good things* when they are used to fix a problem rather than cause one.
I would say that this is the reason for the gap in representation between Republicans and Democrats in the military. Republicans seem to think of *physical* courage, martial values and (as I think the word "loyalty" here is loaded) the ability to take orders from superiors as positive traits regardless of what use they are put to. Democrats see these traits as positive only when they are utilized judiciously.
I may be the only Democrat who reasoned like this, but when I came of military age I considered joining the army briefly until I realized that Republicans might come back into power. Maybe this is because I figured Republicans are more hawkish and I'm not exactly enamored with dying bravely for a (possibly stupid) cause. If I'm going to die bravely I don't want to risk the cause being stupid. .
I'm not willing to put my life on the line for Iraq, neither are most Republicans. My priorities are elsewhere obviously so are most Republicans. If I am a "traitor" than so are they.