What Did You Do in the War, Dad?

There are good arguments to be made against the war in Iraq. Calling its supporters “chicken hawks” isn’t one of them. Yet to judge from an appearance I recently made on a C-SPAN call-in show, it’s a favorite of the antiwar crowd. As someone who thinks that ending the brutal rule of Saddam Hussein was a good idea, but who doesn’t have a Medal of Honor on my mantelpiece, or even a dusty uniform hanging in the closet, I am, of course, fair game.

Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who had student deferments during the Vietnam War, are much higher-profile targets of these venomous attacks. Even President Bush -- who served, but not in combat -- is on the receiving end of such criticisms from Democrats who accuse him of being AWOL during his term in the National Guard.

This has led to a familiar round of mudslinging about who did what in the Vietnam War. Although of enduring fascination to baby boomers, this debate is of considerably less interest to those under 50, who make up more than 70% of the population. To those of us who came of age after the draft ended in 1973 (when I was 4 years old), all this finger-pointing seems about as relevant as Jefferson Airplane.

But lately, the argument about chicken hawkism has gotten much broader than Vietnam. Its advocates seem to think that leaders (not to mention pundits) have no right to favor the use of force unless they have served in combat themselves. Oddly enough, many of those making this point are “chicken doves” who haven’t served either. Have they thought through the implications of this argument?

Consider a close analogy: I favor vigorous policing even of dangerous, high-crime areas where police officers might get shot. Does this make me a hypocrite because I’ve never worn a badge? Should all decisions about law enforcement be made only by cops? If so, mayors, judges and civil liberties lawyers would be out of business. Put this way, the chicken-hawk line is an absurd proposition, but that’s where the logic leads.

Imagine what would happen if this rule were conscientiously applied to defense policy. Fewer than 10% of Americans have served in the military (about 27 million out of a population of 280 million), and an even smaller number have been in combat. If we left all national security decisions in their hands, we would cease to be a democracy.

The antiwar advocates probably would not be too happy with the policy outcomes if we followed their implicit advice. Underlying the chicken-hawk argument seems to be an assumption that war is hell and that anyone who has ever experienced it will never send anyone else off to fight. As if every former bomber pilot were a George McGovern. But remember that Curtis LeMay was a bomber pilot too. If we had left military decisions in his hands during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the likely result would have been World War III.

Today’s caricature that all soldiers are pacifists at heart is no more accurate than the older cliche that they’re all warmongers. Like the rest of us, soldiers have differing opinions on the use of force. Some opposed the Iraq war; many (I would guess most) supported it. Their opinions ought to be given due consideration, and their lives should never be endangered cavalierly or unnecessarily, but in a democracy the final decisions have to be made by civilians, many of whom inevitably aren’t military veterans.

Of our three costliest wars, two were fought and won under the direction of presidents (Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson) who had never served in the armed forces. The third was won by a president (Abraham Lincoln) whose military experience was limited to about 90 days of noncombatant service in a state militia. Other wartime presidents without any wartime service include James Madison and James Polk.

More recently, Bill Clinton -- who, like Cheney and Wolfowitz, had a student deferment during the Vietnam draft -- sent U.S. troops into harm’s way in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq. A few conservatives complained that a “draft dodger” had no moral right to be commander in chief, but he was vociferously defended by Democrats who said, in the words of a certain senator from Massachusetts, “We do not need to divide America over who served and how.”

John Kerry’s advice was right in 1992, and it’s right today. How ironic it is, then, that many of those who were outraged to hear Clinton labeled a chicken hawk are now the very ones tossing that ugly slur around.

Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times.