chickenhawks

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Oct 4 13:16:31 PDT 2002


At 9:40 AM -0700 10/4/02, joanna bujes wrote:
>>So does it then follow that if the Iraq war was overseen stritcly by vets
>>who had killed thousands of people in combat, you'd be less angry about the
>>prospect of invasion, given that the hypocrisy factor would be gone? If so,
>>then Sharon's promise to get into the mix, if need be, shouldn't upset you
>>too much since he served in the Israeli military and saw combat. Can't call
>>him a hypocrite.
>
>No of course not. Don't be silly.

Israel depends upon conscription (of women as well as men), which the USA abolished in 1973 (selective service registration still exists, though, requiring almost all male US citizens and some non-citizens, including illegal aliens [!], to register -- <http://www.sss.gov/FSwho.htm>), so the relation between Israeli citizens and the state is different from the relation between US citizens and residents and the state.

The question, in any case, is not whether those who are combat veterans make better or worse political leaders than those who are not.

In the United States, we have a term "draft dodger," which is mainly used by the Right to make it sound as if those who object to the war (or even question tactics used in it) are "cowards." The term obscures the distinction between those who courageously resisted the draft and otherwise publicly opposed the war out of moral and political convictions and chickenhawks who really dodged the draft merely for individual gains using family influence while supporting the war and even compelling others to kill and be killed. Why should we let them get away with it? -- Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>



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