By far the most common and silliest debate about the war in Iraq
is the old send-your-child-to-Iraq-or-shut-up sophism. This
so-called line of reasoning maintains that a government only has
the moral authority to commit troops to an armed conflict if its
leaders first pack their own kids off to the front. No amount of
common sense or intelligent rebuttal has silenced it.
The obvious response is that an 18-year-old man or woman is an
adult and can do whatever he or she damn well pleases. A parent —
even a pro-Bush, red-state congresswoman — may encourage her
daughters to join the Marines, but she may not drag Courtney and
Morgan by the ponytail to the recruitment station without violating
a long list of their civil rights. Equally a parent cannot
prevent a son or daughter from enlisting, though he or she
is as anti-war as a CCR record. These simple facts never seemed to
occur to Michael Moore while making his Academy Award-winning
documentary.
That should end the discussion. But it hasn’t. Not only must the
offspring of administration hawks enlist — as the left’s argument
goes — but the commander-in-chief and his advisers must also be
battle-tested.
If progressives had their way the only persons with the moral
authority (never mind the skill or expertise) to lead the Iraq
conflict are those who have fought in the trenches of Babylon,
Afghanistan, or Kuwait. And service in the Texas Air National
Guard, or surviving the attacks on the Pentagon or Twin Towers on
9-11, doesn’t count. Such a policy would likely exclude most of the
current federal government. (Wouldn’t Abu and Osama love that?)
Imagine for a moment if, in December 1941, similar rules applied
and only U.S. congressmen that had children in the military were
allowed to vote on a declaration of war against the Empire of
Japan. Liberals would probably have approved of this. After all,
had such a policy been in place then Hiroshima and Nagasaki would
have been spared the A-bomb. And considering what purists liberals
are about multiculturalism, they would probably relish the fact
that the U.S. would now be steeped in Japanese imperial
culture.
FORTUNATELY, AMERICA’S FOUNDERS were not of the low-grade stuff of
anti-war spokespersons Cindy Sheehan, Jane Fonda, and Howard Dean.
Military service was not only not considered a prerequisite, but
the victory of backwoods Tennessee soldier Andrew Jackson over
Harvard Law School graduate and diplomat John Quincy Adams is now
seen as the beginning of anti-intellectualism in America, says
historian Richard Hofstadter. Had there been some kind of asinine
military service litmus test in place at the nation’s founding, Ben
Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Jay,
George “Father of the Bill of Rights” Mason, and Thomas Paine would
have been ineligible for government service (or in Paine’s case his
views ignored) since not one of them wore the uniform of the
continental army, and not one of them had a child serve. (George
Mason’s son John, a bank president and foundry owner, was appointed
brigadier general of the District of Columbia militia, a unit much
like the contemporary National Guard, which as we know from George
W. Bush’s service in that branch, doesn’t count.) Only Washington,
Monroe, and Hamilton would have been eligible for office.
Apparently, what liberals want is a military junta running the
government. An executive and legislative branch made up of Pattons
and McArthurs. Talk about living in “interesting times.”
But the left’s idiotic ideas would go beyond mere policymakers.
Not only must government officials and their offspring enlist, but
civilians who support the war either have to sign up or shut up.
Such bilge is not only uttered by useful idiots like Michael Moore.
Recently the Washington Post’s magazine browser Peter
Carlson launched a similar attack against Weekly Standard
editor William Kristol:
Kristol’s zeal for battle is truly inspiring. In fact,
it inspired me to think: Maybe he should join the fight. He could
emulate Theodore Roosevelt, who proved his zeal for the
Spanish-American War by quitting his cushy desk job and organizing
his own regiment to fight in Cuba. It was called the Rough Riders.
Kristol’s regiment could include other war-hawk opinion slingers in
the Murdoch empire, guys like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. He
could call it the Tough Talkers.
And British MP George Galloway in a recent debate similarly
attacked Christopher Hitchens. People like Hitchens, said Galloway,
are content to fight to the last drop of other people’s blood. Oh
how he wished Hitch would put on a tin hat and go and fight. Then
he wouldn’t have to debate him. Hitchens, Bush, Cheney, and the
neo-cons put lots of young men in wheelchairs and morgues, said
Galloway.
That’s the best the left can do. Suggesting that Bill Kristol
form a tank brigade and fight insurgents on the streets of Baghdad.
The left really is in danger of becoming a gross parody of its old
self.
When history’s great military thinkers — the Sun Tzus, the
Clauswitzes, the Jominis and Napoleons — created military
strategy, they did not deem it necessary to waste time on whether
the adult children of government leaders joined the armed forces.
They knew that such distractions divide the country and take our
eye off the real target. It simply is not an issue when battling
Taliban forces or Saddam’s Republican Guard. It is a shallow
partisan political ploy and thus has no bearing on military
strategy.
It didn’t take a president who could fight like William Henry
Harrison or Ulysses S. Grant to defeat the USSR and win the Cold
War. Civilians like Lech Walesa, Karol Wojtyla, Margaret Thatcher,
and Ronald Reagan did rather nicely. Perhaps that is the left’s
real grudge.
Here’s a basic civics lesson for the Left: when the U.S.
Congress votes to commit troops, it is speaking for the nation as a
whole, malcontents too, and not just those that happen to agree
with the outcome. The American people voted through their
representatives to take out Saddam Hussein. It is not the pro-war
Americans that are being hypocritical. That description goes — in
George Will’s words — to the Americans who think “the world is too
good for America.”
Christopher Orlet is a frequent contributor and runs
the Existential Journalist website.
