The Crux of the "Chickenhawk" Issue
A lot of bandwidth on these here Internets has been spent debating the "chickenhawk" question. Namely, is it valid to criticize healthy, military-age war supporters (paging Ben Shapiro and every college-age douche nozzle with a clam shell necklace and a copy of Toby Keith's Shock'n Y'all in their Jeep Grand Cherokee) for not enlisting in the military to fight in Iraq for the cause they have been so vocal in advancing?
The answer, of course, is yes, and yes for one simple reason. The war in Iraq is teetering on the brink of disaster due to a laundry list of Bush administration fuck-ups and the criminal stupidity (not to mention stupid criminality) of the whole venture, but one of the biggest problems is the massive, critical recruiting shortfall in the armed forces. The current troop strength in Iraq is already insufficient for the task (whatever the hell it may be) and the numbers are likely to go down rapidly as the military runs out of ways to manipulate the over-taxed regular army and stretching the active duty tours of reserve and National Guard units. Back home, reasonable young people are not lining up for the opportunity to catch shrapnel in Tikrit, even for that juicy scholarship package because, let's be honest, what good is going to frat parties if you have to shotgun your beers through a hole in your neck? Because there are so few fresh troops ready to send to Iraq, it is far more likely that the U.S. will pull out before "finishing the job" (a phrase just as meaningless and deadly now as it was thirty years ago) than is the possibility of maintaining a strong presence or increasing the troop numbers. As such, if one were a fervent believer in the U.S. mission in Iraq, and one were able-bodied and in the right age bracket to volunteer, one would be OBLIGATED by their convictions to go to Iraq and help shore up the U.S. military position. To ignore the shortage of soldiers is to abet the eventual withdrawal of American forces.
Bottom line: since a shortage of soldiers is the most serious threat to continued American occupation of Iraq, those who believe that Iraq still needs a mess of occupation have no plausible excuse not to join the fight there. Period.
The answer, of course, is yes, and yes for one simple reason. The war in Iraq is teetering on the brink of disaster due to a laundry list of Bush administration fuck-ups and the criminal stupidity (not to mention stupid criminality) of the whole venture, but one of the biggest problems is the massive, critical recruiting shortfall in the armed forces. The current troop strength in Iraq is already insufficient for the task (whatever the hell it may be) and the numbers are likely to go down rapidly as the military runs out of ways to manipulate the over-taxed regular army and stretching the active duty tours of reserve and National Guard units. Back home, reasonable young people are not lining up for the opportunity to catch shrapnel in Tikrit, even for that juicy scholarship package because, let's be honest, what good is going to frat parties if you have to shotgun your beers through a hole in your neck? Because there are so few fresh troops ready to send to Iraq, it is far more likely that the U.S. will pull out before "finishing the job" (a phrase just as meaningless and deadly now as it was thirty years ago) than is the possibility of maintaining a strong presence or increasing the troop numbers. As such, if one were a fervent believer in the U.S. mission in Iraq, and one were able-bodied and in the right age bracket to volunteer, one would be OBLIGATED by their convictions to go to Iraq and help shore up the U.S. military position. To ignore the shortage of soldiers is to abet the eventual withdrawal of American forces.
Bottom line: since a shortage of soldiers is the most serious threat to continued American occupation of Iraq, those who believe that Iraq still needs a mess of occupation have no plausible excuse not to join the fight there. Period.
posted by matthew christman at 9:48 PM
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