Chickendoves

[posted by Callimachus]

Over the course of the war I've taken my whacks and what has come to be called the "chickenhawk meme." I assume you all know the one I'm talking about. If not, click a link, any link.

Part of what fascinates me is those who really push it -- those who go blog-to-blog and troll up the comments sections with demands the blogger enlist (even bloggers who are physically incapacitated or already veterans). Are they aware of the logical consequences of the position they outline? Do they ever lift their heads up enough to see past the situational ethics?

Oh, I know the answer, too. And since I disagree with the ethical underpinnings of the chickenhawk meme in the first place, I don't want them to live up to it, even when the chickenhawk comes home to roost.

But it is amusing to ask them to at least go through the motions of being true to their morals, and since blogging is essentially about amusing yourself, here are two suggestions:

• Anyone who is fond of writing about America's "defeat" or "failure" in Iraq should have to makes such pronouncements, not from the safety of a keyboard in his home, but out loud, standing on a tabletop in a bar full of U.S. Army and Marine veterans of the war.
  
  
• Any American who advocates an immediate and precipitous withdrawal of American forces from Iraq should have to take into his home one Iraqi family who inevitably will be driven from its home by the subsequent chaos.