For other uses, see Chickenhawk (disambiguation)

Chickenhawk is an epithet used in United States politics to criticize a politician, bureaucrat, or commentator who votes for war, supports war, commands a war, or develops war policy, but has not personally served in the military, especially one who opted out of a previous war on dubious grounds. Generally, it is not a label applied to essentially "dovish" leaders who support defensive wars, "humanitarian interventions," or UN operations.

The term is generally used in the ad hominem circumstantial context: since a so-called "chickenhawk" has not served in war, the implication is that that person is ill-equipped to support a war. This is usually argued to be the case because of the "chickenhawk's" lack of experience with the true costs of war, or the "chickenhawk's" perceived hypocrisy and lack of moral standing to force others to risk death or injury when they were not willing to risk their own life and limb when given the chance.

Chickenhawk is a compound of "chicken" as in "coward" and "hawk" as in "pro-war," thus a chickenhawk is someone who is in favor of a war as long as someone else does the fighting and dying. While the term may have been used as early as the WWII era, its use was revived circa 1992 in a newsgroup post (first recorded USENET mention: [1]) and later in the printed media on November 15, 2000 article by journalist Richard Roeper in the Chicago Sun-Times. He criticized what, in his opinion, was George W. Bush's "chickenhawk stance on the Vietnam War." The term may have been used before that date during campaigning for the 2000 U.S. Presidential election—opponents of Dick Cheney, who never served in the United States armed forces, were upset by his criticism of the Clinton Administration's military policies.

The term "chickenhawk" has also been used for decades in the homosexual community to refer to older gay men who cruise for very young gay men or gay boys. Given that it has a military and a homosexual context, when it is used to label non-veteran advocates of military action it has the capacity to be a vicious double entendre.

Previously, the term "war wimp" was used, most notably by former Congressman Andrew Jacobs (Democrat–Indiana), a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and the Korean War, who labeled whom he saw as "overzealous" supporters of the Cold War as "war wimps," if they had not served in the Korean War or the Vietnam War.[2]

The association between chickenhawks and war may be related to the author Robert Mason's 1983 bestselling autobiography, Chickenhawk ISBN 0140072187, about his wartime service in Vietnam during which he flew 1,000 helicopter missions. Mason published a sequel in 1993, Chickenhawk: Back in the World ISBN 0670848352, covering his difficult return to civilian life.

Although he did not use the word "chickenhawk", Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman noted the phenomenon in his time:

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.

The term highlights that some of those who take interventionist (or militarist) policy positions have not themselves served in combat, or have used influence to avoid military service. Many politicians from the Baby Boomer generation, who avoided serving in Vietnam have faced this label, including George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The term has also been applied to writers and broadcast commentators who advocate aggressive military actions although they have no personal military experience. Examples include radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh and military historian Victor Davis Hanson.

War supporters who have not served in the military have made a number of counterarguments that, they claim, expose fallacies in the chickenhawk argument. Among these points are

• The Founding Fathers explicitly designed the government of the United States of America so that the military would be subordinate to the will of the people through their elected representatives and the President of the United States of America who are answerable to the ordinary citizenry.[3],[4]
• The idea that a veteran would have an inherent moral superiority with regard to military matters is baseless because a veteran could be guilty of war crimes.
• If only veterans can advocate war, then only veterans have the experience and moral standing to oppose war.
• That civilians who are explicitly targeted in war should have the right to voice their views on the conduct of war regardless of whether or not they have served. [5]
• That a majority of the voting public is ineligible or unlikely to serve in combat, as it includes women, the elderly, men over age 50, the disabled, and homosexuals. Using service as a litmus test for voicing a viewpoint would invalidate the views of most of the nation.[6]
• That Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt proved capable leaders of the military in wartime, despite having no personal military experience.
• That extending the Chickenhawk argument into other American political debates would mean that only women should comment on abortion, only crime victims on criminal justice, and so forth.
• Double standard. Some claim that the use of the term is not applied equally, notably as to President Bill Clinton who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War but ordered US soldiers to fight in numerous armed conflicts. Others claim that Clinton is not vulnerable to the claim of being a chickenhawk (although some have made that claim) because he was not a military hawk, but, they argue, he seemed to believe in practicing military restraint.
• Irrelevance. Many have argued that the American voters first proved that they do not care about a politician's wartime service or lack thereof since Bill Clinton was elected and re-elected president by defeating decoratedwar heroes despite his complete lack of military service and allegations of intentional avoidance of the draft.

• Chickenhawkcards Profiles of some alleged chickenhawks.
• Chickenhawk? by Michael Kelly
• "Armchair General" by Christopher Hitchens in Slate
• A fighting chance by Jonah Goldberg
• article: "Brain of the Chickenhawk", by Lew Rockwell