Proud to Be a Chickenhawk

Reasonable conservative Jon Swift explains why he is proud to be a chickenhawk:

I think that the fact that we pro-war bloggers are not in the military makes our voice even more important than the opinions of people in the military. [...] While pro-war advocates who have never served in the military have the necessary detachment to objectively analyze the military situation without being distracted by emotion, people who have served in the military have lost all perspective. Look at people like Jack Murtha, who is "a rank coward" according to one conservative blogger and "a traitor," according to another, or John Kerry, whose reputation will never recover from the attacks of the brave Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Then there are all the generals who came out recently against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's leadership of the War in Iraq, who were accused by the right wing of insubordination after the fact. Clearly, these former military men have had their point of view distorted by their experiences in the military. On the other hand most of the men responsible for the success in Iraq, including Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush, Dick Cheney and the neo-cons on his staff have never served in combat.

Swift has a point. Consider the humble bumblebee. As many people know, it is aerodynamically impossible for the bumblebee to fly. And yet, it flies. It flies because it does not know it cannot!

Swift is far too modest to say so, but as one whose knowledge of history and the reality of combat is utterly superficial, he is one of the fortunate few who, like the bumblebee, is able to bend reality to their will through the power of their own ignorance.