Not Your Sweetie

Chickenhawk Bush on dodgy ground

Those who served and suffered find strange bedfellows in Iraq
protest, writes
AARON HICKLIN
The Herald
AMERICANS have a word for men like George W Bush and Dick Cheney.

In the parlance of Vietnam veterans Mr Bush and his vice-president are
"chickenhawks", men who dodged the draft and now cheerfully dispatch young
Americans to war. Not without irony they note that the most hawkish and bellicose
government in living memory is filled with men who never saw battle themselves.
Of the senior members of the US administration, Colin Powell, the secretary of
state, is the single exception.

For many military men and women in America, the discrepancy has become a
rallying call all the more potent because those who avoided the draft were
invariably the sons of the wealthy and well-connected. Bush himself managed to
stay home during Vietnam by getting a coveted slot with the Texas National
Guard, only to go awol after completing his training as a fighter pilot, effectively
making him a deserter.