Lawrence O’Donnell wrote an opinion piece in the Huffington Post in which he castigated our neocon and Likudnik empty heads who appear on various TV shows and endlessly advocate not only the failed war in Iraq, but in fact urge for a regional widening of the war by attacking Iran. In a round about way he feels that if you aren’t a military veteran, don’t have a relative in the war in Iraq, and don’t intend to personally participate in horrendously expensive wars that violate many international laws and treaties perhaps you ought to modulate your stridency.

Well over 95% of Americans, including Congress and White House staff, have no personal connection to this war--no relative or friend serving in Iraq. Over 99% of us have made no sacrifice for this war--we have not paid one more penny of taxes nor shed a drop of family blood. One of my military relatives thinks of it this way: "The American military is at war, but America is not at war."

Advocating war is easier when you and your family are not endangered by it. I've reached a Rangel-like breaking point with my TV pundit colleagues who championed the Iraq war and now say we can't leave even if we went there for the wrong reasons. For every one of them, I have a simple question: Why aren't you in Iraq? Or why did you avoid combat in your generation's war? The one unifying characteristic that all of us men in make-up on political chat shows share is fear of combat. Every one of us has done everything we can to avoid combat or even being fitted for a military uniform. Just like George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Dick Cheney, we are all combat cowards. It takes a very special kind of combat coward to advocate combat for others. It's the kind of thing that can get you as angry as Charlie Rangel.

This brought a great deal of discussion around the internet, especially among the wrongwing blogotariat, who deeply resent being called out as cowards, especially when everyone knows they are fighting the war of ideas against IslamoMexicoFascism, and are contributing mightily now. (“Mom! Fix Stove Top stuffing with dinner, OK?”)

In response, Kevin Drum posted an article in the Washington Monthly the next day in which he opines on the O’Donnell op-ed:

Regular readers know that I agree wholeheartedly with him that it's time to get out of Iraq. But this attitude is still pernicious. When nations decide whether to go to war — or whether to continue an existing war — everyone in a democracy is entitled to a view and everyone is entitled to be taken seriously. But if non-veterans, by virtue of having never served, are denied the moral authority to advocate in favor of war, their views will quite rightfully be entirely marginalized. After all, why should anyone care what they think if, as O'Donnell suggests, their non-serving status predetermines their only honorable opinion?

I'm not willing to leave decisions on the use of military force solely to combat veterans, but that's where this sentiment leads us. It leads to a place where military veterans are put on a pedestal and anyone who hasn't served is ipso facto less qualified to hold an opinion on isssues [sic] of war and peace than someone who has. Let's not go there.

It’s a fair point, and one that should be considered, given full weight, because of Mr Drum’s other sensible and thoughtful opinions.

I don’t see O’Donnell’s opinion as giving preference to allowing our foreign policy to be dominated only by military veterans. To establish such a precedent would be anathema to the very foundations of our Democracy. This is not Sparta, was not established as such, and such a view is directly counter to what the Founders intended. Living in an age of standing armies considered as the personal property of kings and used as internal police forces as well as instruments of state policy, they clearly identified the pernicious nature of such a force. They chose instead to plan a country defended by a citizen militia, wherein those who voted and had a say in the practical governance of their nation served to defend it.

In the world we live in today, such a force is impractical for primary military defense, and America has had to modify this concept so that the citizen-soldier provides the second line of defense.

Yet this still does not answer the problem poised by O’Donell’s op-ed, which is that we’re not faced with veterans advocating war in Iraq, Afghanistan and (suddenly) Iran. We are involved in two foreign wars of choice, one likely justified as a counterattack demanded by the brutality of September 11th, and the other a war of choice brought on by the demands of Mr Bu$h’s ego and the desire of Mr Cheney’s business friends and cronies to control all the oil in the Mid East.

Much has been written over the years about the peculiarities of Mr Bu$h’s ego and personal insecurities, so there’s no need to rehash the subject. And while it might be a good thing for America’s future welfare to have free and easy access to foreign oil there is less of an argument to support killing people in aggressive wars in order to maintain the exorbitant and obscene profits of Big Oil.

As Tristero points out at digby’s blog,

I don't object in general to people who advocate war who haven't served. I object to the specific situation we have in regards to Bush/Iraq. I strongly object to the chickenhawks for their warped attitude in regards to this particular war. It is not merely that they are advocating war without having suffered the consequences. It is their loopy, ungrounded-in-reality enthusiasm for this war that I find revolting, an attitude that minimizes war's horrors rather than focusing on them, as any responsible person would.

Chickenhawks rarely if ever try to make the case that as awful as the sufferings of war are for everyone involved, reluctantly, this war is necessary. That is because there simply is no case to be made, never has been. Instead the chickenhawks are happy to go to war; rather than acknowledge that sometimes war is a solemn, unavoidable obligation, we hear about Grand Global Strategies or that Saddam was working with al Qaeda, or war is some kind of of post 9/11 therapy.

What is key in this argument is that when Likudnik agents like Kristol, Kagan, Feith, Podhoretz, Malkin, Coulter, Wolfowitz, Perle, Hadley Adelman, Bolton and others demand preemptive war in the Middle East they are not primarily serving US interests, but those of another nation. And while that nation is more or less an ally, their interests are not always in agreement with ours. Going to war in service to another country is a decision that should be made by those who have fought, bled, held a dying friend, or who have suffered the loss of a loved one in war, and not by people whose ideology places America second.