Max Blumenthal's post, based on his interviews with attendees at a recent College Republican Convention, made me realize how major this issue could become. Tactically, as well as substantively -- and it is so good and rare when those considerations converge.
Below find the start of a list. My loosely researched conclusion is that the people listed are all Chicken-Hawks. They've been brass-balls willing to send working class men and women volunteers to kill and die -- but they have risked nothing themselves. Call it The DisHonor Roll.
It would be a good thing if this roll were expanded and fact-checked and circulated to various constituencies, at home and in Iraq and Afghanistan -- do our troops know who sent them to kill and die?
One question is this: have any of the people on this list risked anything for what they profess to believe? An equally important question is this: do they have close family members in harm's way? If the answers to these two questions are--damn little and damn few, that matters. In the heroic days conservatives long for there was a ruling elite--but in those days, the ruling elite went out to war as well. These Chicken-Hawks claim this "War on Terror" is of existential significance to us as a nation and a civilization. If they really believe that, why aren't they and their progeny out there on the front lines like the leaders of yore they so admire?
THE DISHONOR ROLL
George W. Bush (air national guard-you know the rest)
Dick Cheney
Donald Rumsfeld (military, no combat)
Alberto Gonzalez
Condi Rice
Donald Feith
Zalmay Khalilzad
Stephen Cambone
Paul Wolfowitz
Stephen Hadley
Scooter Libby
David Addington
Richard Perle
Ken Adelman
Richard Pipes
Bernard Lewis
Victor Hanson
Max Boot
Frederick Kagan
Norman Podhoritz
Bill Kristol
Fred Barnes
Brit Hume
Bill O'Reilly
Sean Hannity
Ann Coulter
Rush Limbaugh
Check these names out. Is it really true? None of them or their loved ones have done anything? And how much longer does this DisHonor Roll get?