The Cowardice of the Chickenhawk

“Bok, bok, bok, bok” – the universal language that all Chickenhawks understand.

I've met several Chickenhawks in my life, and they're all the same: all they can do is run their mouths but they never, ever join the military. Everyone else is supposed to, though. They can only cheer and give directions from the sidelines. “Throw the ball here! Now throw it over there!”

I used to offer drive them down to the recruitment center but they never took me up on the offer. Cowards and losers, all of them. Terrified to join the military and get in the fight. They were all mouth.

In fact, the bigger the mouth the cheaper the punk.

When I was a teenager I read Gone With the Wind, which actually is a great novel. There were Chickenhawks portrayed in it by author Margaret Mitchell, ones were always ready to give loud unending advice about how the war should be run and what mistakes they were convinced the generals were making but they never, ever made their way to the front lines (or even the back lines, which would have made them REMFs). And since art imitates life…

It's very easy to give advice when sitting safely on the couch on their fat asses, far, far from any danger whatsoever.

The most dangerous men are the ones who don't threaten or just talk, talk, talk like the Talking Heads/Chattering Classes on TV.

I'm only concerned about men who do, not just talk. The ones who do nothing but run their mouths - I've always held them in utter contempt. There is nothing to them - all hat, no cattle. They’re like balloons – empty on the inside.

Big mouths but no balls. All of them.

I’ve occasionally wondered about the psychology of cowards. In every case I’ve found they are ashamed of themselves and so cover it up with narcissistic grandiosity. “Pride is shame’s cloak,” said William Blake.

Such people always want to replace their shame with pride, the way those who feel they have been humiliated or their lives have not worked out, always want to do - which they delude themselves can be done by talking and pointing to other people to deflect attention from their cowardice – not by doing anything courageous themselves.

I went to high school with a kid who got killed in the invasion of Grenada. He was a helicopter pilot and enemy fire went straight through the window of his helicopter (I still have the yearbook with his picture it). He left a two-year-old daughter behind.

Another helicopter was filming his helicopter when it got hit, so I saw it spin out of control and go down on TV. I thought, “I just saw a kid I went to high school with get killed. Shot in the face.”

I also know a man who fought as a mercenary in the former Rhodesia. He told me one of the men in his platoon was bragging how he going to kick everyone asses in combat but when the first shots were fired he turned and ran straight back to camp without stopping.

Chickenhawks – who again are all cowards - rationalize this helicopter pilot’s death by saying “He made the ultimate sacrifice” – which is something they have no intention of doing.

We should take up a collection to buy these clowns a spine – and some testicles.