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—Dick Cheney, the Southern Center for International Studies, August 2000

You suppose Clinton is waiting for Rumsfeld’s call?

29

Operation Chickenhawk: Episode One

Unlike some of my fellow Democrats, I hope the Bush campaign runs that footage of him strutting around the USS Abraham Lincoln in his flight suit. I hope they run it over and over.

You remember. The dramatic tailhook landing.

The President sitting in the S-3B Viking right beside the pilot who actually landed the plane.

Ari Fleischer saying that Bush couldn’t arrive by helicopter because the Lincoln would “be hundreds of miles from shore” and impossible to reach except by jet.

The later reports explaining that, in fact, the Lincoln was so close to port that it had to go back out to sea, make lazy circles, and, finally, be positioned so that the cameras couldn’t see the San Diego skyline looming behind him while Bush made his speech.

All that was fine by me. I just pray Bush uses the footage in his ads. That’ll give us the excuse to run this response. Assume for a second that the Democratic nominee is John Kerry.

OPEN ON: QUICK CUTS OF: TAILHOOK LANDING ON USS LINCOLN, BUSH IN COCKPIT GIVING THUMBS UP, MINGLING WITH SAILORS.

KERRY (VOICE-OVER)

You know, dress up and make believe are fun.

BUSH SWAGGERING AROUND IN THE FLIGHT SUIT, WINKING, ETC.

KERRY (V.O.)

But years ago George W. Bush had a chance to be a real fighter pilot in a war. Instead he let his dad get him into the Texas Air National Guard, passing over the other guys ahead of him in line. Then he went AWOL for a year.

CUT TO: FOOTAGE OF LIEUTENANT KERRY IN VIETNAM.

KERRY (V.O.)

This is me in Vietnam. Sorry the footage is so grainy. At the time, it was a little too dangerous to get a camera crew in.

CUT TO: KERRY IN FULL PIRATE SUIT. BIG PIRATE MUSTACHE. BIG PIRATE HAT. PARROT ON HIS SHOULDER.

KERRY

Yes. Dress-up and make believe are fun. But we need a real president with real plans to protect our nation, to get our economy going, and to fulfill the promise of our great country. Isn’t that right, Petey?

PARROT

AWWWK! That’s right!

ANNOUNCER (V.O.)

Paid for by the Costume Designer’s Guild of America.

It’s amazing, actually, how many hawkish Republicans found a way to avoid military service. Every neo-con I can think of, for instance. Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol—the guys who were really, really gung-ho on Iraq.

Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, even said it wasn’t such a bad thing if we had a tough fight in Iraq. “In a certain way, the willingness to stick it out would be impressive,” he told the Washington Post.

In my book Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, I wrote a little flight of fancy called “Operation Chickenhawk,” placing some prominent Chickenhawks together in a squad in Vietnam.

There was Rush, who lied publicly about why he didn’t go. He said he got a physical deferment because of a football knee, when in fact it was for a pilonidal cyst—a congenital incomplete closure of the neural groove at the base of the spinal cord. A pilonidal cyst can cause discomfort, but somehow Rush’s dad managed to fight WWII with a pilonidal cyst. You know, Greatest Generation and all.

There was Phil Gramm—student and teaching deferments. George Will—student deferment. Clarence Thomas was 4-F. So was Pat Buchanan, who had a “bad knee.” Though today he’s an avid jogger.

Dan Quayle’s father got him into the Indiana National Guard. Maybe that’s why George Sr. picked Quayle in ’88—reminded him of his boy.

Then there’s Newt—grad school. But you gotta love him, because Newt’s told us that he regrets not going to Vietnam because he “missed something.”

In the original “Operation Chickenhawk” Ollie North drags the chickenshit squad kicking and screaming into battle and ends up single-handedly taking on a company of NVA regulars as his men cower and ultimately frag him. North loved the story