Tom Cotton’s ‘Chickenhawk’ Taunt at Iran FM Demeans Jeb Bush, GOP Field [View all]

http://www.juancole.com/2015/05/cottons-chickenhawk-demeans.html

Tom Cotton’s ‘Chickenhawk’ Taunt at Iran FM Demeans Jeb Bush, GOP Field
By Juan Cole | May. 2, 2015

So freshman senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) got into a Twitter slamming match with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif this week. Zarif spoke at New York University on Wednesday and asserted that if there were a UNSC deal on Iran’s nuclear energy program, international sanctions would be lifted whether Tom Cotton liked it or not.

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But by bringing up the issue of chickenhawks, Cotton is doing the Republican Party no favors. George W. Bush avoided serving in Vietnam by taking cover with the Texas Air National Guard, and http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/908800/dan_rather_got_it_right%3A_george_w._bush_did_go_awol”> he appears at some point to have gone AWOL. Bush could at any time have volunteered to go serve in Vietnam (it didn’t have to be as a pilot), but did not. His vice president, Dick Cheney, had five student deferments even as his peers were being drafted and sent off to die in the jungle. He said, when asked, that he had had other things to do. Bush and Cheney sent over 4000 US military personnel to die in an illegal war of aggression in Iraq, but had never seen a battlefield themselves.

Jeb Bush also did not volunteer to serve in Vietnam when he turned eligible in 1971. He registered for the draft but was not called up. Over 58,000 US military personnel died in Vietnam, but the Bush boys, despite never having met a war they didn’t adore, never set foot there. The Bushes of Connecticut in this generation no more fight their own wars than they do their own shopping. Is Cotton calling Jeb Bush a coward?

Scott Walker dropped out of Marquette in spring of 1990 and could have joined up then. He sat out the Gulf War. While at Marquette he had run for student office and was found guilty of cheating by starting his campaign a week earlier than the rules allowed.