may be the best argument I've seen made against those who claim you need to serve in order to have an opinion on the war in Iraq.
I think this is my favorite paragraph:
To be clear: the entire notion of "Chicken______" is absurd. A free society should act on the assumption that citizens can reason about military issues without personal military experience, just as they can reason about any issue without needing a doctorate degree to do so. If you can't trust citizens to reason intelligently outside of their personal fields of expertise, you've ceded political control to the experts. A strong insight into human nature gives citizens the capacity for reasonably wise decisions on all subjects. And insight into human nature doesn't require military discharge papers
As Mr. Kern writes, you don't need to have personal experience to have an informed opinion. I can tell you from experience you don't really need a PhD to do anything. Except teach, and apparently that isn't even required if you hold the right pedigree and personal beliefs.
I can live with people being against war, and this war in particular. Telling people they need to have been soldiers to support this war is a ridiculous argument to make. And the left claims they're the intellectuals?
(With a nod to Ramesh Ponnuru at the Corner for the link)
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