The venerable Dick Cheney has said so many memorable things in his long career that have been long digested and discussed, but my most unforgettable quote was regarding the Vietnam War, that Southeast Asian conflict that he unflinchingly supported.
When asked why as a young man he did not serve in what he constantly described as a noble conflict and used every college deferment he could muster to stay out of it until that approach dried up, after which he impregnated his wife to bring the issue of potential service to a close, his answer was short and to the point:
"I had other priorities."
Cheney's history on Vietnam is a textbook paradigm for the master plan of the chicken hawk:
1) Take a strong pro-war posture accented by tough rhetoric;
2) Delegate the action to others to carry out.
The paradigm model came back into vogue the other day when William Kristol, a stellar team leader on the chicken hawk team, was referring to President Barack Obama's current difficulties, accented by the effort to push through the health care bill he has long sought.
Kristol, in the toughest Cheney tradition, recommended that vigilant Republicans use the shark approach and attack at the sniff of blood. You attack when you smell blood in the water.
The foregoing is an example of the chicken hawk on steroids, primed and ready to send others into battle. Use the toughest rhetoric from an old John Wayne movie followed by a prompt, "Okay, you guys go get 'em!"
Cheney provided us with an example with his now legendary one percent solution. When weighing whether or not to use American military power, if a one percent possibility exists of aggressive action you ask no questions and promptly attack.
Halliburton's most famous executive had better straighten out law enforcement people in seeking to implement his one percent solution. Numerous arrests have been made through the years in various bars throughout America.
These arrests related to bar patrons being arrested and jailed after explaining the Cheney one percent rule of, "When that guy looked at me and moved his arm I knew he was gonna hit me but I slugged him first."
As for Kristol, his credentials as a chicken hawk on steroids in the noblest Dick Cheney tradition extend back to the days when he rooted President Richard M. Nixon on while he bombed Cambodia.
That fervent rooting occurred, in the best chicken hawk on steroids tradition, far away at Harvard University where student deferment recipient Kristol used tough John Wayne rhetoric to urge on the action.
Then there was that one instance where "hit 'em again and hit 'em hard" Vietnam War deferment columnist and commentator George Will belittled then Vice President George H. W. Bush for emitting a "tinny sound" like that of a "lap dog."
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