Front Page  »  

America’s new war: Chicken hawks all over again

March 3, 2026

By DELL FRANKLIN

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin. 

Franklin’s memoir, “The ballplayer’s Son” and “Life on The Mississippi, 1969” are currently on Amazon.

There’s always terrific excitement when we bomb the shit out of somebody. We lounge on our comfy recliners and watch the bombs land and blow up buildings and war facilities on our TVs.

We hear about precision successes without too many deaths while some guy in a tight suit who looks the part and has an American flag pin in his lapel praises our military and our troops and appears grim and stoic as he tries to explain why we are bombing the shit out of somebody, and he becomes surly and maybe nasty if somebody from the press corps pushes too hard for answers. Then he praises the stars and stripes and God before he stalks off with reporters yelling at him.

This new guy actually mentioned this new war as biblical.

There are those in America today pounding their chests and strutting around with grand hubris at our military might and aggression. Boy, are we tough! Remember Operation Iraqi Freedom? At least we had a warm-up and some international cohesion before that ultimately stupid and senseless endeavor.

Remember the cheer leaders? Dick Chaney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle. Every Sunday one or the other was on TV taking turns explaining how we needed to go to war to avoid war in the future and lied like professional white-collar felons cheating on a lie detector test—so smooth and calm and concise and convincing—about supposed weapons of mass destruction.

Like good actors from the Actor’s Studio in New York City.

We’re talking chicken hawks in full flower.

Only Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was a military veteran and he was a pilot and as deranged an egomaniac as Robert McNamara during the Vietnam War. And, after bombing Iraq and routing their 4th- rate army,  there was President Bush on a navy ship boasting about victory when the real shit was just about to torture us and kill American boys for years to come.

Now we have a new group of blowhards repeating the same garbage while lying and obfuscating, and, if needed, bullying anybody having the temerity to question their motives, policy or end game. What we have is a puffed up amateur draft dodger in charge of the most powerful weaponry in the history of the world wasting it on still another stupid and senseless war with nightmare potential.

Chicken hawks all over again. Pledging our supposedly limitless arsenal to at least four more weeks of titanic bombing. The ghastliness of what is to occur is beyond frightening.

Meanwhile, the same old voices are telling us what they think we want to hear—that in the end things will end up just great for America. Only this time we will not put “boots on the ground.”

No, this time we will bomb a despicable country into such submission that eventually the people will overcome a fanatical theocracy backed by a brutally repressive military and form a new government similar to America’s.

Regime change? Democracy?

A policy doomed by history, but who reads history when you have a president who doesn’t like to read books because he already knows the answers by instinct. He admits a few people might die, but of course they’ll die for a just cause and go down in history as heroes.

He is surrounded by office warriors who have no experience in combat or basic military service. They are above all that.

Lindsay Graham and his fellow reckless senators are pounding the war drums. Fox News is in grand celebration. Trump’s non-serving sons are all in while getting richer and richer. Meanwhile, those  rough and tough real estate barons are toadying up to Putin.

Maybe, big blustering threatening Chief Chicken Hawk should have read Colin Powell’s book and the part when the then secretary of defense came out of a meeting with chicken hawks Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and mentioned to highly decorated combat vet and fellow general Dick Armitage something about those guys having “never been in a good bar fight.”

Chicken hawks all over again.

 


Loading...
Subjects:     
Related:


17 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

(Nukes, not Nikes–sorry).


1

What I see:


For several years now, because of their extreme ideology, the Iraqi leaders hate Americans, and have been working extremely hard to be able to NUKE us. Those leaders will do ANYTHING to get what they want. They will hurt, and kill, women who don’t act as the leaders think they should. They will slaughter thousands of civilians who don’t support their anti-American efforts and say so in protests. They won’t let their citizens get information by prohibiting internet access.


If they weren’t stopped by the US and Israel now, what would ever stop them? Not the fortune given to them by Obama so they would please not keep developing those NIKES. That worked well.


In my opinion, this war was a hard choice, but a necessary one. The DEMs will oppose ANYTHING that Trump does.


6

I believe you meant Iranian, not “Iraqi”


Big difference


1

Correct. Thank you.


0

And to think I was hoping to hear about his athletic prowess once again.


3

So Dell, what would be your advice to the president? How would you handle and/or address the situation? A situation that has plagued the Middle East for nearly 50 years, since the Iranian revolution of 1979. Are you troubled by the fact that they ( the Muslim leaders, not the citizenry) of that country fuel terrorist proxies all over the world? Are you troubled by the fact that they, the Iranian mullahs have been enriching uranium presumably for peaceful purposes but by their own admission, they have a bunch of it over 60%, when you only need it at about 5-6% for civilian purposes. Do you think this is all hogwash cooked up by Sean Hannity and Fox News? Not a rhetorical question sir, how would you handle the geopolitical reality that the Iranian regime presents when they chant death to America and have actually taken responsibility for American deaths? Do you think we should just leave them alone, turn the other cheek, and throw up our hands? My guess is you come at this issue with two perspectives. 1, you still haven’t forgiven your country for the debacle of Viet Nam, and 2, you hate Trump so much that if he cured cancer it wouldn’t matter.


22

Imagine what the Middle East would be like today if Carter delt with this regime 50 years ago


15

Jimmy Carter: A decent, good-hearted Christian gentleman who was terribly out of his depth as President. I met Mrs. Carter years ago, she was a lovely lady. He just didn’t have the cold-blooded ability to see the world as it is. He screwed up Iran, Panama, cancelled neutron weapons, wanted to cut the military quite a lot, but fortunately he had Harold Brown as SecDef, and Brown, to his credit, shepherded a lot of critical systems through development to deployment.


https://www.si.edu/object/siris_sil_1089414


And, Mr. Franklin, while you may not like him, Pete Hegseth deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan as an Infantry officer. He’s been in combat, and all the Joint Chiefs have been. I say this should have been done years ago, and I hope the administration will see it through all the way, and I don’t ETS until next year.


Peace.


13

More hogwash from this addled crabby old man. One wonders why they publish such nonsense. Only see one guy pounding his chest n pointing fingers – Dell seems so convinced the those that disagree with him are stupid mouth breathing cowards. Such breathtaking pomposity…


15

Libocrats have ZERO self-awareness.


8

Take a seat, you low-IQ, sloshed HIPPIE DemoNcrat.


Congress has not formally declared war since 1942.


For you pretty over country fools:


Barry Soetoro authorized military strikes in seven countries without specific congressional approval: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan.


“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” -Ronald Reagan, 1964


#NEVERVoteDemoNcratAgain


13

*party over country


-3

The world is a rough and dangerous place which you should be thankful you don’t have to experience. I’m glad you get to enjoy your twighlight in such a wonderful place, free from the reality of how such mundane things, like fuel for your car, show up


19

Right on, Dell.


Be prepared for the nutcases that read this site to pummel your comments into submission.


-10

Maybe this administration is different. We’ll see.


2
1 2