Chickenhawk
Chickenhawk is a colloquial term having three very different meanings.
Definitions
Biology
1. Chickenhawks were originally two species of hawk known to prey on barnyard fowl - the Red-tailed Hawk and the Cooper's Hawk. This usage is obsolete.
Sexual slang
2. Chickenhawk was a slang term, derived from the original sense, used to refer to homosexual men who engage in, or seek to engage in, acts of pederasty. In homosexual slang, a "chicken" is a young boy, and since the hawk is a bird of prey, a "chickenhawk" would be a grown man who "preys" on young boys. This use is considered to be vulgar slang.
Political epithet
3. The term chickenhawk is used in a political sense to refer to a politician who is strongly pro-military intervention but has not himself served in the military. It is said to have been used in this sense as early as 1988 but its first appearance in the media appears to have been by the syndicated journalist Richard Roeper in a Chicago Sun-Times article of November 15, 2000, in which he criticised what he called George W. Bush's "chickenhawk stance on the Vietnam War." However, the term appears to have been used before then by opponents of Dick Cheney during campaigning in the bitterly contested 2000 US Presidential election, in which he strongly criticised the Clinton Administration's handling of military affairs.
Its use was intended to highlight the fact that many of those who were most strongly interventionist (or just militarist, in the eyes of some) had not themselves undergone combat duty or at least military service despite being eligible by age to have done so. Here, chicken denotes cowardice while hawk has long been used to refer to politicians who favor an aggressive foreign policy (see Hawkish). More specifically, many thus labelled are Baby Boomers who did not serve in the Vietnam War. This usage was reinforced during and after the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and (especially) Iraq, in which many of the most prominent supporters of both wars had had no history of military service.
The users of the term are predominantly political radicals, mostly left-wing, but also including some paleoconservatives (signs reading "Pluck The Chickenhawks" have been observed at anti-war rallies held since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began). The epithet is also sometimes hurled by Baby Busters, or, more broadly, members of Generation X, who perceive inherent hypocrisy in Baby Boomers leading a nation into war after having promoted pacifism in their younger days.
On April 28, 2004, Senator Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat from New Jersey, used the term in an attack on Vice President Dick Cheney on the floor of the United States Senate.
The association between chickenhawks and war may be at least tangentially related to the author Robert Mason's 1983 bestselling autobiography, Chickenhawk, about the author's wartime service in Vietnam during which he flew 1,000 helicopter missions. Mason published a sequel in 1993, Chickenhawk: Back in the World, covering his difficult return to civilian life. Both books were well received, with the first widely being regarded as one of the best books written about the war.
Famous people who have been labelled chickenhawks
These people have been named "chickenhawks" by various sources. Most of them did not go to the Vietnam War. Some of them were absent from the Korea War or World War II. A few of them were not drafted during peacetime. These accusations are subjective. Some other politicians, including Bill Clinton, also did not serve in the military, but since they are not considered "hawkish," the "Chickenhawk" label has not been pinned on them, even by their harshest critics.
