In a column from last week that has been approvingly cited elsewhere, New Republic writer Jonathon Chait questions the validity of the notion that a veteran has a special moral claim to comment on foreign policy, asking:

One of the important ideas of a democratic culture is that we all have equal standing in the public square. That doesn't mean stupid ideas should be taken as seriously as smart ones. It means that the content of an argument should be judged on its own merits.

The left seems to be embracing the notion of moral authority in part as a tactical response to the right. For years, conservatives have said or implied that if you criticize a war, you hate the soldiers. During the Clinton years, conservatives insisted that the president lacked "moral authority" to send troops into battle because he had avoided the draft as a youth or, later, because he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

So adopting veterans or their mourning parents as spokesmen is an understandable counter-tactic. It was a major part of the rationale behind John Kerry's candidacy. The trouble is, plenty of liberals have come to believe their own bleatings about moral authority. Liberal blogs are filled with attacks on "chicken hawk" conservatives who support the war but never served in the military.

(snip)

The silliness of this argument is obvious. There are parents of dead soldiers on both sides. Conservatives have begun trotting out their own this week. What does this tell us about the virtues or flaws of the war? Nothing.

Or maybe liberals think that having served in war, or losing a loved one in war, gives you standing to oppose wars but not to support them. The trouble is, any war, no matter how justified, has a war hero or relative who opposes it.

Sheehan also criticizes the Afghanistan war. One of the most common (and strongest) liberal indictments of the Iraq war is that it diverted troops that could have been deployed against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Are liberals who make that case, yet failed to enlist themselves, chicken hawks too?

To answer Mr. Chait's question, yes, absolutely. I don't happen to care for the word "chickenhawk", as it conjures up an association with pederasty, preferring instead the word "coward", but liberals like myself who support sending our troops to fight the remnants of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan without being willing to volunteer myself are as cowardly and gutless as Cheney, Bush, Hitchens, and the rest of the neocons, all of whom became more vociferous in support of an aggressive foreign policy once they were safely out of harm's way.

In fact, I have less of an excuse. When the President commenced hostilities with the Taliban in October, 2001, I was 38 years old. I probably wouldn't have been the optimal material for a recruit (think "Private Pyle" from Full Metal Jacket in terms of body type), but older men than I volunteered. I'm single, with no children, and the type of legal practice where I could afford to suspend operations for a time without hurting my clients. And I supported our fight in Afghanistan, as did most of the rest of the human race.

When Pat Tillman volunteered for duty, almost a full year after 9/11, and months after the Taliban had fled into the mountains, he wasn't much younger than I, and he was in an occupation that had a very narrow timeframe for him to excel. He went anyways, and never came back. Tillman was a hero; I'm not.

And that is why the story of Casey Sheehan resonates, and why his mom's vigil has so captured the public's imagination. Casey Sheehan did not have to die in the service of his country, but he chose to do so. I have no idea what mixture of idealism and calculation went into his decision, but he made a choice to put himself in danger, because our democratically-elected leaders told him that his country needed him. And as a result, he's dead.

Now that his life is over, his mother, like so many other parents who've gone through the hell of having to bury a child, asks why he had to die. Was it to punish Iraq for the deaths of September 11? There's no evidence Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. To protect the "homeland" from WMD's? Iraq, as it turns out, didn't have any. To fight "Islamofascism"? Saddam was one of the most repugnant dictators who ever lived, but he was kind of weak on the "islamo-" part of the equation, and anyways, the constitution that's being drafted doesn't seem that much different than the laws governing Iran or Saudi Arabia. And, of course, Al Qaeda is more powerful than ever.

I'd say Ms. Sheehan has a right to some answers, as do the rest of us. And yes, Mr. Chait, giving greater moral weight to the opinions of those, like Ms. Sheehan, who've paid the ultimate price, while disregarding the views of those who claim that in spite of this being the most important cause of their generation, they don't have to sacrifice, is only fair. Realizing that such a cost must be borne by people like the Sheehan family is the only way one the "content of an argument" should be judged on its merits.