As suspected, my criticism of Beauchamp has invited waves of “chickenhawk” epithets in my email box. The charge is as vacuous as ever. But if it helps, let’s note that a very large number of current and former military have been criticizing him too. For a brief rundown, see here.

Meanwhile, I thought I could answer a lot of the same emails by excerpting something I wrote six years ago amidst allegations over Bob Kerrey’s service.

Let’s put down one instant-myth before it becomes established as the “enlightened” way to discuss this Kerrey story. It is not wrong to judge Bob Kerrey for what he did in Vietnam. It is not wrong to judge him, even if you weren’t there and you’ve never been in combat or even in uniform. This formulation, already repeated a thousands times on the airwaves, is a moral and intellectual cop-out offered to either stifle discussion or to assuage guilt.Indeed, the idea that you have to walk a mile in someone’s shoes — or combat boots — before you can form an opinion of him contradicts everything we know about law and justice. Judges, juries, and lawyers are usually disqualified if they are too close to the events in dispute.What’s also interesting about this “who am I to judge” line is that judging is precisely what the anti-Vietnam hysterics have been doing for over a quarter century. Will we be hearing the same sort of equivocation about William Calley and the massacre at My Lai? Perhaps we will hear about the horrific casualties Calley’s company received in the days leading up to that tragedy. Indeed, perhaps with all of this eagerness to “weigh all the facts” we will finally hear the Left accept some responsibility for driving ROTC programs from American campuses to the extent that the army had no choice but to make sub-par men like Calley officers in the first place. But I doubt we will hear anything like that.Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think anyone should be quick to judge or that we shouldn’t give greater weight to those who served than, say, people like me. Still, the suggestion that the “fog of war” is some sort of impenetrable barrier that prevents us from ever drawing judgments is absurd and dangerous. Besides, if that was the case, we wouldn’t be able to elevate heroes any more than we could denounce criminals. Valor and villainy would be concealed behind the same curtain, something neither the war’s supporters, nor its detractors would want.