What is a chickenhawk?

James Wolcott explains:

John Podhoretz--now there's a chickenhawk. Back in 2002, he urged Bush to adopt a Wag the Dog policy and spring an "October Surprise" on the Democrats by--well, let's hear it in his own words (via Unqualified Offerings):

"There’s a luscious double trap in starting the war as soon as possible, Mr. President. Your enemies are delirious with excitement about the corporate-greed scandals and the effect they might have on your popularity and the GOP’s standing in November.

"If you get troops on the ground quickly, they will go berserk. Incautious Democrats and liberal pundits will shriek that you’ve gone to war solely to protect yourself from the corporate-greed scandal. They will forget the lesson they so quickly learned after Sept. 11, which is that at a time of war the American people want their political leaders to stand together.

"Your enemies will hurl ugly accusations at you, Mr. President. And at least one of them will be true - the accusation that you began the war when you did for political reasons.

"But that won’t matter. It won’t matter to the American people, and it won’t matter as far as history is concerned. History will record that you and the U.S. military brought an end to a barbaric regime on its way to threatening the world."

Any grownup who could describe the scenario of getting a jump on your political enemies by going to war as "luscious"--who could treat the carnage and misery caused by massive bombing and overwhelming American firepower as a neato trick to pull on those crybaby Democrats--is a wanton clown. Suppose Bush had taken Podhoretz's tip and launched the Iraq war even earlier than he did, and the war went even worse than the one we're waging now because of haste and cynical expedience, what would history have said then? Podhoretz doesn't know, and he doesn't care. Like Richard Perle, he thinks he's got it all figured.