I agree with your basic assessment of this dust up. It’s nothing. But Wes Clark is a loon. And he himself suggested Kerrey was more qualified than Bush due to his in-theater experience. So Wes is stepping in his own poo.

Your arguement can be exploded out to a higher level. One need not have military experience to comment on the military or have informed opinions about it.

One need not have played professional baseball to comment on the MLB or have informed opinions about it.

One need not be black to comment on race issues in America.

And so forth.

The beginning of old saying is flawed: “Before judging someone, walk a mile in his shoes.”

But the conclusoin is correct, “Because then you’ll be a mile away, and you’ll have his shoes.”

Nonetheless, McCain is far more qualified to run our military than Obama, being shot down, notwithstanding. But at least in Wes, now Obama has a friend besides Bill Ayers who can successfully bomb something.

Firstly- Your “McSame” argument that McCain is going to operate the military as Bush is specious reasoning. It’s much like the EADS discussion Needl put forward recently. It’s A + 5 = Bird nest. There’s no sense in it. It’s a false argument that propagandists put forward hoping that merely saying it will make people believe it.

It’s absurd to think McCain would run the military the same as Bush. To say so is to ignore or to admit ignorance of very recent history. You make this comment after McCain stated last year “Rumsfeld was one of the worst Defense Secretaries in history”. And in 2004 he said, “The problem we have here is that the Pentagon has been reacting to initiatives of the enemy rather than taking initiatives from which the enemy has to react to.” Not perfect English, but hardly a problem for Obama who thinks there are 57 states and sees dead people in the crowd and can’t keep Nazi death camps straight.

Does that sound like a guy who is going to follow Bush’s military playbook? No. Saying he will run the military the same simply because he won’t abandon the good people of Iraq is like saying a Princess Cruise and the Griswold’s trip to Wally World are the same because they are both vacations.

McCain is definitely better equipped to run the military than Obama. Joe Klein of the liberal propaganda rag Newsweek, (quoted here in the last post- Newsweek, not Mr. Klein) went into great technical detail in an attempt to portray McCain as unclear about Iran after McCain blamed their president Ahmenijad for Iran’s bad behavior. His point? Ahmenijad is a loud-mouthed puppet and really the Mullah’s are in charge. No kidding. McCain understands that. Anyone who’s studied Iran knows that. Ahmenijad is the face of the regime, and speaking about him is shorthand for “the terror-sponsoring mullah-cracy of Iran”. Meanwhile, Obama said in basically back-to-back appearances that Iran wasn’t a threat (highlighting his ignorance of asymmetric warfare) and that’s he’s “always said Iran is a grave threat.” Spaceneedl will tell you Obama was treated unfairly by McCain and the media for that gaffe. (Speaking of “boo hoo”.) And then he’ll call Cindy McCain a trampy party girl who makes money off of dead kids who drank too much. That’s the “fairness” Spaceneedl’s striving for I guess.

Obama also didn’t know that natives of Afghanistan and natives of Iraq speak different languages. That’s a pretty serious sign that Obama’s not in Kansas anymore. (Where mere days after a tornado he said 10,000 people died in said tornado when the actual number was 12! He’s a bit of an improve artist.) McCain has a better grasp of world affairs and of military affairs and of basic geography. Ergo- a better commander in chief of the military.

“Nearly destroyed the military’s capability?” Really? Surely you’re not one of those blog commenters that makes statements like that without factual backing. What’s your basis for this statement? Have you recently checked on the ratio of deployed to non-deployed troops? After 30 seconds on Google, with sources like the Guardian and the Baltimore Sun I discovered that 66% of our military are NOT currently deployed.

BTW- That’s a most impressive laundry list you have there. I’m not going to bother fact checking the rest of it because none of your examples have any relevance to your basic thesis. Firstly, not one of your examples of basic governmental failures are “foreign policy”. Foreign policy are things like unconditional negotiations with terror masters in Tehran and Syria, not logistical failings like delayed armor. I’m not sure if you’re suggesting that Bush and company sat down in a foreign policy meeting and said: “Yes. We’ll delay armor.”

The bungles you’re referring to are not a result of Bush and his cabinet. I know from first hand experience in working within the military bureaucracy that the logistical troubles of managing the military date back decades. Maybe you could look at the delays caused by the democrat controlled congress in funding, like the Speaker who just credited Iran for reduced violence in Iraq… They couldn’t be at fault for spending delays. It’s 100% pure heartless Bush.

Who’s not running…

And the $100B in repairs- Well golly. Perhaps we should keep our military hardware in climate controlled warehouses behind velvet ropes so they don’t fall into disrepair. Why don’t you fact check yourself on the cost of military hardware repair in the same period of peacetime operations. If it’s as much as a tenth as wartime repairs, we’re doing pretty damn good.

STOP THE PRESSES! “Recruitment and retention of quality applicants” is difficult during wartime? Maybe that’s why FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson all supported the draft to man their wars. The military built up by Reagan and Bush (and sabotaged by Clinton) were enough to fight two fronts without a draft.

But don’t let those facts get in the way of your propaganda. Keep going with your argument. You’re only making the point conservatives have been shouting for decades. If you want a sampling of government run medical care, look no further than Walter Reed. “How to take a bad practice and share it with the entire populace” -by Barack Obama. The government is more efficient than the private sector at exactly nothing.

And regarding the GI Bill, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that your point is backed by totally unbiased press and Obama’s oral fountain of truth. Nonetheless, here are the facts, in case you’re interested:

In WWI the veterans were treated like Alpo and their revolt in the peacetime years between WWI and WWII nearly resulted in a coup against FDR which, if successful, would have resulted in US support for the Nazi’s in WWII. FDR put forward the GI Bill to avoid that horrid scenario and mass unemployment of the returning draftees from WWII.

What liars-by-omission Webb and Obama aren’t mentioning is that today, we have an all-volunteer military which means the armed services have to compete with private sector jobs. Our veterans of today make way more money in relative inflationary terms than the WWII vets made, including enlistment bonuses of reaching $40K in some cases. The average is somewhere above $10K. Did you get that when you signed on with your job? These bonuses are separate from EXISTING EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS FOR MILITARY FOLKS.

The current GI Bill is worth $38K. Obama and the democratic congress panders to its base with marked fiscal irresponsibility. Expanding the GI Bill is another example of buying votes. (Bush was an avid proponent of buying votes with government give-aways too.) Webb wants to cover four full years of tuition plus a ONE THOUSAND DOLLAR A MONTH STIPEND.

Now, whether you agree with his plan or not, those very relevant facts have been dishonestly left out of the discussion. Of course, explaining the relevant facts reduces the size of the club to beat McCain with.

And here’s a questions: What if a vet doesn’t want to go to college? He or she is screwed. How about just handing over Webb’s $118K as a check to veterans when they’re done? Could you support that? (Of course, then it wouldn’t go into the 99.6% liberal institutions of post-secondary education.) Webb is discriminating against those vets who want to start a family instead of going to college. He’s discriminating against military vets who want to paint houses or portraits, and against poets, and musicians, and the vet who wants to start a bakery without college.

Firstly, no one ever brought up in this post what I think, sthat’s irrellevant to the topic.

Secondly, these three statements are not in conflict:

McCain has been critical of Bush in prosecuting the war. Very vocal and very consistent for years. He wants a different approach.

McCain feels the war should be continued until won.

Voting to approve funding the war (and therefore the troops) is not a vote of approval for the strategy and tactics.

Those statements are not that nuanced. If you can’t see that, then you plain can’t see.

For the record I can’t stand Fox News. Never watch it. Nor Rush, et al.

This statement might be technically true, “Iraqis of every ethnicity will continue to resent and attack Americans at every opportunity.” A handful from every ethnicity may do that. But that belies the truth of the ituation. And it is far far different than this statement, which is true technically and matches the spirit of what is happeneing on the ground: “Many thousands of Iraqis are glad that the Americans have done what they did, and continue to do what they are doing, and have begged us to stay until their home is safe and their liberty ensured.”

Again, I don’t know what Fox says. But I know what Michael Yon says, and the many (often liberal) non-military folks from our government whom are over there today, showing them how to run a country: schools, utilities, electricy plants, road maintenance systems, telecom infrastructure, and so on.

There is nothing I can disagree with in your statement here: “But that doesn’t happen at the barrel of a gun. If a true democratic and open system is to happen in Iraq it will be at the Iraqis terms and on their schedule.” And luckily we’re not holding a gun to their heads. We’re holding guns to killers heads and AQ’s head. But they need our guidance. It sounds like we’re babying them, but as an infant democracy, they need us. They need the bureacractic systems in place.

There was a rumor rampant in the Iraqi military that the US had “air conditioned armor” and “chill pills” got mistranslated to mean pills that eliminate heat if you took them. And the local military wanted both. We’re facing comical misconceptions like this. Meanwhile, we’re facing major governmental issues like what it takes to run the government. Hence we’re rethinking the banishment of all Baathists. Some were puritanical about keeping Shia in their place, but others just had government jobs.

To me, and I believe this is what McCain thinks too, “to win” in Iraq is to be able to leave without leaving a vacuum of power… That is, to have a self-sufficient government that can defend itself against aggressors like Iran and snuff out the AQ infiltrators in their ranks. McCain isn’t expecting Thomas bin Jefferson to come along and set it all right, but to win means having the functions of government up to snuff- from garbage collection, to electricity production, to local police, to schools, to the military, to an Iraqi FBI to prevent the new water system from being blown up. It also means working checks and balances in a democratic-esque government. And mostly to observe core human rights. If five years after we are no longer the local enforcers in Iraq, if little girls are still in school, and the schools show Israel on the map, and national, regional, and local elections are still happening, I’d say we achieved our mission. This is what McCain means when he says “win”. I think.

The UAE just forgave $7B of debt which is a huge step, beyond the $7B… it’s a show of support. I think the world wants us to stay. Iran is the only state neighbor that wants to stir up trouble in Iraq. The world is united against Iran. The world is united in its hope for Iraq. The world, and many Americans believe going into Iraq was a mistake. Fine. Leaving it to become an agent-state of Iran (like Syria and Hezzballah) would be larger mistake. It’s our mess to clean up.

Yes this war is very expensive. And yes, oil is a huge factor. If all we wanted was the oil, we would carpet bomb and make Iraq the 51st state. But we don’t operatre that way. Our smart-bombs are actually brilliant. And they are about $1 mil per. That’s the way we roll. Not perfect, but our enemies don’t care about perfect. We try for perfect.

It’s also very fair to say that if oil wasn’t involved we wouldn’t so involved. But if oil weren’t involved, then Iran and Iraq and Libya, and so on, wouldn’t be able to afford nuclear technology. Wouldn’t it be great if we could paratroop into Sudan like the responsible adult on the planet and make them all play nice? Wouldn’t it be nice if the UN wasn’t a paper tiger? If Sudan saber rattled with chemical weapons and a nuclear reactor, we’d be on them, and the genocide would be over. But frankly, they are not that strategic to us.

But wh ois supporting the government of Sudan with UN support and in-country support? China. And the next time you see a “No Blood For Oil” sticker, thin kabout this scenario: China secures oil reserves from Venezuela, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Russia, and all those nasty African dictators with whom they are so cozy, and China guarantees trade deals with them if they pinch our oil supplies. The Chinese government has proven time and again that it has no soul. Its citizens are a resource with right similar to that of grain and cattle. They run organ farms in their own country for the rich and party elite. They certainly don’t care about the Sudanese, or Shia liberties in Iraq.

China is globe-trotting to nations with little power and giving them the choice: You’re with us or with Taiwan. And the little countries bail on Taiwan and no longer recognize the tiny democracy’s legitimacy. (That issue is going to come down to China and the US sitting across the table form one another, and China is going to ask us haw many American cities Taiwan is worth to us. Their answer will be “4-6 Chinese cities.” But I digress.)

China would be more than happy to make similar demands of the world’s oil producers. Until we figure out how to power our nation without oil, a steady source is a strategic requirement, like steel, cement, food, water, and so on. But we’re not taking it. We’re ensuring its delivery to an open market. If Iraq stayed out of OPEC, all the better.

“No Blood For Oil” is a snappy bumper sticker. Mine would be “Ensure strategic resources can remain on the global market and while we’re at it, topple a sadistic autocrat and then test drive democracy in a Muslim country besides Turkey, which is regressing into a theocracy even while they beg to be in the EU, and hopefully create a friendly supplier.” Or something to that effect.

I hope that helps.

Thanks Steve. You haven’t won me over, but you answered my question.