Military Credentials Given Too Much Weight in Politics

Service is best as an experience but must at the least be an item of genuine empathy. You don't have to be a veteran to understand the use and misuse of military power. The views and advice from career military can be far worse than that of those who study history but have not served.

McCain's remark that the Obama trip to the Middle East will be OK simply because Obama is taking Hagel and Reed with him is preposterous. The idea that any person's opinion on world affairs doesn't count unless they have military experience is absurd.

My military service has opened my eyes to many things in the world and it gives me a perspective that I think 99% of America can not appreciate. However, it has not made me an expert on politics, strategy, diplomacy or the executive branch... all things that the military needs the Commander in Chief to be, know and do.

The argument that a President should be a veteran goes in the face of history. Our past presidents who were vets have run the spectrum in terms of performance. Simply being in the military does not make a person more qualified to be a Commander in Chief or even in a leadership position in the nation.

Kissinger's World War II experience failed to bring him to his senses in '68 when he intervened and derailed the Vietnam peace process (prompting the South to pull out of the talks) resulting in an additional 25,000 troops getting killed before the end of that war.

People are people. McCain's service no more qualifies him for the job of President than Obama's lack of military experience disqualifies him from the same.

Grant won the civil war and turned out to be what some might call the worst President in our history (in terms of administration accomplishments and policy).

Today's soldiers do not need a President that supports them by damning them to an endless death in a wasted war. No matter who wins the Presidency the troops need a person who will place politics in line with strategic objectives and make all the military effort to change the world be for a net gain.

As things on the ground do and must constantly change, so should the opinion and policy from the politicians. The tragedy is when a politician will not change his stance in the face of the ever changing conditions on the ground. A war evolves: so should the policy and politics.

The power of the office of the president is in the other means the President has to shape world outcome. The military is a very narrow and limited portion of that power and it has been abused and wrongly used by the Bush administration.

America should think of how it should respond to the next terrorist attack and think that if we now elect a McCain that is committed to repeating the mistakes of the Bush administration response we will have learned nothing of the nature of the current conflict and we are in fact sentencing our troops (and our military institutions) to death.

Our focus on Obama should not be his lack of military service as Commander in Chief, but we should focus on who has his ear in terms of military affairs. The potential for Rumsfelds, Wolfowitzs and Feiths behind the curtain should be of greater concern to a country that continually falls for the false argument when contemplating military action.