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I hear the teevee talking heads are in a tizzy this morning about a remark made by Gen. Wesley Clark in an interview. Gen. Clark said that riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is not a qualification to be president. He's absolutely right about that and that's not an attack. It's a simple statement of fact.

As Clark also said, we can certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war and as a nation we should be grateful to McCain for fighting in that war, just as we should cherish and honor the 58,000 who didn't get captured and died on the battlefields. But spending five years in a cage in the jungle, where McCain himself admits he received preferential treatment because of his father's status as an admiral, is hardly preparation for the kind of decisions that must be made by a president.

Furthermore, if we're to judge McCain by his military service, then shouldn't it be material that he graduated from the military academy at almost the very bottom of his class and he left the service and went into politics instead, when it became clear that he would never be promoted to admiral because his superiors judged he just didn't have what it takes to be a leader?

If he wasn't fit for a high ranking military command, why on earth should "his record" be used as a credential to prove his fitness for the highest office in our nation? If anything, it proves the opposite.

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Being a bad soldier does not qualify somebody for president.  McCain was so bad, that he was shot down and taken as a POW.  What a loser.  He can't even keep a plane in the air, how do you expect him to run a country?

We can certainly honor his service to his country, sitting in a cage while his fellow soldiers gave their lives for freedom, but we should also honor the 58,000 soldiers that managed to fight, rather than giving up and allowing themselves to be captured.  The enemy treated McCain with love and respect, while they tortured him, because his father was an admiral.  Hardly the kind of preparation that produces a good president.

Furthermore, did you know McCain is stupid like Bush?  McCain graduated low in his class, like Bush.  McCain went to an ivy league military academy, just like Bush, well, almost.  Do you really want another almost like Bush in office?

Although McCain left the service after figuring out a clever way to avoid combat during the war, (like Bush).  Had he stayed, we would have fired him because he was a worthless soldier that had no leadership skills and would never have been promoted.  Unable to hack the military, he left in disgrace and became a corrupt politician.

He wasn't fit to be in the military.  He wasn't fit to be a POW.  He is just like Bush, stupid, slow, low in his class, riding his fathers coattails, and a military failure.  His record speaks for itself.  He rolls over and lets the enemy capture him, then runs away from the military to hide in congress.  Is this the kind of "leader" we want running the country?

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Seuss said:
How much military experience does Obama have again?  How many years did Obama serve in the military, risking his life to protect the constitution?

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Seuss said:
How much military experience does Obama have again?  How many years did Obama serve in the military, risking his life to protect the constitution?

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wait, so the vietnam war was about protecting our constitution?

i'm not knocking mccain's service, but cmon now..

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zappaisgod said:
Just what, exactly, is Wesley Clark right about?

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zappaisgod said:
OK.  He's wrong.

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Seuss said:


My argument is that General Clark is wrong... and that if General Clark is correct, then poor military service is better than no military service.

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McCain isn’t a hero because he was tortured. He’s a hero because he declined an offer by his captors to be released, refusing to leave his fellow Americans behind.

It may not take much effort to get shot down, but it must take a considerable act of will to consign oneself to more deprivation and torture. It must take a level of courage unknown to most to place concern for others above one’s own interest.

#ad#Surely self-sacrifice, courage and loyalty figure somewhere in the calculus for selecting a president.

We can make no similar analysis of Obama, since he hasn’t fought in any wars in his lifetime. But we have been given a glimpse at how Obama responds to external pressures and where he draws the line on loyalty and self-sacrifice. When it comes to family and friends, it seems Obama is first a survivalist.

A few months ago, when the Rev. Jeremiah Wright first came to national attention, Obama was nearly demure when he said: “I can no more disown (Wright) than I can disown my white grandmother.”

He may not have disowned his white grandmother, but Obama didn’t exactly paint a sympathetic — or loving — portrait of her either. He essentially threw her under the bus, saying that she had made racist remarks while he was growing up, a statement that served only to highlight Obama’s own remarkable transcendence.

After several weeks of balancing his professed love for Wright with the controversial statements of his chosen father figure and spiritual mentor, Obama eventually left his church of 20 years. But why then, after all those years, did Obama finally find the door?

What changed was the degree of his self-interest. As long as Wright was helping Obama burnish his bona fides within the African-American community, it didn’t matter that the minister’s rhetorical flights of fancy bordered on paranoid, racist delusion. Only when Wright became a potential obstacle to Obama’s ambition — by saying that Obama was simply behaving as a politician — did Obama show Wright the underside of that very busy bus.

Clark is right that getting shot down doesn’t qualify one to be commander-in-chief. But it is relevant to wonder with whom one would rather share a foxhole.

— Kathleen Parker is a syndicated columnist and author of Save the Males: Why Men Matter; Why Women Should Care.

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Clark is right that getting shot down doesn’t qualify one to be commander-in-chief.

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Which is what this thread is about.

Thank you, have a nice day

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I think some of the criticism of Clark has been overblown; he always repeats that he respects and admires McCain, but doesn't think he has the judgment or executive experience needed to be President. This afternoon on CNN, John Roberts pointed out the most glaring contradiction in Clark's theory of military experience: his enthusiastic endorsement of John Kerry, whose strategic command experience was nowhere near McCain's. Here was the exchange:

    ROBERTS: But when it comes to that same type of qualification, you were very robustly behind John Kerry's military experience...

    CLARK: Absolutely.

    ROBERTS: ... in your speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, where you talked about his experience of being there under mortar fire.

    CLARK: Right.

    ROBERTS: And let's listen to the way that you summed that up.

    CLARK: Right.

    (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

    CLARK: John Kerry's combination of physical courage and moral values is my definition of what we need as Americans in our commander in chief.

    (END VIDEO CLIP)

    ROBERTS: So, you said it's what we need in a commander in chief. And I'm wondering how different was John McCain's experience from John Kerry's?

    CLARK: Well, a lot, because John McCain basically served honorably and well in uniform. He did everything the country could have asked.

    What John Kerry did is John Kerry got out of the uniform. He took a judgment, a judgment I didn't agree with at the time, but he had the moral courage to stand up for himself and oppose the conflict in Vietnam.

    ROBERTS: But where was the executive experience that you talked about?

    CLARK: The executive experience wasn't the issue there, because John Kerry wasn't claiming that he had some special executive experience on national security against George Bush.

So Kerry's military experience was better than McCain's because after serving for four months in Vietnam, he returned to the U.S. and falsely accused his fellow servicemen of being war criminals. I think it's time for Wesley Clark to be ushered quietly off the stage.

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zappaisgod said:
This National Reviewer seems to concur.  She adds some other thoughts, though.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzU4NzNmNzY2ZjQ3MWMxODJiZjRiYjk4YTMzY2VmOTg=

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McCain isn't a hero because he was tortured. He's a hero because he declined an offer by his captors to be released, refusing to leave his fellow Americans behind.

It may not take much effort to get shot down, but it must take a considerable act of will to consign oneself to more deprivation and torture. It must take a level of courage unknown to most to place concern for others above one%u2019s own interest.

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dill705 said:

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Clark is right that getting shot down doesn%u2019t qualify one to be commander-in-chief.

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Which is what this thread is about.

Thank you, have a nice day 

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And my claim is that military experience alone, especially military experience where you were denied higher leadership positions, does not make one qualified for president.

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