“Little Mac”; McCain’s military service doesn’t count

“Little Mac” Wesley Clark reportedly had an IVAW moment today – by that I mean that no one’s military service counts except what I (Clark, DeWald, Clifton Hicks, Adam Kokesh, et al.) say counts. With a hat tip to Hot Air, National Review’s Byron York recounts the conversation;

Everybody admires John McCain’s service as a fighter pilot, his courage as a prisoner of war. There’s no issue there. He’s a great man and an honorable man. But having served as a fighter pilot — and I know my experience as a company commander in Vietnam — that doesn’t prepare you to be commander-in-chief in terms of dealing with the national strategic issues that are involved. It may give you a feeling for what the troops are going through in the process, but it doesn’t give you the experience first hand of the national strategic issues.

If you look at what Hillary Clinton has done during her time as the First Lady of the United States, her travel to 80 countries, her representing the U.S. abroad, plus her years in the Senate, I think she’s the most experienced and capable person in the race, not only for representing am abroad, but for dealing with the tough issues of national security.

Allah Pundit writes;

Hey, remember four years ago how we needed a vet at the top of the ticket since only people who’d seen the horrors of war could appreciate the human cost of sending men into battle? Late-breaking caveat: Having seen the horrors of war isn’t quite as valuable experience-wise as picking out White House china patterns.

Ed Morrisey writes;

Hillary Clinton has five years on the Armed Services Committee, less than a quarter of the tenure of John McCain, who has been on the panel since 1987. Not only has she never served in the military, neither did her husband, on whose administration she supposedly soaked up all of this military readiness. In terms of strategic experience, which is what the ASC addresses, McCain runs laps around Hillary Clinton.

Furthermore, it’s not as if John McCain sat silently in the Senate on foreign policy and national security issues. As he notes sometimes ad nauseam, McCain came out early to demand a change in post-invasion strategy and tactics in Iraq. He understood that the nature of the conflict had changed to a counterinsurgency and foresaw the strategy necessary to conduct it.

Funny how military experience during a war isn’t as important now as it was four years ago when the Democrats were trying to undermine a US victory in Iraq with the head chickenshit from our last war. Wesley Clark didn’t mention that his experience wasn’t worth squat while he was running for the Democrat nominee, either.

Visiting 80 countries on your own private jet, with your own private staff isn’t leadership experience. Leadership experience is a vocation in which you make split-second decisions that involves the lives of tens, maybe hundreds of people you know intimately. Being First Lady or one voice in a crowd of a hundred people doesn’t give you leadership experience – it gives you the power of bullshit.

For Wes Clark and those other flag officer puds on the conference call to demean themselves is one thing, but to demean the hundreds of thousands of the rest of us who are running our own corners of this nation based on our experience as military leaders is downright shameful. They all need to go back to their Myrtle Beach (or is it Hilton Head, now) country clubs, put on their high-waisted polyester trousers and their white loafers and STFU.

Category: John McCain/Sarah Palin, Politics, Support the troops