Wow , did you really miss the point that badly?
yeah, except for this part:
Secretary of Defense William Cohen felt that Clark had powerful allies at the White House such as President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that were allowing him to circumvent The Pentagon in promoting his strategic ideas, while Clark felt he was not being included enough in discussions with the National Command Authority, leading Clark to describe himself as “just a NATO officer who also reported to the United States”.[53] This command conflict came to a ceremonial head when Clark was not initially invited to a summit in Washington, D.C. to commemorate NATO’s 50th anniversary, despite being its supreme military commander. Clark eventually secured an invitation to the summit, but was told by Cohen to say nothing about ground troops, and Clark agreed.[54]
The flag lowered at the United States Consulate General in Hong Kong in respect for the victims of the embassy bombing[55]Clark returned to SHAPE following the summit and briefed the press on the continued bombing operations. A reporter from the Los Angeles Times asked a question about the effect of bombings on Serbian forces, and Clark noted that merely counting the number of opposing troops did not show Milošević’s true losses because he was bringing in reinforcements. Many American news organizations capitalized on the remark in a way Clark said “distorted the comment” with headlines such as “NATO Chief Admits Bombs Fail to Stem Serb Operations” in The New York Times. Clark later defended his remarks, saying this was a “complete misunderstanding of my statement and of the facts,” and President Clinton agreed Clark’s remarks had been misconstrued. Regardless, Clark received a call the following evening from General Hugh Shelton who said he had been told by Secretary Cohen to deliver a piece of guidance verbatim. "Get your fucking face off the TV. No more briefings, period. That’s it."[56][57]
These things happen for a reason. And Clark, being a Democrat under a Democratic President, can’t hide behind the current meme of “I tried to tell Rumsfeld no and he fired me!”
Apparently. Fight my ignorance, please.
Really?
One command of a flying squadron is definitely executive experience, but I’d say it’s on par with being mayor of a large town or a very small city. If he had been a base commander or a ship commander, I’d be more convinced, but as it is, I reject the premise of the OP that “McCain was an effective military leader.” Turning down a billet as an O-7 makes me a little suspicious of his executive temperament.
On the flip-side, Clark went over his bosses’ heads several times while in uniform – I no longer accept his judgment on military matters.
There was a thread recently about McCain inviting Obama to go to Iraq, and Obama inviting McCain to go the “inner city.” I guess that whole thread was meaningless. As you say, a POTUS “is never expected or even allowed to risk his own life.”
I’m curious now though, what form of courage has either man evinced that fits the sort of courage we expect from POTUS? At least Hillary plopped out, and raised a baby. Still the wrong form of courage?
IMO the point is that the republican party had gotten so far off track that it tolerated and rewarded the kind of horrible dishonest tactics Bush/Cheney/Rove used in the 2000 election to defeat McCain. They allowed a respected member of their own party to be smeared and shit on in a way that should be completely unacceptable.
I know politics is a hard game but at some point certain tactics should be rejected because those very tactics reveal what we need to know about the person’s character. Sadly McCain, for the sake of the party tolerated and forgave Bush and proceeded to support him, and in recent months has begun to reverse almost every disagreement he had with this admin.
I agree with you about Clark.
I haven’t made McCain’s command experience to be more than it was - it is part of his record, only a part, and something that ought to be considered. But a couple of other things have to be mentioned - McCain was off of the promotion lists the entire time he was a prisoner. While his colleagues moved forward with their careers, he sat in a cell.
And the physical trauma he was left with from his experience almost cost him his flight status when he returned - he had to fight to get it back, both legally and through excruciating rehab. It was enough to get him a command tour. But he had those poor annual physicals - again from the trauma of those years in Hanoi. In the end there wasn’t any further he could go - the job he had after that was a liaison position and the O-7 job similarly was not a command post.
Criticizing McCain for not becoming an admiral isn’t much on the mark - there ain’t many of them around and lots of people with very honorable service never get close to that.
Oh, come on. Both sides play this game. Remember the unattributed story that Bush used Coke? That would have been a huge deal had it been corroborated. And people went bananas trying to show that he wasn’t a good Guardsman. And when it was John Kerry who had the military background and the medals, that was sure repeated over and over again as a qualification for Commander-in-Chief, wasn’t it? Remember “John Kerry, reporting for duty!” at the Democratic convention? And we learned over and over just how many medals he had, and how heroic he was, and how that made him battle tested and ready to command the nation’s military.
The fact is, both sides probe the other for weakness, and try to play on that and play up their own strengths. And partisans on both sides pick up the talking points and run amok. That’s how campaigns are waged.
Frankly, I’m surprised that Obama has managed to make his past a non-issue. He’s obviously admitted to transgressions much more severe than any other presidential candidate ever has - he’s admitted to snorting coke, to smoking pot, to perhaps doing other drugs, and to being a general ‘hell raiser’, which probably means there are other crimes and misdemeanors in his past.
I think it was smart of hiim to admit this all right out of the gate and defuse it, and that’s no doubt why he’s getting a pass. There’s a lesson in there for other candidates - go on the offense with the stuff in your closet, and control the narrative. If Obama had tried to hide his past, and it was discovered by Republicans, it would probably be a big damned deal now.
But anyway, both sides play the game. If the next election has a Democrat like Clark going up against a Repubican with no military service, you can damned well bet that the Democrats will try to make that an issue.
I think it was a big mistake for Kerry to make such a big deal about his service. Bring it up yes, but the issues of the day should remain central.
Sure. I think we have tolerated too much bullshit from both parties. It’s time we told the campaigns and the pundits to STFU about the personal non issues and playing on our emotions instead of trying to stay relevant.
I sure hope not. As part of an overall picture sure, but the fact is military service doesn’t seem to make someone a better and/or more effective public servant.
There are, at least two, defining moments in John McCain’s military career. The first was when he was on the USS Forrestal. A fire broke out around his plane, he could have ejected to save himself, but chose otherwise to avoid spreading the fire. He crawled out on the fuel probe and jumped clear. He was running back towards the fire when the first of several large bombs went off and blew him into uncontentiousness.
The second moment was when he was captured. The Vietnamese knew that his father was in charge of all the naval operations in, and around Vietnam at the time. They offered him an early release, he declined, they insisted. He, literally, spat in their face. They hung him from the ceiling until his arms came out of their sockets.
This is a man that is willing to put the country before his own interests. How far back does one need to look to find a president that did this? Kennedy?
Ooohh…McCain once had enough sense to jump off of a burning object. How incredible.
The title for this thread should be changed. It’s inaccurate on two counts. Wesley Clark is not part of “the Obama campaign,” and he did not “attack McCain’s military service.”
I am amused, however, by the self-delusion and the oblivious hypocrisy of some of the righties in this thread. We’ve got people swiftboating Wesley Clark in a thread falsely accusing the Obama campaign of the doing the same to McCain.
As always, conservatives believe that military service is only honorable for Republicans, which means they don’t really respect it at all. They just think it provides a handy hammer to bash liberals with.
Which does not mean he would make a good president. A square is a rectangle, a rectangle is not necessarily a square.
The code phrase is “my service in Vietnam”. Check his speech Saturday, for example, to the Latino elected officials.
Oh, Latinos! Which position did he take this time?
Absolutely, they do. I’m not going to give the Democrats a pass on this, any more than the Republicans.
I don’t care whether somebody has had military service, because I know that military service alone is not strong indicator of performance. Our best presidents, and our worst, have been in the military.
I’m saying that we, as voters, should stop giving a rat’s ass when they trot out these stupid meaningless indicators.
Since he was talking to them, he’s for immigration reform again.
Would that he had remained uncontentious.
That’s not accurate, even according to his own account as told in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S.News & World Report. He thought it over for several days, weighing both the political and military consequences. The two factors that convinced him to stay were that (1) he didn’t want to be used as a propaganda tool and (2) the military Code of Conduct prohibited it.
Suddenly “The Cat” said to me, “Do you want to go home?”
I was astonished, and I tell you frankly that I said that I would have to think about it. I went back to my room, and I thought about it for a long time. At this time I did not have communication with the camp senior ranking officer, so I could get no advice. I was worried whether I could stay alive or not, because I was in rather bad condition. I had been hit with a severe case of dysentery, which kept on for about a year and a half. I was losing weight again.
But I knew that the Code of Conduct says, “You will not accept parole or amnesty,” and that “you will not accept special favors.” For somebody to go home earlier is a special favor. There’s no other way you can cut it.
I went back to him three nights later. He asked again, “Do you want to go home?” I told him “No.” He wanted to know why, and I told him the reason. I said that Alvarez [first American captured] should go first, then enlisted men and that kind of stuff.
“The Cat” told me that President Lyndon Johnson had ordered me home. He handed me a letter from my wife, in which she had said, “I wished that you had been one of those three who got to come home.” Of course, she had no way to understand the ramifications of this. “The Cat” said that the doctors had told him that I could not live unless I got medical treatment in the United States.
We went through this routine and still I told him “No.” Three nights later we went through it all over again. On the morning of the Fourth of July, 1968, which happened to be the same day that my father took over as commander in chief of U. S. Forces in the Pacific, I was led into another quiz room.
“The Rabbit” and “The Cat” were sitting there. I walked in and sat down, and “The Rabbit” said, “Our senior wants to know your final answer.”
"My final answer is the same. It’s ‘No.’ "
“That is your final answer?”
“That is my final answer.”
John McCain, Prisoner of War: A First-Person Account, U.S.News & World ReportNo spitting. No hanging arm sockets. Just a methodical thinking process.
It is McCain who makes his POW history the focal point of his campaign commercials. If he does that, then I think it’s fair game to question the relevance of that experience.
That is such unmitigated nonsense. ALL military service is honorable, except for those whom are dishonorably discharged or otherwise conduct themselves in a manner unbecoming.
For instance, I never begrudged John Kerry’s politicization of his military service, but I do think that he got Purple Hearts for what amounted to scratches which imo, cheapens them somewhat. Then to protest and toss those medals over the Pentagon fence, only to trot those medals out later in his life when it was politically convenient was just…smarmy to me.
The McCain camp reaction to Wes Clark’s statement is a feint, a head fake.
It is designed to provoke the Obama camp into saying something to the effect of “we can’t be held accountable for everything our supporters say about our opponent.” Which the McCain camp will trot out every time a Swiftboat attack comes out against Obama. Obama’s alternative is to defend the gist of the statement, which may be accurate on its merits - honorable service is not executive experience - but still a foolish point for Team Obama to make prominent.