Gregory Kane: Let's require presidents to have prior military service
By: Gregory Kane
Examiner Staff Writer
June 28, 2010
Read more at the Washington Examiner:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Let_s-require-presidents-to-have-prior-military-service-97269404.html#ixzz0s9yNZFLnAm I the only one confused about the entire Obama-McChrystal affair?
Gen. Stanley McChrystal was America's guy leading the war effort in Afghanistan. He made a comment in Rolling Stone magazine that President Obama didn't like. According to news reports, McChrystal criticized a comment that Vice President Biden made about the war effort. A leaked memorandum hinting that the war would be lost without 40,000 more U.S. troops being sent to Afghanistan also raised Obama's hackles.
The argument goes that Obama, as commander in chief, had no choice but to fire McChrystal. And that's where my confusion comes in. I'm still wondering exactly why Obama is the commander in chief.
Yes, I'm at it again. I've said this once, and I've said it again: Barack Obama has no business being commander in chief of America's armed forces. I know it. You know it. He knows it.
And lest anyone think I'm just picking on Obama, I'm applying the same criterion across the board: No one who hasn't had military experience should be sitting in the White House.
I've come to the conclusion that maybe I'm funny that way. The first presidential campaign I have any memory of is the one between Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Vice President Richard M. Nixon in 1960.
I wasn't even 9 years old, but when I read newspaper accounts of the two men's qualifications to lead the country, one of the first things I looked for was military experience.
Since 1960, in every presidential campaign, I've looked for those military qualifications. But I didn't know how important they were until I joined the Air Force in 1974, where the military training instructors did their best to whip raw recruits into shape.
They chewed us out. They threatened, intimidated, cajoled and used any tactic to turn us from civilians into airmen.
Our bunks had to be made a certain way. Our clothes had to be folded or hung in our lockers a certain way. The shoes had to be spit-shined, and even the belts on our uniforms had to pass military muster.
Any variation from any of these rules, any infraction, was met with a demand from one of the drill sergeants for us to "Whip out a 341 form!"
At some point during our basic training, the squadron commander explained why we were being put through all this hell. He conceded that the goal was to deliberately submit us to a stressful situation to see how well we could hold up.
And if we couldn't take the stress of basic training, he admonished, it wasn't likely we could take the greater stress of a combat situation.
Once I left the Air Force, I pondered whether Americans would ever elect a president who passed on going through such stress. How could such a person bear the stress of being commander in chief?
Obama had his chance to serve in the military and passed on it. He chose a career in community organizing and law. If a person passes on a military career for whatever reason, I don't want him or her telling me years later that he or she wants to be commander in chief of the very armed forces that person didn't think were worthy of joining.
Before he became president, what were Obama's qualifications to be commander in chief, and why did he think he deserved the job with no military experience? The media had the responsibility to ask those questions in 2008 but didn't.
I'm betting McChrystal wishes they had.