Remember, We Are Voting For a Commander-in-Chief as Well as a President
by James Glaser
March 24, 2008

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barrack Obama has had any real military experience that might give them some idea of how to take charge of our military. You might say that neither did George Bush, but that is the point. George Bush has had no idea of what to do in the two wars he has started. Even though Bush keeps talking about listening to the generals in the field, in truth, President Bush gets rid of any senior officer who gives advice he doesn't like.

Neither Clinton nor Obama has the luxury of being able to talk war strategy with the Pentagon like Bush does, but they both have come up with their plans to get our troops out of Iraq. They are both ready to play Commander-in-Chief, but they don't have the "inside scoop" from those generals in the field.

On the other side of the political spectrum we have John McCain. McCain claims that he is the best person to become Commander-in-Chief, because of his military experience and his years on the Armed Services Committee of the US Senate. True, McCain was in the service and was a Navy pilot, who spent 5 ½ years as a POW in North Vietnam.

Yes, John McCain has military experience, but if you listen to what the Senator says about Iraq, you will quickly see that John McCain is nothing less that the second-coming of George Bush as a military leader. McCain has no plan at all for getting our troops out of Iraq, and has said that they may stay there for the next hundred years. That's right, John McCain has seriously said that he thinks American troops may well be in Iraq for the next hundred years, and he went on to say that he didn't think the American people would be upset with that.

Read this by Garth Porter, from the Inter Press Service:

During a press conference in Jordan Tuesday, McCain brought up the charge that Iran with [sic] training al Qaeda operatives and sending them to Iraq, then corrected himself after Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, whispered in his ear. It was the fourth time in a little over three weeks, however, that McCain had made the same charge.

If elected, John McCain would be the oldest person ever elected to be president, and his age is starting to show. McCain sometimes has a hard time figuring who is who in Iraq, and that means that friends can become enemies, and foes can become friends, which I would guess makes the troops rather nervous.

Right now we have two wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are now in our 6^th year of combat in Iraq, and in our 7^th year of fighting in Afghanistan. No presidential candidate even talks about bringing our troops home from Afghanistan.

If we elect either Democrat, at the rate things are now going in Iraq, we can look at least another one thousand of our troops being killed before we get them out, and that means many thousand more maimed, and more still suffering from life-long debilitating combat stress. If we elect the Republican, John McCain, there is no telling how many troops we will lose because for sure we will have another eight years of combat there.

These are hard times for America, and I see no one running who would make a qualified Commander-in-Chief. I thank God I don't have any offspring in the service today. It might be too late, but a third party with a plan to reform our foreign policy, where war would not be such a constant option, would get my backing if they had a credible man or woman at the top of the ticket.

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