Barack Obama and Wesley Clark

Let us go back to the Swift Boat vets and John Kerry.

 

You remember John Kerry?  He served in Vietnam, and leftists made that point virtually the centerpiece of the Kerry campaign against that service avoiding President Bush--who only served in the National Guard.  In fact, leftists ATTACKED President Bush's National Guard service with LESS evidence than the Swift Boat Vets accumulated to question the allegedly exaggerated service details of John Kerry.  Those how think the attacks on President Bush's service were fundamentally different from the attacks on the details of John Kerry's service are sanctimonious hypocrites of the left, and their media sycophants.  John Kerry's SERVICE was "superior" to that of President Bush.  The ATTACKS were fundamentally the same.

 

Meanwhile, what was Wesley Clark doing (whose service in "command" was MAINLY distinguished by being relieved of command--hardly George Patton or Dwight D. Eishenhower, although certainly "honorable"--his JUDGMENT might be questioned).

 

Well, in 2004, Wesley Clark was out there STREONGLY saying the John Kerry's service in Vietnam ALONE made him more qualified than President Bush to be President. The entire left (sanctimonious hypocrites that they are)  were saying that.  John Kerry himself was effectively pushing his military record more than John McCain now is.

 

Did John Kerry have extensive "command" decision responsibility in Vietnam, or elsewhere in the military?  Don't be silly.  Anyone but Wesley Clark would have to acknowledge that John McCain's total military experience is MUCH more impressive than John Kerry.  They were both heroes, but McCain served longer, in more substantial roles, than Kerry--plus SUFFERING more.  Kerry suffered three minor wounds in a shortened tour in Vietnam, and was hardly the career military man that McCain was.  That is apart from McCain's firsthand experience with TORTURE and real physical and mental adversity over five years as a POW. 

 

That did not stop the execrable, hypocritical Wesley Clark from campaigning for Kerry on the basis that Kerry's military service made him more qualified than President Bush to be commander-in-chief, while now saying that the MORE military experience of John McCain is irrelevant.  There are few worse, and more dishonest, human beings than Wesley Clark (unless you consider Barack Obama--see below).

 

How would you RATE John Kerry, President Bush, Barack Obama and John McCain as far as the impressiveness of their military resume?   I don't think that there is any question:  1. John McCain  2. John Kerry  3. President Bush  4.  Barack Obama.

 

Again, what does it say about Wesley Clark that he has attempted to say that voters should act on the difference between 2 and 3 than on the difference between 1 and 4?  it tells you Wesley Clark is speaking as a POLITICAL HACK rather than a military man when he talks on the campaign trail.  Worse, Clark talk has talked here as a political hack trying to disparage the real difference in THIS qualification between John McCain and Barack Obama, which is MORE than the difference between John Kerry and President Bush (even though Kerry's military service did give him the clear edge, in that category, over the honorable, but less impressive, National Guard service of President Bush).  John Kerry and his supporters argued that his military service gave him a qualification for President that president Bush did not have.  They were right.  Their only problem (sanctimonious hypocrites that they, and Clark are) is that this is MORE true of the comparison of John McCain and Barack Obama. 

 

Does this mean that military experience is the defining qualification to be President.  Of course not.  Nor has McCain run on that basis.  He has run less on that basis than John Kerry did.  He has probably run MORE on being RIGHT about Iraq (the troop surge), while Barack Obama was WRONG (about the troop surge, which SAVED many American and Iraqi lives).  McCain was for the troop surge from the beginning, and he was proven right.  McCain further has the EXPERIENCE edge on Obama in EVERY way, including his long service in the U.S. Senate.  For Clark to suggest, as he did, that McCain's qualifications consist of being shot down as a fighter pilot is beyond disgusting (again, unless you consider OBAMA, who has tried to USE Clark without having to defend him--"INARTFUL" indeed!!!!).

 

But Clark asserts that McCain had no real "command experience" in war where we could evaluate his "judgment".  If you understand this, this should give you nothing but CONTEMPT for Clark.  NO military experience PROVES your "judgment".  That was true of John Kerry, even as Clark was asserting the opposite.  It was true of U.S. Grant, who was a TERRIBLE President.  It was true of General McClellan, the former commander of the Army of the Potomac in the Civil War, who challenged Abraham Lincoln for the Presidency.  If McClellan had won, we would no longer be the United States of America   So what.  It still WAS a qualification to be President that U.S. Grant was a great general.  It was just not the DEFINITIVE qualification.  McCain's military record is A qualification to be President.  For Clark to suggest other wise merely makes him contemptible.

 

Assume, however, that Clark were right (despite all logic and morality).   What does that mean? It means that the Swift Boat Vets were RIGHT to demand an examintion of the DETAILS of Kerry's war service.  My position, and McCain's, is that it makes no sense to argue over the DETAILS of honorable, heroic military service--at least not without definitive evidence of something dishonorable (as there was NOT, for example, in President Bush's National Guard record).  The allegations of the Swift Boat Vets, despite the efforts of leftists to make "Swift Boating" a verb, were never DISPROVEN.   They had anecdotal evidence suggestion that John Kerry's military record was inflated.  Kerry never even authorized the release of his complete military records.  IN my view, that is irrelevant.  We just can't start engaging in fights in political campaigns over the DETAILS of honorable military service.  The records need to stand--NOT because the records tell everything, but because it is IMPOSSIBLE to evaluate the individual "merit" of military service beyond the face of the service (in the absence of conclusive documentation as to major dishonesty).  Note that Wesley Clark is saying the exact opposite, and JUSTIFYING what the Swift Boat Vets did in demanding an examination of the JUDGMENT and CHARACTER of John Kerry's actual military experience.  It is the LEFT who are the hypocrites here, in suggesting that a different standard should be applied to BOTH President Bush and John McCain than to John Kerry.

 

Bottom line, of course:  It is NOT just heroic military service over 20 years.  McCain has more OBJECTIVE qualifications to be President than Barack Obama by EVERY measure.  That is because Barack Obama is the LEAST "qualified" person to run for the Presidency in my lifetime--certainly less objectively qualified than JFK was.

 

Now consider Barack Obama and Wesley Clark.  There is no question that Wesley Clark has been associated with the Obama campaign.  He initially made these statements in a SCHEDULED "Meet the Press" appearance.  Is it conceivable that Obama did not approve basically this approach toward disparaging McCain's military service, even if the Obama campaign did not approve the exact language.  Nope, it is not conceivable.  Even the leftist Associated Press, in the first article on Wesley Clark's comments, called Clark an OBAMA SURROGATE.

Then what happened AFTER Clark made these comments.  Obama made a speech in Indpendence, Missouri where he did not even mention Clark by name.  He STILL has not directly CONDEMNTED Clark's commnets.  All he has said is that he "honors" McCain's service, and that Clark was "inartful".  As far as I am concerned, that makes Obama WORSE than Clark.  Obama is trying to take advantage of what Clark said, WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF HIS ALLIES IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, without taking personal responsibility.  That is despicable.  You doubt this (you fool you!!!).  Consider that Clark REPEATED the same allegations AFTER Obama's speech in Missouri.  It is not possible that Clark would have done that without a specific green light from obama.

 

Is this a standard, if despicable, leftist hypocrisy?  Of course it is.  They are just slightly more "artful" at it than Republicans.  Now the Swift Boat Vets could have said that they "honored" Kerry's service (maybe they did).  They could have said the same things that Clark and Obama have said here.  They could have said that the DETAILS of the service, and Kerry's JUDGMENT, were what were being questioned--NOT not the "honorableness" of his service.  In fact, that is what they WRE saying, whether they specifically said so or not.  This is the same ploy that Democrats use when they say that they "support our troops, while they are ATTACKING our troops as rapists, "murderers" and uneducated idiots (remember John Kerry's "joke" and Stephen King's similar statement about people who cant' read ending up in the military?).   It is EASY to say that you "honor" someone's service (it means NOTHING, which is true of a lot of what Obama says), and then TRASH the details of that service.   Leftists do it all of the time.  Wesley Clark and Barack Obama just did it with regard to John McCain.  "Inartful" means that the SUBSTANCE of the attack by Clark was correct, in Obama's view, but he just did not say it in a clever enough way.

 

By the way, is being a POW A qualification to be President?  Of course it is.  Even though I have disagree with McCain's willingness to OVEREMPHASIZE alleged "torture" (waterboarding, for example), there is no doubt that McCain is the MOST qualified man on this planet (other than maybe another POW) to have opinions on that subject.  Further, is it true that a President is exposed to enormous pressure--equivalent to torture and being a POW in terms of demanding character to withstand it?  I don't think this is an arguable point.  OF COURSE John McCain proved something about his ability to withstand both physical and mental strain by the way he triumphantly survived being a prisoner of war.  Again, it is not the ONLY qualification to be President, but you are as contemptible as Wesley Clark if you deny it is A qualification.  It is one more qualification that Barack Obama does not have.

 

I am asking Kenda to illustrate this entry (as official cartoonist for the blog).  I do not know whether she will.  Further, I don't know HOW she will, if she does.  Artists are temperamental, and this artist is not only busy as a lawyer but does not agree with me politically.  Therefore, without binding Kenda to this illustration, here is my word picture of the way I would illustrate this entry if I could draw.  I would have General Clark watching a U.S. fighter plane going down in flames with this caption:  "Wesley Clark Watches Another Dumb Fighter Jock Who He Hopes Will Not Survive to Be a Presidential Candidate".