Alright, you may see this a just a rant, but I am simply sick and tired of hearing the term "commander in chief"! I am sick and tired of framing our national conversation in terms of national security, then framing national security in terms of military might, then framing our leaders in terms of who has the biggest balls to use that might!
We spend more money on our military than every other nation in the world combined! We stage a military presence in 70% of the world's countries. Yet we seem to be the only country running off the cliff to fight 2 wars, threaten a third (Iran) and fourth (Korea) and now perhaps a fifth (Russia). Who knows, Nigeria and who knows where else are just around the corner.
We fling terms like patriotism and love of country around like the days of McCarthyism - everybody seems scared shitless to whisper that maybe, just maybe, our country has been a real fuck-up when it comes to foreign policy. For my vote, and I have been around for many years - we have done way more harm than good with our military junkets.
We have backed one lousy foreign leader after another, for a variety of ultimately losing propositions - because they seem to like us, because we deem them to be the lesser of 2 evils, because we want to maintain a "balance of power". In the end we have ended up for decades cleaning up messes that we never should have meddled in. Whether it was Vietnam - that "government" was a joke, or backing the genocidal Khmer Rouge after the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia; whether it was backing the Shah of Iran with his bejeweled horse drawn carriages, or arming the very same Somalians who shot down the blackhawks; or how about this one - arming Sadam Hussein in his fight against Iran! Really now - did all this make us better off?
The fact of the matter is that economic influence is far more potent than military force. People want ipods, they want McDonalds and they want Levi jeans (or at least they used to) a whole lot more than they want a 12 foot concrete wall and the point of a gun. You can encourage people with carrots far better than you can force them with sticks. While we are swinging sticks of patriotism this election season, while we are debating the devils that seem to be around every corner -- while we succumb to either fighting "radical fundamentalists" or risk being branded an appeaser, or traitor, or defeatist, or - oh dear me - a radical, other countries that don't share our paranoia - like Canada - are simply coming in and buying up our assets.
Beware the military industrial complex - that's my motto. Beware the guy who wants to become commander in chief. Don't sell me this swill that David Petraeus is "one of the great military commanders in our history" while you chew up our brave young boys in one military fiasco after another. Don't you dare.
John McCain, I too am an American. You were in Vietnam as a prisoner - and I am sorry that you had to go through that. But while you were there, I was marching in the streets of New York - demonstrating against that war - and I am not sorry about that. At this time of national urgency, I would like to respond to your craven ambition to become a "commander in chief" in terms that you can easily understand:
Get the fuck off my lawn!
Give me a President.