MY MEDALS ARE SHINIER THAN YOURS

ABOUT COMMAND APPOINTMENTS

Thursday last, retired General Wesley Clark commented on Senator McCain's military background seeming to say that McCain's military experience did not qualify him as a leader, as a president.

From a review (New York Review of Books, April 3, 2008) by Max Hastings of a book written by Rick Atkinson,"The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy. 1943-1944:"The performance of Clark's [American Mark Clark] and Leese's [British Oliver Leese] subordinates ranged from adequacy to bungling, Lieutenant General Bernard C. "Spadger" Freyberg who led the New Zealand corps, had won a Victoria Cross in World War I. He exemplified a key principle about command appointments: any man possessed of the suicidal courage required to win a VC or Medal of Honor is unlikely to possess the judgement or imagination to make much of a general." Of course there are brilliant exceptions to this key principle as Atkinson calls it.

Once I sat across from a man vying for a promotion who, unasked, pointed to a lapel button denoting a military organizaton he was or had been a member of. He offered that he had been an officer and in charge of a number of men. He commented on the sway of what he thought was his impressive authority. He couldn't have been more disgusting if he spoke of what his morning's evacuation still bubbling in the toilet revealed to him of his prospects for the day.

There are opinions. Of course most medals such as the Victoria Cross or the Medal of Honor are awarded to people who will never aspire to high office. A few might. The real issue here, the heart of this miserable contentiousness, is not the assertion that valorous military duty is a precursor of greater things or that valorous duty is not such a predictor, it is that this discussion is happening at all.

In "The Day of Battle" Atkinson offers opinion. Wesley too offers opinion. Wesley overreaches. He is offensive and should have left it alone. His hunger for the Vice Presidency has fogged his common sense. Yesterday, Wesley essentially stayed the course with his message. This has no place in a campaign and Obama again needs to avoid association with Wesley's opinion.

Thomas Paine