Monday, July 9, 2007

How/why can he be President?

Politics; currently we find John McCain trying to nail a message on the White House door much in the manner of Martin Luther and the Church. There is a fundamental difference between what he believes and the mainstream Republican Party professes to believe. It is unfortunate but the current administration has within itself a group of people so adept at usurping power by claiming as their own all thought even that which appears to smack of similarity. GW, Dick Chaney, Donald Rumsfeld all—well at least Chaney and Rumsfeld were seasoned veteran political infighters. There was no way they were going to let John McCain's support for the war in the Mid-East be construed as anything short of their (groups) camps dialogue on the conflict. Recently Mrs. McCain has spoken out on the fact the current administration has ignored the reality John McCain has tried to bring to the conduct of this conflict. First of all it is necessary that we have this conflict and it is better conducted there than on home soil for as long as possible. It is inevitable that once again America will find the enemy attacking home soil. Secondly, John McCain has been quite sound in his assessment of what it will take to subdue this enemy where we now have it fixed. That is after all a principle we are taught in warfare 101 to fix on and engage the enemy at the most advantageous location. The current administration made some horrendous miscalculations on what it would take to subdue the enemy. I have at times included my beloved military in this costly mistake but only at the highest levels where souls in Olive Drab were sold wholesale to the likes of SOD Donald Rumsfeld. How many sold their souls for a star or two? I remember seeing the lists of names submitted for stars at the onset of the war. At the same time there were those who spoke from the standpoint of their knowledge against the conduct of the war. A soldier is against a war that he knows is being conducted in a manner that will cause him to sustain high casualty rates and lose when the flawed plan never produces a win. Churchill once said something like "you can do your best but at some point you have to get results.) John McCain knew we needed more troops, better equipment and different leadership from SOD to CG. He was listening to the right folks the guys on the ground wearing the boots.
On this note he should soon elucidate on how he would fix this rotation problem that is taxing our system of using NG and Reserves to bolster the ranks of the all volunteer army. Are we going to wait to be attacked again before we conscript? That may be too late. I know that "too late" is debatable but frankly I don't see us doing well going back to 18th and 19th c local militia fighting within states boundaries. We can't presently secure our borders, deal with local disaster relief on the state level. It is a travesty, the state of equipment shortages. I know there are romantic writers who have given us inspirational stories and movies about resistance fighters that will fight to the end. Do we really want to do that or is it not a better idea to put in place a CIC that will get the job done now and where we currently have the enemy fixed. Not wait until the evil doer revisits our homeland.

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