McCain Should Look at his Own Role

John McCain is positioning himself as the front runner in 2008 presidential derby by attacking steroids in baseball and defenses secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Given his criticisms of Rumsfeld, it’s clear Senator Sun Tzu, oops, McCain knows more about baseball than transforming the military.

First, when he says Rumsfeld should have increased the size of our armed forces, McCain must be under the misperception that the secretary of defense raises armies. Article 1 section 8 of our Constitution charges congress, not the secretary of defense or even the president, with raising armies and maintaining the navy. So when Senator Clausewitz… uh…McCain complains about the size of our armed forces he’s really noting his and congresses own incompetence and failure to act. That’s right, the same sanctimonious boobs that gutted our intelligence agencies then responded with outrage when they performed like gutted intelligence agencies, is complaining about the size of our armed forces when it was they who trimmed it for the “peace dividend” in the first place. Yes, very odd indeed.

Next, Senator Patton…uh…er…McCain, doing his best John Kerry, “I’d be smarter than the president.” imitation when he claims he’d simply add more soldiers to the Special Forces, intelligence and linguistics branches. This is like saying the NFL is going to add more Peyton Mannings or Jim Browns to the league. These forces are highly motivated, specialized, trained and equipped. It is not a matter of going out the formation, asking, “Who wants to be Special Forces?” and giving them a different color beret. It takes years to make one of these guys. Also, even if you went to the active forces and took all of the best NCOs available and turned them into Special Forces soldiers, what do you think might happen to the regular forces absent their leadership? Military professionals know that even the most mundane occupational specialties need quality leadership. It is what is referred to as a quality spread, where even some of the best and brightest are assigned a tour or two in mundane but important tasks such as the mail room or chow hall.

Last, Senator Lincoln…uh…McCain thinks the National Guard and Reserve forces are being over worked. There is one guy that agrees with McCain and has been trying to do something about it, Donald Rumsfed. Since 9-11 Rumsfeld has said over and over that force mix of guard, reserve and active duty is set up for the cold war. A lot of the unique forces required to fight the war on terror, civil affairs, MP, engineers etc. are found predominately in guard and reserve forces. But you cannot simply say to a guard unit, OK you guys who are trained as MPs are now artillerymen. Forces have to be recruited, trained, retrained and reequipped over several years to transform a single unit. Doing it on the scale that is now underway, is a monumental task.

It’s clear to me that given the Babe’s…uh…McCain’s bombastic rhetoric over the last several months, he is better suited to be the next Commissioner of Baseball than the next Commander in Chief. He should take Bud Selig’s job. It’s a win-win situation. He can get the dope out of baseball and America gets one dope out of congress. OK, that’s a bit too cute. I do have great respect for McCain. I think he is wrong for attacking Rumsfeld for the job he’s doing in Iraq with the military McCain and his buddies set up twelve years ago.