For our warriors in uniform today, I have only praise. I do not support our current wars, and I understand that now as always there are rogues in uniform. But the great majority of our uniformed military personnel are exceptionally well-educated, exceptionally physically fit, and exceptionally committed to their service, whatever their branch, rank, race or gender. Indeed, having served in Vietnam in the Marines, I envy them. Justification for our current wars aside, they enjoy a measure of open, enthusiastic support from the American citizenry that I and my generation never had in our war. And their deaths are mourned openly in a way that never happened during the Vietnam War. I do not begrudge the current generation of service personnel that support. But in my heart of hearts, I would have given anything to have had even a small measure of it in my war, in my day.
The continuing tragedy, however, is that the appointed civilian leadership in the Defense department is even worse now than it was then, combining ignorance and incompetence with a predisposition to take America to war for the interests of a foreign country: Israel. The ignorance and incompetence are crucial, and it is by no means something new. For some odd reason, our political system increasingly has seen fit to put people in important positions, such as Secretary of Defense and the service secretaries and their subordinates, with little or no military experience themselves, and usually no expertise in military affairs. If Americans want to see the result of their handiwork, they need only note that Arlington National Cemetery and our other National Military Cemeteries are choked with the bodies of Americans in uniform who died needlessly because of the ignorance, amateurishness or outright incompetence of their elected and appointed civilian leaders. And if anyone doubts this, the next time someone you love requires emergency surgery, demand that the procedure be performed by the hospital's administrators, accountants and attorneys -- you'll doubtless be as pleased with the outcome as Americans in uniform have been with what has passed for their civilian leadership.
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