You are a veteran therefore you are uniquely qualified to even express the right to an opinion. You are correct, I've mentioned before I am 48 so do the math yourself. There was no selective service in 1977 nor was there even any registration for it. If that irks you then tell your Democratic Congress to build a time machine and correct that error. But, as I said, most of the criticism here is just like yours "You didn't serve so.......". But we don't demand ex cops etc to be the only people with a credible PoV or even the right to have one, EVEN the right to express policy on same, do we? No we don't. So climb down off mount soapbox Gary lest you fall off from the heights of your own stupid arrogance. Perhaps you'd like all your leaders to be in and from the military too? Yeah I didn't think so.

Ah yes, no opinion about the military is valid without having been IN the military?

- Shooter242

You can have opinions about the military without having served but you can not lead the military without having served. Nor can you send others to die without risking anything yourself in the cause.

It's like so many other specialties. You can have opinions about medicine but you can not perform surgery on others without being a physician.

... Article II, Section 2: "The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states ..."

Commander in Chief. The head guy in charge. The one who runs the military every day. The Congress wrote the UCMJ. That's rules and regulations. The Congress does not write every unit's personnel policies, unit rotation schedules, etc.

And as for the chaos that would result if Webb's proposal was enacted ...?

-- Hornet Driver

Being commander-in-chief, like any other executive function, is a matter of enforcing the regulations, not making them. It's the executive branch. They execute. They do not make things up, dictate, or otherwise wing it.

Do you know of one(1) neocon who served in the armed forces?

When a group of people, highly influential in the government and various prominent think tanks is extremely militaristic and advocates wars of choice as pretty the only way of conducting foreign affairs, yet can't produce even one neocon who ever bothered to experience military service, it stinks to high heaven and is as immoral as it gets. Imagine a person who knows nothing about fire recommending to you to set yourself on fire-this is precisely what the neocons have done to our nation, and amazingly, the government heeded their advise.

"Ah yes, no opinion about the military is valid without having been IN the military? - Shooter242"

My family, both mom and dad served in the Big One -- 1939 - 1945. When they found out that their fair-haired, blue-eyed son had a bee in his cap about following the family tradition (it was a long tradition -- you should see the family crest -- dead Moor's head on the end of a sword, no less), both of my parents went apewire.

You see, both my parents were slightly left of liberal, and served because the country, nay the world, was in peril. Dicators were to be overthrown, countries liberated, freedom was to be brought to the oppressed. All that went out the window when, as Ike pointed out, the military became the tool of the corporations and the corrupt. My folks weren't going to have their progeny becoming the guard-boy the rich and powerful. "Don't do it son, unless they threaten us", became the watchword. So I figure, never having had to say, "Sir, yes, sir", or having to follow salute anyone qualifies anyone to have an opinion about the military. There are our servants, n'est ce pas?? As in the C-in-C. Remember, he is only the C-in-C of the military, not ours. He can wear any silly uniform he wants to, but until he pulls a Lincoln and puts us under Military 'Protection', we don't have to kowtow to him and his buddies. So, shooter, I think WE have a responsibility, and the right, to decide about military matters.

If troops want more time at home, Kagan says, there is an easy way to achieve that: "win the war we're fighting."

It looks like "blame the troops" is the new right-wing talking point, straight from the Commander-in-Chief himself with his "return on success" line.

Gee, DCLaw1, why didn't you post this article from the Washington Post?

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/09/live_from_the_mall_why_huge_cr.html?hpid=topnews

Probably because it shows the anti-war protesters to be the disorganized, unrepresentative loons that they are.

Actually, perhaps I should have posted that article - would have shown how the pro-war minority in this country keeps losing support even despite a disorganized antiwar movement. Thanks for helping make the point!

...you're killing me with all of those quotes.

C'mon, this isn't dodge ball.

You said:

You don't ever hear of anyone claiming that only cops and firefighters get to have or take a position on crime and firefighting. One would think with the logic here that only cops and firefighters could do that. And only poor people could speak for the poor or nurses for the ER or Native Americans for them.

I hope you all will remember that and not leave yourselves open to this kind of intellectual dishonesty. In other words, when there's a policy issue about liberal left coast bloggers, THEN you can chime in. thank you.

I, for one, desperately do not want to leave myself "open to this kind of intellectual dishonesty," so please help me out. You seem to be implying that Glenn said one had to have military experience to comment on military affairs.

If this is what you intended, back it up. If not, please clarify. Or, admit to your own intellectual dishonesty.

War is little more that an abstraction for the people Glenn is concerned with here, much as it is for the rest of the Establishment, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton included. It will undoubtedly remain so as long as the United States remains relatively immune to war's direct effects. These war advocates and apologists -- and we who are obliged to take them seriously -- are for the moment perfectly free to turn the idea of war this way and that, discuss its utility in terms of the leverage it gives us over lesser countries, or its role as a support for the demand function in the global economy, or in dampening domestic political conflicts. Who can stop us?

I almost laughed out loud today when I read that President Putin believes that sovereignty is an issue properly of concern to only three or four of the larger nations in the world, and that the rest have little need for it. Measuring his remarks against those of our own neocons, I was overcome briefly by the ironic notion that after all the agonies of the Twentieth Century, we've returned again to August 1914 without either a twinge of déjà vu, or a blush of shame.

Perhaps it really is true that none of these players who dominate our news outlets would find any need to revise their opinions of war if their families were suddenly obliterated by a single bomb-blast, or their neighbors were forced to hunt rats in the rubble of what had once been their homes, or they themselves were obliged to conduct their war-planning in a damp, smelly hole in the ground. Perhaps, but their resolve remains to be tested.

Until it is, calling them poseurs is hardly unjust; in fact it's a blessing compared to the curse the Almighty is already preparing for them.