The Redhunter

In case you didn't know, John Kerry served in Vietnam. In combat, no less.

According to the Democrats this makes him uniquely qualified to be president. .

Their argument is that there is a positive correlation between combat experience and performance as president in foreign policy/military affairs. The opposite of which is that if you don't have combat experience you will be a poor president.

I've said it once and I'll say it again: There is no evidence that military service, let alone combat experience, affects one's performance as president.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have never served in the military.

Let's take a little walk through history and see what we find.

Barbary Coast Pirates 1801 - 1805 (1) Thomas Jefferson was president. No military experience. We were right to go to war against the north African pirates, although we did not achieve our goal of ending payments of tribute to them. It did at least weaken them, and it showed American resolve in a situation that required action. I'm going to give Jefferson an A for resolve, but only a C for his conduct of the war. A "B" grade overall.

War of 1812: 1812 - 1815 (2) James Madison was president. He had never served in the military. His conduct of the war was mixed. We gained none of our original war aims, but did garner world respect for confronting Great Britain over their impressment of American seamen. I give Madison a C.

Mexican War: 1846 - 1848 (3) James Polk was president. Polk never served in the military. Not all of our actions were admirable, but my decidedly un-PC view is that the war was inevitable and we largely did the right thing. Mexico may have laid claim to vast regions of what is today the southwestern US, but they controlled most of it in name only. The people of that area are better off today living under the US than they would be under Mexico. The American Indians (another un-PC term I realize) were going to be conquered by someone. It's a sad fact but there it is. I give Polk a B.

Civil War: 1861-65 (4) Abraham Lincoln, president. Lincoln had no military experience. One of the most interesting aspects of this war was how long it took the Federal Army to get it's act together. The outnumbered and outgunned Conferderate army defeated northern armies regularly for almost two full years. That Lincoln kept the north in the war is a tribute to his leadership. It is perhaps not commonly recognized that opposition to the war was quite fierce in the north, culminating in the draft riots that shook New York City in 1863. Things even got so bad that a former Union general, George McClellan, was able to run as a "peace" candidate against Lincoln in the 1864 election, this being over three years into the war. For keeping the war effort going in the face of stiff opposition, and for his willingness to fire generals until he got one who would fight, Lincoln gets an A+

Spanish - American War: 1898 (5) William McKinley was president. McKinley had served as a private in the Union Army during the Civil War. Like all of the other Republican presidents in the post-Civil War era, he used his war record to win election, doing what was then called"waving the bloody shirt". Here, too, I am going to take an un-PC view; that we did the right thing by entering the war and the world is the better for our actions. McKinley entered the war hesitatingly, which is a plus in my book as one should never be eager for conflict. I give McKinley a B.

The casus belli of the war was the sinking of the battleship Maine. We blamed it on a Spanish mine, when in all probability it was an internal explosion caused by coal dust. So our reason for going to war was flawed, which is why he doesn't get an A. It was obvious even at the time to sober observers that the probablility of a Spanish mine was remote. Yet the world is better off for us having done gone to war

There is of course a parallel here with the invasion of Iraq. Let's just get this out of the way right now: President Bush used WMD as the major reason for going to war with Iraq, and we didn't find what we expected to find. Unlike the Spanish-American war, however, there was overwhelming evidence that Saddam had WMD. The world is a better place for us having invaded, current difficulties notwithstanding.

World War I/The Great War: 1917-18(U.S. involvement) (6) Woodrow Wilson was president. No military experience. Wilson is, I think, the most overrated president in history. That most presidential ratings are done by liberal professors tells you why. My take is a bit different, but I am sympathetic to the position he found himself in in 1917. The war in Europe was pointless, with neither side really occupying the moral high ground. While the weight of the blame can be laid at Germany's feet, the British and French were hardly blameless themselves. The conduct of the war by the generals was atrocious, with millions of men dying in battles that gained them nothing. To be fair to Wilson, it would have been very difficult to resist the calls to war after publication of the Zimmerman Telegram and the sinking of the Lusitania. However, he set himself up by using "he kept us out of war" as his campaign slogan in 1916. He should have stuck to that pledge.

Even worse was his conduct after the war. His "Fourteen Points", which is one reason the liberal historians love him, was an exercise in naivete. He handled the proposed American entry into the League of Nations (another reason the liberals love him) badly, all of which culminated in a return to American isolationism. All of this resulted in our desire to stay out of the Second World War even when it was obvious that Nazi Germany had to be defeated. I give Wilson a D, and I'm being nice.

World War II: 1941-45 (U.S. involvement) (7) Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president. No military experience. FDR is in my opinion the greatest president of the twentieth century(Reagan being #2), partially for his leadership during this time of great danger. I rate him highly for two reasons; one, his conduct before the war, and two, his conduct during the war.

As stated earlier, the US returned to isolationist sentiments after WWI. When war broke out in Europe again in September of 1939, the US was firmly on the sidelines. Although most Americans sympathized with the British, we did not want to get involved. Yet FDR knew that if Great Britain were to fall, Europe may never be recoverable (the reason being complicated military stuff I don't have time to get into here). There were two things that needed to be done to stave off British defeat; keep the sea lanes open so they could continue to receive imports, and second, ship to them badly needed war material. There was much opposition in the US to our doing either.

FDR waged an undeclared, semi-secret war against German U-Boats during1941 (8), well before Pearl Harbor. He did this in the face of public opposition, with some polls showing up to 80% of the public wanting no involvement in the war(9). FDR could see the evil of Nazism, that it needed to be defeated, and that it would only occur if we got involved. He got us involved long before the public was ready to do so. This was true leadership, not poll-following.

He also proved an excellent wartime president. It is tempting to look back on conflicts such as World War II and view ithem as glorious crusades(there's another un-PC term) where we all linked arms and marched off to defeat some evil. The reality is usually different. In WWII the allies squabbled among themselves quite a bit, the most notable example being the friction between US General Patton and British Field Marshall Montgomery. While the coalition was never in serious danger of breaking up, there were many strains that only dedicated and skilled leadership could prevent from interfering in the war effort. FDR was one of those who provided such leadership.

I give Franklin Delano Roosevelt an A.

Korean War: 1950-53 (10) Harry S Truman and Dwight D Eisenhower, presidents. This is a difficult one to rate. Both presidents had military experience. Truman had been an artilleryman during the First World War with combat experience. Eisenhower was allied supreme commander in Europe during the second, although he never saw any combat himself.

Truman deserves high marks for his decision to enter the war, and for allowing General MacArthur to conduct the war as he saw fit. His low marks come for having let his Secretary of State Dean Acheson declare before the war that we would not defend South Korea. This declaration was read in Moscow as an invitation to war. Had Acheson's remark been rescinded, the war might never have occurred.

It is easy now to sit back and say that MacArthur should have been fired long before Truman finally did so. Much of the blame for the bloody stalemate that resulted from China's entry can be laid as MacArthur's feet. Certainly his behavior was so egregious that Truman would have been well within his rights to exercise his prerogative well before he did. On the other hand MacArthur was immensely popular back home (as it was Truman faced impeachment threats when MacArthur was relieved of command), and he did not want to disrupt operations by changing generals in mid-war. It is easy now to recommend a step that was then very unpopular.

Eisenhower assumed the presidency in 1953, his campaign promise having been "I will go to Korea". He did just that, and after some time, was able to secure a negotiated armistice with China and North Korea.

I give both presidents a B.

Vietnam War 1963-73 (11) John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon were presidents. JFK had combat experience in WWII as commander of PT 109. LBJ was in the ArmyAir Corps, but in typical fashion served only to further his political career, flying a few missions only almost as a stunt (12). Nixon was a naval officer during WWII but served in a non-combat role due to his religious beliefs as a Quaker.

The short version of the Vietnam War is that Kennedy started our involvement by sending advisors, Johnson turned it into a full-scale war, and Nixon continued the war for a few years and then got us out.

Kennedy's role was so short that he is impossible to rate. Despite what his partisans will say, there is no conclusive evidence as to what he would have done in later years. He is better rated for his actions during the Cold War(see below)

Johnson is easy to rate; F. I give him this grade for many reasons. First, as Col Harry Summers points out in his excellent book, he tried to fight the war "in cold blood" (13). He refused to make the public case for the war, as he felt it would interfere with his Great Society programs. Second, once engaged he refused to do what it would take to win the war, proudly proclaiming that the military "couldn't bomb an outhouse without my approval." To be sure, much of our hesitation was due to fears of Chinese involvement a la the Korean War, but this again is something he simply refused to deal with.

Richard Nixon inherited an impossible situation. By the time he assumed the presidency, there was no political will to do what it would take to win the war. The most he could do was try for a "peace with honor". This he largely got, although it was sabotaged by Congress who did not carry out their obligations to fund South Vietnam's defense. Then again, had he not become embroiled in the Watergate Scandal (of his own making), he would have been able to jawbone the Congress into doing the right thing. Nixon rates a B.

Cold War 1947 - 1990 (14) (15) I am only going to consider five presidents: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Carter, and Reagan. Carter had been a nuclear submarine officer, having served under the legendary Admiral Hyman Rickover. Reagan served in the Army during WWII, his service being limited to making propaganda movies.

Harry Truman gets an A+. He took a number of steps which secured western freedom and stopped early communist attempts at expansion. He confronted Stalin and let him know in no uncertain terms that he would be met with force if necessary. In particular, aid to Turkey and Greece secured their freedom. NATO was organized during his term in office.

Eisenhower's record is mixed. I realize my opinion of him will be controversial. On the positive side, his Secretary of State, Allen Dulles, forged alliances around the world which worked to limit Soviet expansion. On the negative side he adopted a flawed military strategy called "massive retaliation." Under this doctrine the US cut back it's conventional forces and put the bulk of our spending in nuclear forces. Our declared policy was that if we went to war with either China or the Soviet Union, we would use all of our nuclear weapons against both countries (go back and read that sentence again). He basically handed over defense planning to General Curtis LeMay, who would have welcomed nuclear war. In addition, we decided to target Soviet cities ("countervalue") instead of their military forces(counterforce"). To be sure, the inaccuracy of the weapons of the day contributed to this decision. However, given the destructiveness of the large weapons of the day, it is my belief that a counterforce strategy would have worked quite well. Besides the general insanity of such a "strategy", the other effect was to render our military unable to respond to large or even medium-scale conventional conflict. I give Eisenhower a D.

The seminal event during Kennedy's administration was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Most scholars give him high marks. Donald Kagan, however, presents a different picture in his book (16). I'm not quite sure which side I believe, but I'll give Kennedy a B. He avoided a nuclear war and got the missiles out of Cuba algthough he had to make a secret deal to do so (we agreed to remove our missiles from Turkey).

Jimmy Carter is another easy one to rate. He gets an F. His theory that we suffered from an "inordinate fear of communism" resulted in Soviet expansion around the globe. The left today claims that we are not respected around the world due to the policies of George Bush. During Carter's presidency, we are not only disrespected, they didn't fear us either. They may not like us today, but they do fear us.

Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, gets an A. He met the Soviet threat head on and defeated it. His strategizing was of the highest order; discover the enemies weakness and exploit it. He realized that their weaknesses were the inherent immorality of their cause, and their weakening economy. He met the first by making clear statements, and the second by increasing defense spending and committing us to missile defense.

Gulf War 1991 -1991 (17) George H W Bush was president. He served during World War II as the pilot of a naval torpedo bomber. He saw combat on several occasions.

I rate his performance as a B. On the positive side he saw that war was necessary. On the negative side he did not go on to invade Iraq and end Saddam's rule. However, it is easy in hindsight to see what "should" have been done. At the time it was not quite so obvious. The coalition partners made it quite cleat that they would only cooperate so long as we limited our objectives to Kuwait. Saudi Arabia allowed our troops on their soil only with the promise that we not invade Iraq. The consequences had we gone ahead and done so could have been catastrophic.

War on Terror 2001-present (18) George W Bush is president. He was a fighter pilot in the National Guard but never served in combat.

I consider the war in Iraq to be part of the War on Terror, protestations on the left notwithstanding.

I'm going to give him a B. He gets high marks for the Afghan campaign, the decision to invade Iraq, and for the way the major combat operations phase went. The post invasion has not gone quite as well, but it is easy to nitpick now. What is often forgotten is that the situation in post-war Europe was much criticized at the time (19) (20).

Conclusions
(yeah, finally)

Jefferson - no military experience - C
Madison - no military experience - C
Polk - no military experience - B
Lincoln - no military experience - A
McKinley - military and combat experience - B
Wilson - no military experience - D
Roosevelt - no military experience - A
Truman (Korean War) - military and combat experience - B
Eisenhower (Korean War) - military but no combat experience - B
Johnson - semi-military but no combat experience - F
Nixon - military but no combat experience - B
Truman (Cold War) - combat experience - A
Eisenhower (Cold War) - military but no combat experience - D
Kennedy (Cold War) - combat experience - B
Carter - military but no combat experience - F
Reagan - semi-military but no combat experience - A
George H W Bush - combat experience - B
George W Bush - military experience - B

In Summary
The average rating of a president with no military experience is an B-
The average rating of a president with military experience only is a D+
The average rating of a president with combat experience is a B.

Bottom line? I can't see that military or combat experience makes any difference.

Posted by: Tom the Redhunter / 8/04/2004 07:42:00 PM

|