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I wish. It goes rather deeper than that. Partisan politics as answer to every concern is a little too shallow for the real world. Careerism, ticket punching, officers as mere pols and spinners - these things are a little too common and run a little too deep to all be Clinton's fault. Officer careers are too long to be determined by one president.

Clark got on the "political officer" track in the 1970s, under Ford, when he went from west point poli sci academic to the OMB. He spent a long time getting from major to colonel, finally ending up in training commands. He ran the NTC under Bush the elder, which is the position he became a general to fill. After three years doing that he got command of the US 1st cav - after gulf war I. Which was being switched from a heavy army main force. He stayed there under Clinton. His Clinton era specifically political role started with Dayton (negotiating with the Serbs), and then southern command and Panama (pulling out), finally Kosovo.

What did all of these various institutions and superiors get out of him? Why did none of them ever sidetrack him? Is political brownosing still the way ahead in our armed forces? It would be naive to think there aren't a dozen others like him still serving...

>>Careerism, ticket punching, officers as mere pols and spinners - these things are a little too common and run a little too deep to all be Clinton's fault.

You are absolutely right. Though this was part of it, it was only at the very highest levels.

The Army has always had a lot of political officers who weren't very good as wartime commanders. If you read much about WWII, there were a lot of Regular Army commanders moved aside, and a lot of 90-day wonders who rose quite high.

Just based on a number of news items, nothing scientific or definitive, I think we've had some of that in the last two years, where folks get removed from command positions early and rather unceremoniously. This appears to be a natural event during wartime, and there probably isn't much to be done about it.

You're going to make O-6 just punching all the right tickets and keeping your nose clean, which Clark had obviously done. He was probably not an optimal choice to reach general-grade, but who did, again probably due to peacetime ticket punching. He then rose even higher than normal at that level, perhaps largely because of the Clintons. He is a homie with Bill, after all.

There may be other officers like Wesley, the android, but I think he is in the point one percent category of ability to give the answer asked by whomever he was trying to impress. He might even be an idiot savant in this talent.

Number one in his class at West Point - never a 'wrong' answer!

A recurrent theme in articles about him is that he did not consider the men under his command as thoughtfully as he did those he was answering TO.

I believe that his main talent his whole life has been saying what he thought would meet with approval. This works in hierarchical structures - organizations, universities, bureacracies. It absolutely is not a trait that a CEO should have. He can never be a Number One.

He would be trying to please Kofi Annan and his friends in Europe. In other words he would continue to live as a subordinate.

Our military in the 1990s promoted this kind of guy to the head of Nato. Something diseased happened to the upper reaches of the American officer corps, that this character wasn't passed over at colonel until he retired.

There you go. There's the scary part. A verified lunatic in charge of all the guns.