Quote Originally Posted by Schmedlap View Post
I agree with the frustration, with one caveat. I don't think most are loyal to their constituents. They are loyal to whatever will induce their constituents to vote for them. That can be something diametrically opposed to the welfare of their constituents.
Absolutely. That’s what I meant when I said it. Should've been clearer.

Quote Originally Posted by Schmedlap View Post
Disagree with the solution. An ethical individual will do the right thing, whether that person has military experience or not. We don't need to elect people with military experience (though that's not a problem if they have it). We need to elect people who are ethical. Good luck with that.
It’s not just about ethics. It’s about ethics and expertise when you’re trying to decide whether or not to go to war. I’ve met ethical politicians who simply don’t have the requisite experience or information to even know who to listen to. And with competing lobbying organizations, think tanks, and other political pressures, it becomes a problem. Both the House and Senate are filled with committee members whose only qualifications are that their district or state elected them to office. Others have a very narrow breadth of professional expertise. It’s not unusual to find one’s self horrified at the lack of knowledge and awareness on the part of some members of the House and Senate Armed Services and Veterans Affairs Committees (like when you have to explain to a sitting member of Congress what “dwell time” is and why it’s important in terms of effectively managing a long war).

And when you’re fighting in two or more conflicts at the same time, this type of knowledge becomes important. So it helps when members have military experience. However, if you’re willing to forgo that by not competing for representation, then the SEIU, the Club for Growth, George Soros, and Rush Limbaugh—people whose first, second, and third priority is not defense policy--will be more than happy to assist other candidates in taking your potential candidate’s place.

And when you allow that to happen, you get a Congress that gets jerked around by guys like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. (Apologies if anyone here is a big fan of those two.)

You might say it’s not important to have people with military experience in office, but I will argue that it’s absolutely crucial that members of one co-equal branch of government be able to go head-to-head with a member from the other branch. Take Rumsfeld and Cheney for instance. Those guys, whether you support them or not, pushed Congress around in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. They said that not only is invading Iraq an awesome idea, but we can do it with like 90,000 troops. And it’ll be easy.

And there was no one in Congress with enough of a following or enough political capital (like, say, a Jim Webb) to stand up and say, no, actually, that’s a really bad idea the way you’re presenting it. That's why it's important. I'm sure there were plenty of ethical politicians in 2003 who believed Wolfowitz over Shinseki.

(I should also add, I'm not suggesting that prior military experience makes a politician ethical. I could probably name half a dozen unethical, former military members of Congress off the top of my head.)