Wesley is a Girl's Name, Right?

For a long time, I have tried to give GEN Wesley Clark the benefit of the doubt. He served our Country honorably as an Army Officer. However, any respect I may have had for the man has totally evaporated with his latest attack on John McCain. Substantively, he says that McCain lacks executive experience. I think that a dangerous knife to pull because it cuts both ways. Obama has even less executive experience and less experience overall. If you take a hard look at his record, you see he has done nothing. People have complained for 7 years that we've had an inexperienced President. We expect to remedy this situation by electing an even more inexperienced one? How does that make any sense? If you were picking the CEO of a company-- pretty much any company-- you wouldn't pick Obama. Can you imagine the Board of HP installing an untried and untested manager to run the entire organization? If you were seriously ill and you could afford it, you wouldn't get some first year doctor even if he did go to Harvard. You'd find the best, most experienced man for the job. Why is it so different with the office of the President?

But that's not really what really pissed me off. Gen Clark said that being shot down while flying a fighter doesn't qualify a man to be President. That's typical of a man who has shied away from actually taking gunfire his entire career. Typical to want to downplay something he would never have the courage to do. It's all well and good to get a "kick ass" reputation on the courage of other, better men. Let's look at this clearly. I'll give Clark the benefit of the doubt for argument's sake and agree that getting shot down in a fighter doesn't qualify one to be President. But surviving years of torture and keeping faith with your men does. Organizing your men so that they might survive and keeping the fellowship necessary to survive such an ordeal does too, Just ask COL Bud Day. And not taking a trip home to safety without your men certainly qualifies him to be President. I doubt GEN Clark would have the fortitude to make the same move. If such bravery, honor and commitment doesn't qualify someone to be President, then nothing does. Certainly nothing Obama has done.

The fact of the matter is this: there is no job in the world that prepares you for the Office of the President. It is On The Job training like nothing else. The experience necessary isn't the experience in running such a country which no one but former Presidents have. No, it's experience of the world and how things work. It's the ability to see thing clearly and to have the courage and conviction to stand up for what yo believe regardless of detractors. John McCain has proven over and over his has such experience even if you do not always agree with his positions. Obama, for all his nice words, has proved nothing. GEN Clark, even less. For either of them to criticize the character of John McCain is a joke. And GEN Clark should be seriously ashamed of himself.

The Coward's Bargain

My students reached a new level this week. After a year of muddling about, they have finally reached the point where they can engage each other definitively and with malicious intent. They have learned how to increase their emotional content without losing their structure. They can now move with authority to exploit their opponent's weaknesses. Most importantly, they are no longer making the "coward's bargain."

Perhaps the "coward's bargain" irks me so much because I was guilty of it as a kid. It shows itself by a forced courtesy. Apologizing to someone after you have it him as if you were genuinely sorry. It's truly pathetic. Such an impulse does not rise out of compassion. It is born of fear, plain and simple. An apology is meant to blunt the sharp edges of a reprisal. It is using society's norm to take advantage of a situation. It makes me sick.

Think about how much we do this in our lives. We apologize not because we genuinely feel regret. We apologize because we fear repercussions. We know we acted wrongly and fear what might come as a result. It means no more than the mea culpas of a criminal when he stands before the judge at sentencing.

I recognize that this impulse is the birthplace of courtesy. When I shake your hand, I am offering my weapon hand to show you that it's empty. As I often like to say, there is no place in the world more polite than a gun convention. When the expectation is that everyone is armed and has lethal capability, courtesy becomes the norm. But we have taken this too far. Courtesy means something in a society where violence is a possibility. When courtesy is the norm, it becomes a defense for the deceitful. We hide ill intent behind kind words today and think nothing of it. Hence, our litigious society where we parse words and attempt to obfuscate their meanings. When there are no lethal repercussions, spin becomes the weapon of the day.

In the martial arts, we learn to dispel this. You see that the "coward's bargain" gets you nowhere because it exists only in your head. LTC Grossman noted in his book, "On Killing," that in WWII, only 1 out of 10 soldiers actually shot to kill. The rest made the "coward's bargain" which in that case was "if I don't actually try to shoot anybody, nobody will try to shoot me." In countless wars before that time, the primary role of NCO's were to ensure that the men actually fought.

This truth about human nature disturbs me greatly. When we have power over our fellow man, we behave horribly. Take the Stanford prison example where common people who were placed as guards slowly developed habits of cruelty that was incongruent with their everyday behavior. But when our opponent can fight back, we aren't so brave or so cruel. We wither and make a false claim of morality. Is this human nature? Is this what we are doomed to be?

I think martial arts are a way to train this base impulse out of us. Through hard training, I think we can become genuinely compassionate when we do not have to be. We can afford to be gentle because we know we are strong. This strength is where human dignity begins and it is the only place where it can find its foundation.