The amazing thing is that any of our wars lasted longer than a week: Our military must have numbered in the billions with so many people who looooove the uniform so.

At the Republican convention we listen to grand speaker after grand speaker — the party poobahs like Giuliani, Romney, Lieberman, Thompson, Huckabee and so many others — praise and adore the military, worship at its boots, identify having been in it as the principal reason to love and be loved by the land itself.

They must know what they are talking about because they all talk about it with such sincerity. They praise John McCain’s military service as the primary reason to admire the man, wrapping themselves up in the miltary flag. McCain’s military flag.  They have to use his as they have none of their own.

Mightn’t you expect that they all must have been soldiers and sailors and airpeople themselves? Or maybe some of them. A few of them? One? Hah, what a joke. There was Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman and Rudy Giuliani — demonstrating why we love New York  so — and Mike Huckabee, all slobbering over McCain’s worthy military feet. And never once indicating the truth that none of them found the time nor rose to the occasion to ever wear the uniform themselves.

McCain is a true hero — but not because of his military service. He was a pilot and there were thousands and thousands of pilots; maybe he was a good pilot maybe he was a bad pilot but being a pilot isn’t reason itself to be president. He served in the Vietnam war. Millions and millions served variously in the Vietnam war, and few would say that qualifies us all for Oval Office duty. No, he is a hero because of what he did in that horrid Vietnamese prison. It was absolutely heroic and goes to his courage and fortitude and wisdom and character.  Truly.

But to criticize someone else for not demonstrating those qualities might suggest that the critics had been there, too. To listen to the blowhards in St. Paul, they were all in the war together. If they looooove the military as much as they say they do they must have rushed to sign up. Right? Fat chance. Mike Huckabee can spin one of those goofball e-mail stories that flood the internet about veterans with everything but Jesus’ mug showing up in the lima beans — but he never saw fit to try the military himself when he had the chance. He could have signed up whenever he wanted to. He did not want to. Fred Thompson can rumble along, play acting. But did he join up? Did Giuliani? Did Rambo Lieberman?

Of course not.  

You don’t have to have been in the military to be a national leader. Very often, though, people with military experience are more aware than others of what a hurtful business is the business of war and are more cautious about playing the war card. McCain may dream of 100 years of war and that is not the normal way of seeing things. But he paid some heavy dues.

The others? No, they were too busy, or something.