By  "John Paul Lejeune"

Best Defense Guest columnist

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced on March 5 a new personnel initiative applicable to the Navy and Marine Corps called "21^st Century Sailor and Marine" (21CSM), which is designed to "maximize Sailor and Marine personal readiness" -- a laudable goal. 

As a serving active duty officer in either the Navy or the Marine Corps, north of O-3 and south of the FO/GO ranks, I wonder if the enhancement in personal readiness occasioned by breathalyzers will be worth the trade-off in flagging morale, professional insult, and perceptions of detached, out of touch senior leadership. I will tell you this:  Getting a breathalyzer after morning PT as a precondition for working like hell for the rest of the day has great potential to piss me right off.

While the "in the weeds" specifics of how the breathalyzer program will work are not yet revealed, the general contours of the program are that Navy leaders will administer breathalyzers to operational unit work sections duty sections -- apparently everyone on duty, including, presumably, ship and squadron commanders -- plus "random" samples of other sailors in shore and support commands. No probable cause. No reason to suspect alcohol use, much less abuse. One size fits all screening of everyone, regardless of rank, career status, history of alcohol use or abuse, duty performance, or billet. Marine units will phase in the breathalyzers later, after the Navy beta tests the program.

This is among the most paternalistic, professionally insulting concepts I've seen in all my years of service, and I'm not sure I will submit. Yes, I know my options, and I just may exercise them and go right over the side the first time the duty blowmeister shoves a plastic tube in my face and treats me like a drunk driver for daring to report for duty. To the CNO, CMC, CMC of the Navy, and SgtMaj of the Marine Corps, here's my question:  At what point will one of you four exercise your duty to tell the Secretary of the Navy, "Hey, Boss, WTF, over?" and that he really ought to fire whichever clown came up with this idea to screen everyone to identify serial alcohol abusers who are readily identifiable through other means.  One or more of you needs to find the moral courage to recommend relegating this part of the initiative to the dustbin of really bad naval ideas.

Secretary Mabus' speech announcing the initiative notes "[t]he test will be used only as a training and prevention tool...This is a deterrence tool used to identify and direct appropriate counseling or treatment before any of those career or life-altering incidents happen." Well, which is it, a training and prevention tool or a deterrence tool? Deterrence usually equals avoiding some bad outcome, which is inconsistent with viewing this as a "training and prevention" tool. We can't have it both ways. Moreover, the Secretary notes the program will be "used to identify and direct appropriate counseling before any of those...incidents happen." This is because the time-honored tradition of assessing sailors and Marines by looking them in the eye at quarters or morning formation and holding them accountable for showing up for duty under the influence of alcohol -- what some old salts used to call "personal leadership" --  is an insufficiently precise way of knowing who is drinking too much. This "program" is encouraging "leaders" to default to a plastic straw and digital display in place of demonstrating the moral courage required to pull a promising petty officer or sergeant out of formation and haul him to the infirmary for a fitness for duty physical.

Secretary Mabus observed:  "In 13 of 20 recent Navy Commanding Officers relieved, alcohol was a component in the incident for which they were relieved." So, according to Secretary Mabus and the cowardly sycophants who thought up this scheme, the problem is not that we have poor character development and command screening processes. Rather, the problem is that we can't possibly tell when people are drinking too much and displaying conduct which suggests they might not be fit for command. And breathalyzing every O-5 and O-6 on duty ensures that we will have the soberest bunch of moral coward commanders in the history of the naval force. The solution to commanding officers abusing their positions in alcohol related incidents isn't character development and rigorous screening. The solution is a breathalyzer. Oh. My. God. What have we become?

I am keenly aware that alcoholism threatens readiness and the lives, well-being, families, and professional performance of sailors and Marines. I've had alcoholic service members work for me, I have seen it control their lives, and I think I have done my duty to get them help when I could and to hold them accountable when I must. I am also intensely aware that the fix is in holding leaders accountable for exercising due diligence with regard to educating and influencing their sailors and Marines on the dangers and consequences of alcohol abuse.  That does not mean every ship CO or battalion commander is going to see the old man for every DUI in his unit. It does mean that if a ship CO or battalion commander has cultured a leadership environment in which clear signs of alcohol abuse are tolerated or even encouraged, and if there is a spike in alcohol-related incidents in the command, service senior leaders are going to take a hard look at what is going on inside the unit. Leaders exercising their solemn duty to junior sailors and Marines, who have even a modicum of intuition about their charges, can figure out who is sucking the worm out of the bottle every night without resorting to the extraordinary insulting and distrustful measure of breathalyzing every shipmate who steps across the brow and every Marine who marches into a gun park.  Of course this might require the unthinkable: For the squadron XO to come in on a weekend and walk through the barracks, for the Master Chief to get off his ass in the Chief's Mess and head down to troop berthing, and for the company commander to fire a 1stSgt hiding a platoon sergeant's alcohol problem. Egad, it might even require a flag or general officer to look at his O-6 brigade or group commanders for regular signs of red faces and bloodshot eyes. It might require -- wait for it -- leadership -- for officers to be officers and not simply Powerpoint producers or flag mess food blisters.

Think of the signal this program sends to our officers, specifically our junior officers:  welcome to the fold; you are the next generation of captains and colonels, admirals and generals; we love you like our younger brothers and sisters; we expect enormous productivity, professionalism, and sacrifice out of you; we entrust you with monumental responsibility; we want you to think strategically year to year while acting tactically day to day; we want you to blow in a tube like you are Lindsay Lohan in return for the privilege of showing up, embracing your mortality daily, and working really hard in dangerous and austere conditions for modest pay and recognition. Who wouldn't want to keep taking that deal? If corporate leadership tried this stunt in a Fortune 500 company, they would get a considerable reaction from the union or the labor force, and their retention programs would suffer massively. Labor simply would not stand for an invasive program like this. The military is different, and we just roll over for it. Maybe it is time for military leaders to start thinking about our service members more like a labor force (any active duty member who says the military is categorically different and does not respond to human resources programs in the same way as a civilian labor force:  Please return your reenlistment bonuses, flight pay, and subsidized health care stipends to the U.S. Treasury at once, and call personnel to zero out your generous annual leave balance).  Leaders should recognize that it is possible to cross redlines with the force. 

Personally, this is a redline for me.

So here is one version of how this plays out:  Lieutenant Umptefrats and Captain Beltbuckle, classmates at the Naval Academy, meet up in Honolulu. Close friends at the Academy who boxed the same weight class and remain within 5 pounds of each other, Umptefrats is a division officer on the USS Chosin and Beltbuckle commands a company in Third Marines.  Smart, sharp, dedicated, and diligent, they work hard -- real hard -- enduring separation from their young families for months at a time conducting and supporting combat and presence operations at sea and ashore. Their wives give them their liberty card to go out together. It's a weeknight, so both officers are keenly aware that they have to keep it in check. Still, the beer starts flowing and the stories about misdeeds in Bancroft Hall abound. Each of them has 5 beers before they call it a night just after midnight. They take taxis home. When each of them reports for duty at 0630 the next morning, their breathalyzers register .013. Neither is impaired, and both are fully prepared to execute a full workday. Absent a breathalyzer, no one on the ship or in the battalion would likely know or care that either officer had even been out the night before. Now, with both officers showing up and blowing very low alcohol levels, their COs are notified. Each officer is called in to see the XO so he can evaluate them for himself and counsel them on responsible use of alcohol. Whispers about "drunk on duty" start circulating, both officers get a little scared for their careers. Then they get pissed at being treated like a problem child trooper with 3 NJPs in his book, snatched by the Shore Patrol out of a drunken bar brawl in Phuket. How long before both these guys start counting the days until their five years are up so they can go back to grad school on the GI Bill?

We have tools for determining whether Umptefrats and Beltbuckle, their sergeants and chiefs, their seamen and Marines are abusing alcohol: daily observation; evaluation of duty performance; perceptions of peers; knowledge of life stressers; receipt of information about financial troubles; brushes with law enforcement. We don't need another one size fits all tool that screens everyone to identify a few, and the leadership doesn't need to insult everyone and treat us all like wayward teenagers in order to identify a relative few folks who would dare show up for duty under the influence of alcohol. 

This tool is categorically different than the inspections we conduct to detect the presence of illicit drugs:  Unlike the urinalysis program, this "leadership" instrument threatens to sweep up members of the force for engaging in perfectly lawful activity, even tacitly encouraged by the government through the sale of booze in exchanges and clubs. Unlike the urinalysis program, which is virtually the only way to determine whether a service member smokes marijuana during weekend liberty periods, we have options with regard to diagnosing alcohol abuse. Moreover, it is cumulative:  we already sacrifice some measure of privacy for the greater good by submitting to random drug testing, even though the vast majority of the force does not and would not use illicit drugs. This program in its current form is needlessly invasive, professionally insulting and misguided. It warrants a hard look by the uniformed senior leadership in reevaluating their advice to the secretary, who may be so far removed from his own uniformed service that he misunderstands the contemporary military. If retained, it should be administered selectively, in the same way that the services test for steroids (supported by facts which add up to probable cause), not daily breathalyzers across the force.

The remaining issue this officer has to sort out is how I will react personally when the breath Stasi try to make me blow into an breathalyzer as a precondition for reporting for duty.  I might just say no, and take a day of leave on short notice.  When my commander later hears about it and has "the discussion," that conversation might offramp into discussion of other topics, like my transition off active duty. I understand the leadership's fervent desire to mitigate operational and personnel risk and help those with alcohol problems to get counseling and continue to serve honorably. Treating every service member -- including tee-teetotalers and moderate social drinkers who comprise the vast majority of the force -- like a DUI suspect without cause is a flawed methodology for getting from here to there. It is reactive leadership at its finest, and bespeaks a lack of understanding of the modern force.

"John Paul Lejeune" is an active duty naval officer with more than 10 and less than 25 years of service.  He is leaving his service identity and rank undisclosed to emphasize that this is a leadership issue for both the Navy and Marine Corps.

By "Army of Anon"

Best Defense guest column

After ten years of war, the path to general officer retains an extreme emphasis in two areas: Command and staff assignments at the tactical level, and schmoozing on a general staff as an aide-de-camp or executive officer. White, male, Republican, Evangelical Christian, sole family income provider, poorly read, obsessed with physical fitness, and extremely concerned about risks -- what a perfect recipe for groupthink. C'mon man!

We promote meatheads. Too many officers are promoted who have already demonstrated limited intellect, hyper-aggressive tendencies, and incompetence during their watch -- or on the other hand, extreme subservience.  The Army that wisely promoted intellects such as General David Petraeus and Lieutenant General Dan Bolger also promoted Tommy Franks and Ricardo Sanchez! In today's Army, only general officers can screw up and move up. C'mon man! The Division Commander of the 4^th Infantry Division, who probably did more to inflame the Iraqi insurgency than anyone outside Abu Ghraib, was not only rewarded with command in Iraq again, but is now the Chief of Staff of the Army. Why is the main culprit of the Rolling Stone McChrystal debacle (Part I), Charlie Flynn a brigadier general? The same battalion commander in OIF whose command shot down two friendly aircraft and suffered the shame of the decimation of the 507^th Maintenance Company was also later elected for brigade command. His brigade commander at the time was later selected to be a general officer. This would never happen in the other services, particularly the Navy, where being in command literally entails responsibility for everything your unit does or fails to do.

Our officer corps doesn't read, and isn't bothered by the fact. $500 in book purchases for each senior leader may have saved the Army thousands of lives lost. Take the example of General George Casey. According to David Cloud and Greg Jaffe's book Four Stars, General Casey, upon learning of his assignment to command U.S. forces in Iraq, received a book from the Army Chief of Staff. The book Counterinsurgency Lessons Learned from Malaya and Vietnam was the first book he ever read about guerilla warfare." This is a damning indictment of the degree of mental preparation for combat by a general. The Army's reward for such lack of preparation: two more four star assignments. C'mon man!

For the tiny fraction of our Army that actually fights, we have made too little effort and taken too long at reducing the soldier's load. The quality of the equipment is superb, but why did it take so long to get lighter machine guns and mortars? Close with and destroy the enemy under a minimum seventy pound load? C'mon man!

There is no strategic corporal in the Army, and the squad is an insignificant maneuver unit. Commanders are reluctant to employ squads on independent missions because the squad is likely led by a soldier with too few years of experience and contains too few men. Our platoons are not employed on doctrinal missions because commanders doubt the leadership of their lieutenant, the platoon lacks sufficient medical capability to handle massive bleeding and stabilize wounded, and the platoon has insufficient communications. Commanders don't want to risk enemy contact with only eight to nine riflemen with only one medic available to support a platoon.  Instead of Army squads and platoons being a force to reckon with, they remain nearly equal in firepower, medical capability, and communications to their predecessors of the last thirty years. C'mon man!

Never have so few been supervised by so many doing so little. For the last ten years, the terms "field grade oversight" and "adult supervision" have been used entirely too often. Whether it be the Rangers blowing up a radar tower in Desert Storm, the rescue of Scott O'Grady in Bosnia, the Ranger parachute assault outside Kandahar in 2001, or the stereotypical deployment of the 82^nd Airborne Division commanding general to accompany even a brigade minus mission, U.S. military commanders increasingly accompany the smallest elements of their command in combat. There are times when a lieutenant colonel or above needs to lead Hal Moore-style, being the first one on the ground. But the overwhelming majority of combat situations do not warrant this senior presence.  Field grade officers do not need to be leading fire teams, squads and platoons. They need to do their job, staying away from room clearing. And ensuring subordinates are getting what they need. C'mon man!

Ten years into war and the Army still treats combat deaths as potential criminal negligence. If losing soldiers in combat warrants always an official investigation, then by all accounts the D-Day planners and the leadership on Omaha Beach should have been sacked in 1944. The Army should stop formally investigating American combat deaths immediately! Senior leaders should provide cover for the operations they sanction. Does reading soldiers their rights send a signal that they are potential subjects versus participants in a small unit action? Reading anyone their rights never sends a signal that you are on their side. C'mon man!

The United States Army focuses excessively on demonstrating physical fitness over any other attribute. "PT is the most important thing we do all day," goes the maxim. Yes, physical training is extremely important, but war skills like battle drills, and marksmanship get much less emphasis. The U.S. Army has arguably not lost a battle due to poor soldier fitness since the Chinese intervention in Korea in November 1950, yet the Army appears to rewards commanders for more for their running ability than their mental ability.  Too often, officers who are mental wind tunnels get a pass because they can run fast and do a lot of pull-ups. The reputations for general officers such as Petraeus and McChrystal highlight their intensity and sharp intellects, yet the overwhelming majority of their careers were defined by their reputation as fitness fanatics and political savvy. Without a doubt General Petraeus possessed the intellect and generalship we desperately needed in our combat commanders, he was notorious for sizing up subordinates solely on how they impress him on their ability to keep up with him on grueling runs. The penalty for not being fast enough for General Petraeus was being held back another year in a non-career enhancing job, rather than moving on to the key developmental position. Yet when General Petraeus needed to surround himself with extraordinary brainpower, the pool of senior field grade officers meeting that criterion was limited. He had to reach out for help to particularly smart Australian and British scholars. How many quality officers failed a Petraeus "check ride" in the 1990s and were professionally marginalized? Who would have been there to advise General Petraeus that was no longer "competitive?" C'mon man!

Our non-commissioned officer corps today is too political and focused on its own selfish promotion. We've established senior non-commissioned officer positions at every level. The senior non-commissioned officers have metastasized into a mirror of their senior officer counterparts. I use the word counterparts because many officers see their senior noncommissioned officer as an equal in command, someone whose endorsement must be sought at every decision. In our non-commissioned officers, there is an ever-increasing sense of entitlement: change of responsibility ceremonies, inflated evaluation reports, security detachments, demand for challenge coins, and their own senior non-commissioned officer-specific in briefs. Note to those sergeants who don't read history: It's not about perks! Changes of responsibility ceremonies have no historical basis in the Army. Today's Army non-commissioned officer evaluation report is far more inflated than the officer evaluation report. Who would have seen that coming two decades ago? C'mon man!

The Army's efforts to develop an advisory capability remain half-hearted. The Security Force Assistance Brigade concept is foundering. What ought to be the brigade's decisive operation overseas is an afterthought. Could the Army just be waiting it out for two more years? The Army belief is that the best officers are selected to command battalions, brigades, divisions and corps. It rewards what it values. The Army's golden boys are largely absent in the advisory effort.  Too often our advisory teams were filled by those who weren't politically connected enough to avoid advisory duty! The combat advisor augmentees the brigade does receive are often parceled out to be liaison officers. There is no effort Army-wide to look deep enough at individual backgrounds, personalities, and aptitudes to ensure the right manning. Our advisory team manning remains a mess: you might receive a talented former light infantry first sergeant, and you might receive a former Bradley Stinger air defender who has never led a dismounted patrol in his life. C'mon man!

"Army of Anon" is an old infantry major.

Sen. John McCain said yesterday on Face the Nation that:

Iraq is unraveling. It's unraveling because we didn't keep a residual force there because the president of the United States pledged to get out of Iraq. And we could have kept a residual force there and kept some stability. Instead, it's unraveling, and Iran's influence is increasing, and there's every possibility you could see a very chaotic situation there.… The vice president of Iraq is now hiding out in Irbil. There is militias and death squads operating. There is a breakdown in the Iraqi government, and there will be increased tensions on the border between the Kurdish areas and Iraq.

The difference between me and Sen. McCain is that I think it is possible that the unraveling was inevitable, from the moment the U.S. military entered Iraq in the spring of 2003. We untied the knot that was Iraq.

I admit it: When I was writing The Gamble I thought for a while that such a residual force was the way to go. But with the passage of the years since then I increasingly have come to believe that the Iraqis were simply sitting around keeping their powder dry and waiting for Uncle Sam to get out of the way, so they could sort themselves out. Remember, the surge was half a war ago -- it began five years ago, in January 2007. Iraq was given a lot of time. I do not see what keeping 15,000 troops there for another year or two would do that it did not do in 2009 or 2010. Plus, President Obama was not elected to keep us in Iraq; he was elected, in part, to get us out. So it would be pretty hard to keep troops there without a clear indication that it would do any good. Especially since Iraqis seemed to want us out.

Best defense top 10s of 2011: Tom’s picks

Over the break, I am running my 10 favorite Best Defense posts of the year. War Dogs is so popular it will get its own special day. I also will do a list of best 10 guest columns.

Looking over the year’s columns, these are the ones that for various reasons jumped out at me. It took a half a day to do this, mainly because the FP website loads so slooooooooowly. Someone needs to feed the squirrels inside the servers. 

10.  Annals of sucky deployments. This was a favorite in part because it so seemed to capture the oddity of one soldier’s tour of duty, but also because I was surprised by the reaction to it.

9. The 19 things generals can’t say about the Afghan war that are true. Honestly, this was not one of my favorites of the year, but the response was so widespread that it deserves to be remembered. To my surprise, it was picked up by a variety of newspapers and run as a column.

8. Was JFK the worst president of the 20^th century? On reflection, no, he wasn’t. But I do think he is the most over-rated.

7. The defense budget implosion series, this one about cutting retirement benefits.

6. The story of a purposely pro-Nazi unit in the U.S. Army during World War II. Just interesting weird stuff.

5.  Lt. Gen. Walter Ulmer on what a good unit feels like. This is a sentimental favorite because a friend of mine saw this quote and used it in a book about what makes a good school.

4. Getting blown up and then getting ticketed in Bagram. This just brings home the nature of our wars these days.

3. I think President Obama handled Libya well.

And still think so a bit later.

(But I still worry about the narrowness of his national security team. This is an unnecessary vulnerability.

2. I liked this one about the meaning of a World War II photograph because it is brings home the nature of this blog, in which the commenters and guest columnists contribute so much. To me, this post, and the 73 comments that follow, are what the Best Defense is all about.

1. There is more of my heart in this one than in just about anything else I’ve ever written. Susan Glasser, the impressive editor of Foreign Policy, asked me to write a summary of what I am thinking about Iraq right now. I thought, “I just did”—and thought of this column.

The U.S. Army/Flickr

I think that as the United States leaves Iraq and shuffles toward the exit in Afghanistan, we need to think about how to answer that question when veterans of our wars there pose it.

This is a difficult one for me, because I think the war in Afghanistan was the correct response to the 9/11 attacks, but was mishandled for years after that, and I think the war in Iraq was an unnecessary and very expensive distraction from that response. Also, we may well see further violence in both countries that will raise questions about exactly what we achieved.

Also, today's vets tend to have good BS detectors. Recently I walked past a small monument to graduates of a high school who were lost in the Spanish-American War. It stated that they died "for humanity." I don't think so.

I think my response would be along these lines -- but I'd welcome your thoughts. "When your country called, you answered. You did your duty on a mission your country gave to you. In our system, thankfully, the military does not get to pick and choose what missions it will undertake -- that is decided by the officials elected by the people. Those officials are not always right, but they are the leaders we chose to make that decision. No matter what happens in Iraq and Afghanistan, you have the thanks of a grateful nation for answering the call."

Is that enough? I don't know. If someone said that to me, I suspect I would think, Yeah, well where was everyone else? Why did my friends die and yours didn't?

I don't know. Help me out here.

As a public service, Best Defense is offering this primer for generals on their way to Afghanistan.

Here is a list of 19 things that many insiders and veterans of Afghanistan agree to be true about the war there, but that generals can't say in public. So, general, read this now and believe it later-but keep your lip zipped. Maybe even keep a printout in your wallet and review before interviews.

My list of things to remember I can't say

• Pakistan is now an enemy of the United States.

• We don't know why we are here, what we are fighting for, or how to know if we are winning.

• The strategy is to fight, talk, and build. But we're withdrawing the fighters, the Taliban won't talk, and the builders are corrupt. 

• Karzai's family is especially corrupt.

• We want President Karzai gone but we don't have a Pushtun successor handy.

• But the problem isn't corruption, it is which corrupt people are getting the dollars. We have to help corruption be more fair.

• Another thing we'll never stop here is the drug traffic, so the counternarcotics mission is probably a waste of time and resources that just alienates a swath of Afghans.

• Making this a NATO mission hurt, not helped. Most NATO countries are just going through the motions in Afghanistan as the price necessary to keep the US in Europe

• Yes, the exit deadline is killing us.

• Even if you got a deal with the Taliban, it wouldn't end the fighting.

• The Taliban may be willing to fight forever. We are not.

• Yes, we are funding the Taliban, but hey, there's no way to stop it, because the truck companies bringing goods from Pakistan and up the highway across Afghanistan have to pay off the Taliban. So yeah, your tax dollars are helping Mullah Omar and his buddies. Welcome to the neighborhood.

• Even non-Taliban Afghans don't much like us.

• Afghans didn't get the memo about all our successes, so they are positioning themselves for the post-American civil war .

• And they're not the only ones getting ready. The future of Afghanistan is probably evolving up north now as the Indians, Russians and Pakistanis jockey with old Northern Alliance types. Interestingly, we're paying more and getting less than any other player.

• Speaking of positioning for the post-American civil war, why would the Pakistanis sell out their best proxy shock troops now?

• The ANA and ANP could break the day after we leave the country.

• We are ignoring the advisory effort and fighting the "big war" with American troops, just as we did in Vietnam. And the U.S. military won't act any differently until and work with the Afghan forces seriously until when American politicians significantly draw down U.S. forces in country-when it may be too damn late.

• The situation American faces in Afghanistan is similar to the one it faced in Vietnam during the Nixon presidency: A desire a leave and turn over the war to our local allies, combined with the realization that our allies may still lose, and the loss will be viewed as a U.S. defeat anyway.

Thanks to several people who contributed to this, from California to Kunar and back to DC, and whose names must not be mentioned! You know who you are. The rest of you, look at the guy sitting to your right.

I was surprised to see Ronald Wilson Reagan and Woodrow Wilson almost tie as the worst presidents of the 20th century. Reagan led most of the week, but Wilson pulled by him yesterday afternoon -- only to be edged out in the final tally when I shut down voting at 9 A.M. eastern time this morning.

I understand Wilson's showing -- both the pacifist left and the non-interventionist right loathe him, as well as many people who simply see him as a racist. But I suspect Reagan's high score says a lot about the readers of this blog. Based on comments posted on this blog and notes to my blog e-mailbox, you guys really think Reagan was a bad president. I suspect his surprise near-"win" is due in part to a growing distaste with tax-cutting ideologues who seem blithely unaware of the damage they do. Sample comment from Boone, N.C.: "with his half-baked political philosophy, Reagan set this country on its present course to ruin."

The surprise to me is how even the voting was. After Reagan and Wilson, it basically is close to a scatter-shot tie between the rest -- Harding, Lyndon Johnson and Nixon clumped together, followed by Carter and Hoover, who also tied. And old Coolidge brought up the rear with one vote.

I was impressed that one Marine intelligence analyst in Afghanistan took the time to send in an anti-Harding vote. Another military e-mail voted against Richard Nixon, not for the usual reasons of corruption and such, but because, he wrote, "He's helped the Chinese more than he's helped Americans. We're still paying for his foreign policy coup since most of our manufacturing is now over there."

And you all certainly don't agree with me about JFK. In fact, there was not a single whole vote for him as worst president of the century, although one person gave him a half vote, and several offered him 2nd place, maybe just to be nice to me. Reading over the discussion and notes, I've been persuaded that he was not the worst president of the 20th century, but probably the most over-rated. (Though of course many of you would give that title to Reagan.)

I'm also surprised that Lyndon Johnson didn't get more votes. And apparently people have forgiven Bill Clinton his inability keep all his body parts inside his clothing -- not a single person named him, despite the apparent bias against Southern Democrats (Wilson, Carter, Johnson) in the polling. And yes, Wilson was a Southern Democrat. He received one of the most succinct votes: "On any consequentialist reading, whether you are realist or liberal in international relations, the worst American president in the international realm of all time. On civil rights, more retrograde than any American politician since Andrew Johnson."

Here is the final tally:

1. Ronald Reagan 17.5
2. Woodrow Wilson 17
3. Warren Harding 9
4. Richard Nixon 9
5. Lyndon Johnson 8
6. Herbert Hoover 7
7. Jimmy Carter 7
8. Calvin Coolidge 1
9. JFK .5

Fred Kaplan is one of the more interesting defense writers around, taking a broad approach. Here, by the way, is his review of Robert Dallek's new book on Kennedy.

And here are two of his e-mails to me in response to my Friday post about how I had come to think Kennedy was a terrible president. I disagree with what he says here, but I think it is worth considering.

By Fred Kaplan
Best Defense department of defending JFK

[E-mail 1:]

Just to state a few points on the question of whether JFK was a terrible president:

(1) Yes, he listened to Taylor and other hawks early on, but the Cuban missile crisis, which you glide over, was a turning point. The real significance (which I've gleaned from a close examination of the tapes) is that, quite early on (the 4th day), JFK was looking for how to give Khrushchev a face-saving way out; that when Khrushchev offered the secret trade (his Cuban missiles for our Turkish ones), JFK wanted to take it right away, while everyone -- and I mean everyone around the table (except, significantly, George Ball) -- was adamantly opposed. I think that the crisis taught him that all those smart experts sitting around the table weren't any smarter than he was. (He was beginning to see this point during the Laos crisis, when his generals behaved like bureaucrats -- the Army wanted to invade, the Air Force wanted to send B52s, the Navy wanted to send carrier groups.) Another key thing: JFK told six people that he was taking the deal and swore them to secrecy. Among the people he did not tell was LBJ. This was a critical mistake, as it left intact a false lesson of the crisis, which JFK's successors (including LBJ) applied to Vietnam. (McGeorge Bundy concedes this point in his memoir.)

Read on