It doesn't matter very much whether or not Obama served in the military.
It would be useful for him to have had that experience -- but on the other hand, it would be useful for Republicans to have done some community organizing, so that they could understand counter-insurgency techniques, which we will be needing in the kind of wars we will be fighting for the next twenty or thirty years.
Military service is sometimes taken as a proxy for character -- are you the kind of person who is willing to sacrifice for a higher cause? Everything else being equal, this is not a bad test, but, as anyone who has been in the military will know, there are at least some people who go into the military for purely personal reasons, some of whom are in fact of low character. (One of the good things about military service is that it can take people of marginal character and make them a lot better. But this does not always work.)
So far as I can tell, Obama and McCain are, for politicians, relatively honorable men. Both have faults and weaknesses. But we shouldn't be choosing a President on the basis of a character assessment, if in fact there are really great political differences between them. If there are such differences, then these should be key, assuming that neither candidate is a psychopath.
I think that there are big differences between them on domestic policy -- Democratic vs Republican differences -- but on foreign policy, I think that the differences in practice between the two men would be slight.
We are not going to do another Iraq. If we find ourselves in another Iraq anyway, McCain's instincts were and are far better than Bush's, with respect to things like troop numbers, and maintaining our world reputation for decency.
Obama's more leftwing supporters hope that he is secretly as anti-American as they are. But in fact, I believe that, if he becomes President, little will change in our foreign policy. We will slowly withdraw from Iraq, more or less within the constraints laid down by the elected government of that country. So would we under President McCain. We cannot stay if the Iraqis ask us to leave. And we will not precipitately leave, if they ask us to stay, provided progress towards a stable Iraq is evident. We will stay in Afghanistan, and maybe step up our presence there. And more challenges from the radical Islamists will come along, which will have to be met in various ways, one of which involves killing people. Sorry about that, CodePink.
In fact, ever since WWII -- and prematurely under the Democratic President Wilson -- the consensus among those who steer our country has been that we must be a major active player on the world stage. We cannot be indifferent to the kind of regimes that exist in potentially powerful countries. The only true alternative to this sort of foreign policy was advanced by Ron Paul, and is not going to fly.
So, under Obama or McCain, regardless of differences of nuance, the United States will be attempting to restrain, and if possible, to replace, undemocratic regimes in the Middle East. We will not be doing this by invading them, probably. And we will be trying to broker a two-state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict, and will be therefore taking stick from the mad nationalists on both sides.
Plenty for everyone to be unhappy about. But we have no choice.
"she" 
bootcamp like my "Devil Dawg" son did! 
Remind me again .. your point was?
