Canada has had its fair share of blow-hard and/or incompetent defence ministers.
The ones that do the most damage are the former military officers who never made it to the top while in uniform but manage to circumvent the eminent good judgment of the professional promotion system and get there through the political route.
Witness one Gordo, the current MND, but formerly a brigadier general who spent his career bouncing around inside a tank.
O'Connor seems determined to follow in the fine tradition of politicians who, as national defence minister, presume to know considerably more than they do.
Gordo, as many across the country have known for far too long, is trying to impose his vision for the Canadian Forces on a professional and highly-competent officer corps that knows their business far better than the retired zipperhead. His ideas do not stand up on their merit. Instead, O'Connor persists in advancing his ludicrous notions - like relocating JTF 2 to Trenton or creating whole new battalions of currently non-existent troops for deployment across Canada - merely because he is the political boss.
In the meantime, the far more competent Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier, faces the challenge of reconciling the demands of the men and women in the field doing the hard work of defending the country with a budget that cannot support them and Gordo's foolishness.
To give an indication of how obvious was the problem with Gordo, consider that Bond Papers pointed it out fully one year ago, shortly after the retired tank driver was appointed to the job at 101 Colonel By.
Also noted at the time was the misery being inflicted on the people of Goose Bay who have been taken in by O'Connor's promises of troops, troops and more troops. They have their hopes pinned on O'Connor's commitments.
If they are lucky, Gordo will be fired - the sooner the better - and the community can start finding a new direction for the town's major employer.
If they are unlucky, the current federal administration will leave the decidedly wrong man defence minister, waste millions of taxpayers dollars fulfilling Gordo's pledges and in the process hook the people of Goose Bay to a form of economic crack cocaine: political patronage and pork.
It will fall to a future administration, gifted with more reasonable leadership to cope with the results of the mistake inherent in putting retired military men or women in charge of national defence.
It's not like we haven't been down this road before, far, far, far too many times.