I think, also, some moral pressure," he continued. "Any time, in any way, you are even remotely involved in killing, it takes something out of you, and it takes a lot of work to process that."
Buttigieg, who was an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, noted that he "was not a special forces operator — I wasn't kicking down doors."
But he said the experience still "takes something out of you, and it takes a lot of work to process that."
Obama went on a drone spree in the middle of his term. He had a 'secret hit list' that he constructed and approved with very little input or verification from other government sources and agencies. He launched dozens, if not hundreds, of drone strikes killing who knows how many people, many of them civilians. Since there was very little oversight on the program, nobody, except Obama, knows all the details of exactly what Obama was doing.
Obama once bragged, and you can look this up, "I am really good at killing people." He seemed to enjoy it.
The President has the lives of hundreds of thousands of troops and civilians in his hands every single day. If Buttgieg admitted that a tour in Afganistan gave him that much grief, even though he was never directly responsible for any deaths, then how can he possibly be the Commander in Chief of all U.S. Forces, and NATO? He would have a breakdown before the end of the first week.
There are always ongoing OPS all over the world nobody knows about in which people are killed everyday. Only this time, as President, he would directly make the call whether people live or die. It would tear him up. He wouldn't be able to do it.
Whether Buttgig knows it or not, this statement summarily disqualifies him from the job. Essentially he just admitted that he would not be able to make the hard choices that holding the office necessarily entails. In which people die frequently worldwide, both directly and indirectly from the decision.