Posted on 09/24/2003 10:43:43 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
As a military analyst on television, Wesley Clark argued early that President Bush failed to make the case for the Iraq war. He predicted incisively that America would win quickly but face deadly trouble in the aftermath.
Where some Democratic presidential candidates have criticized Bush's foreign policy and postwar leadership with the benefit of hindsight, Clark can claim to have raised similar questions with foresight. So far, so good, for his new presidential campaign.
Less conveniently for his political aspirations, however, Clark at times heaped praise on Bush and his team for skillfully handling the Iraqi operation - even so far as to say the president should be proud for forging ahead despite the naysaying.
On Bush's broader war on terror, Clark expressed confidence, well into the Afghan conflict, that the United States was moving deliberately to win the global campaign. Now, as a candidate, he characterizes the Bush administration's actions from the start as "obfuscation and slow investigations and memos and shenanigans and creating departments."
It doesn't suit Democratic contenders for the presidency to say anything nice about Bush, and Clark is hardly alone in playing up criticism that would have seemed unpatriotic when America was at war.
But the former NATO supreme commander comes to the campaign with a unique body of work - a huge volume of opinions, insight, guesswork and play-by-play commentary on the chaos of the day, delivered as a military analyst for CNN and frequent contributor to newspapers during the Iraq and Afghan wars.
Some portions of that portfolio are more helpful to his campaign than others.
In this politically charged climate, America's record in Iraq is fair game for Democrats, and Clark is attacking Bush full bore on it. "What is the intent, what is the plan, Mr. President?" Clark demanded in a warm-up to announcing his candidacy last week. "Because the commander in chief better have a plan, and we haven't heard it yet."
Months earlier, Clark was full of admiration for the way the Bush team was conducting the military operation. He spoke of a "very strong leadership team in this government" and marveled at how "everybody there is galvanized by the mission."
That's not to say Clark agreed with the decision to attack.
"The administration has never been able to make the case effectively," he argued in February, shortly before the war began. "The American public doesn't understand the urgency of this, and there's not broad support."
He asked Americans then not to blame the soldiers because they were only following orders into battle. "And my concern is that this is a political issue; the president and his party put this forward," he said bitingly.
Clark also was cautious about plunging into battle after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when many Americans were out for vengeance.
Three days after the attacks, he counseled this response: "It's fundamentally a police effort against individuals. It's not a military effort directed against factories and airfields. You may still need to use military force, but you have to use it in a very precise way."
It became a huge military effort to uproot the government of Afghanistan and the terrorist network it harbored. Clark seemed to swing behind the strategy once it was set, and he voiced confidence in the outcome.
On Iraq, before any shots were fired, Clark sketched out the dangers that would follow the fall of Saddam Hussein.
"I think there will be a lot of tensions inside Iraq, and I think that we will be welcomed very warmly at the outset but afterward, as these tensions begin to assert themselves, it'll be convenient for many different groups to look on us as the source of their problems rather than the solution," he said in February. "And I think our troops will be at some risk there."
Once the war started, Clark praised many aspects of the battle plan and provided a steadying voice when things were not going well.
He was particularly impressed with cooperation among the branches of the armed forces and their coordination with the CIA and credited the Bush administration with that result.
"In the first place, this is a trained and experienced team of top leaders," he said.
Clark occasionally sounded as if he'd supported the war all along.
"President Bush and Tony Blair should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt," he wrote in The Times of London in the first flush of the takeover of Baghdad.
And in June, he spoke as if his only change of heart had been over whether it was vital to capture Saddam, deposed Iraqi president.
"I was one of those before the war who said, `Don't focus on Saddam Hussein. Go in there, take over the government, and you'll take care of things.'" Afterward, he came to the view that Iraq could not be secure with Saddam still at large.
Clark's stance on the validity of the war is still an open question. Last week, he said he probably would have voted for the Iraq war resolution in Congress but asserted the next day: "I would never have voted for this war. Never."
"I don't know if I would have or not," the Times quotes. "I've said it both ways, because when you get into this, what happens is you have to put yourself in a position. On balance, I probably would have voted for it."
As the interview on the plane proceeded, he called on his press secretary, who was in the front of the plane. "Mary, help!"
Mary to the rescue: "You said you would have voted for the resolution as leverage for a U.N.-based solution."
Clark:"Right. Exactly."
No, he IGNORED the case for war with Iraq, just as all the Democrats (other than Lieberman), and the mainstream media did.
The great divide in the Presidential race is this: those who GET IT, and those who DON'T, vis-a-vis the War on Terror. Let's forget left vs. right, as if we actually have the luxury of playing an ideological parlor game. The philosophical debates about the nature and limits of government, the nature of man, issues of liberty versus tyranny, are age-old, and important debates. Such debates will always be with us. But, for example, after Pearl Harbor, the principal issue wasn’t the creeping socialism of the New Deal, but whether Western Civilization could defeat German fascism and Japanese militarism. After World War II, the ideological debates were rejoined. We’re in a similar situation today.
It would be nice if George W. Bush were the second coming of Russell Kirk. He clearly isn’t. But this little fact is largely irrelevant. The War on Terror is still the biggest issue, and George W. Bush is really the only candidate in the Presidential race who GETS IT. The UN doesn't get it; the European Union doesn't get it; the media doesn't get it; the Democrats (with perhaps Lieberman as the sole exception) don't get it either, and especially Wesley Clark -- for a military man, to not GET the War on Terror and the importance of dethroning Saddam, is a major blindspot.
That's the great divide in America right now. I have faith that the American people still get it. And what they will “get” is that when it’s time to pull the lever, touch the screen, or punch the chad in November 2004, they will conclude that the world is too dangerous a place to allow the Democrats back in power. This isn’t a “left-vs.-right” consideration. This is a consideration much lower on the Maslow hierarchy of political need. It’s civilization versus the savages. And most people “get it.” Wesley Clark doesn't, and that's why his candidacy is doomed.
WESLEY CLARK EXCHANGES HATS WITH CONVICTED BOSNIAN WAR CRIMINAL
On August 27, 1994, Clark, then director of strategy, plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went to Banja Luka - and met with Ratko Mladic, the bloodstained military leader of the Bosnian Serbs. (My note: everybody apparently forgets that before Serbia's the aggression in Bosnia the same Ratko Mladic was military commander of the Serbian army ("Yugoslav Peoples Army") in Croatia and conducted large scale massacres of Croatian civillians there, especially in the ethnically "cleansed of Croatian population "Krajina", another Serb-proclaimed "republic"). The State Departement had advised against the meeting, on account of Mladic's well-documented war crimes in Gorazde, Srebrenica and Sarajevo. Still, Clark and Mladic had a jolly time. Mladic gave Clark some plum brandy and a pistol with a Cyrillic inscription, and the two merrily swapped military hats.
Here's a clue :) Next time you get a chance, try googling the words Wesley Clark, Iraq, quagmire. Last time I checked, I got 3500 hits.
Well to be fair, you have to admit it's a bit hard to know exactly what the case is/was as it has changed several times since May and none of the original arguments have yet to be completely proven (WMDs, ties to 9/11, Al Qaeda). Or have been outright refuted by the same administration that used them to whip up their supporters for war
Jack Kelly of the Washington Times: He is opportunistic and lacks integrity"... "After a Serb surrender had been negotiated with the help of the Russians, Gen. Clark ordered British Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson to parachute troops onto the airport at the Kosovar capital of Pristina, so NATO would hold it before Russian peacekeepers arrived. Gen. Jackson refused. 'I'm not going to start the Third World War for you,' he told Gen. Clark, according to accounts in British newspapers". Rumor has it that this incident weighed heavily in Bill Cohen's decision to fire Clark.
A picture of Wes Clark's "ammo". All duds.
"Breaking Right"
Coming to a "gun show" bumper sticker near you...
Why doesn't Wesley run for the Baath party, they love him. As an American General, he is pitifully weak in the history department, or his political advisors are. Wars are won and then the REAL work begins; changing a regime doesn't happen over night, it doesn't happen in months. But eventually, the good done will over shadow the murderous past and this is the part that the Iraqi people must adopt and they are, slowly and steadily with the help of the coalition military. Those soldiers are the paste that is holding the wound together until it can heal by itself. The democrats and the French want instant change only because they don't want the Bush administration to have any success. What about the people of Iraq, don't they have a say so? Listening to the Socialist Democrats you would think that we could just walk away from helping further - well they are wrong.
What most of this bad press boils down to is propaganda, spin and political rhetoric. Some reporters are beginning to report the truth - if you can 'hear' it over the Clinton, Clark, and the other 7 dwarfs shouting and wailing; they would have lost Iraq for Iraqis at the get go - they are simply not cut out to go the distance, it takes up too much of their time from other pursuits like raising taxes and very much how they treat the American people - just as soon as they are elected, they leave those who supported them and it's back to business as usual, politics and Washington,D.C.
America, Our Guys got Uday and Qusaylets not forget that monumental success! The left would rather you forget such enormous success the Iraqi people surely have not!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.