Elect Wes Clark: 4-Star Egghead
An acquaintance of mine, who swears by Rush Limbaugh and UFOs, writes:
Check out this Village Voice article, which illustrates that Wesley Clark is immorally bankrupt."
So I did. . .and found it most interesting and thoughtful. . It does not, in my opinion, illustrate that Wes Clark is "immorally bankrupt" as my acquaintance put it, nor does Schanberg, the VV reporter, seem to think so. Rather it illustrates that Clark is a 4-star egghead, and reporters, opponents and even supporters are still grappling with this. He doesn't make gaffes so much as think out loud--which he's gradually learning not to do. Clark's a complicated guy who's just now mastering the art of sound bites. . .but by writing books, I suppose he's setting himself up for this sort of criticism.
Dear me. . .Are we so tuned out and intellectually lazy that we can only elect a candidate who says: "I owe a lot to California and I'll fix the problems." Clark, unlike The Terminator, has left a giant and complicated paper trail. His ideas and observations are not set in concrete. . .Are yours? Schanberg's point, it seems to me, is that Clark needs to explain--and sooner rather than later--why the book he wrote this summer differs from his pre-war CNN commentaries. Fair enough--and I, for one, suspect that Clark is more than up to the task.
I don't think Schanberg is attacking Clark--but rather raising valid questions about a candidate who's still pretty much an unknown quantity. I think Schanberg's points are (1) Why does the book differ from the CNN commentaries. and (2) it's essential that Clark address this issue.
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If I were guessing I'd say the reasons for the discrepancies are (1) partly opportunistic--he's running for office now, and he's obviously a politician and an ego. If I didn't believe that, I'd totally give up on him as a candidate. (2) There's no way he could have said this stuff during the run-up to the war. . .Maher was fired from ABC for far less. Also, he had no proof and was not privy to secret info the government supposedly had. According to his book, he had heard rumors about empire-building and trying to link Saddam with Bin Laden, and didn't know whether the rumors were true or not. Also, as a retired general and a responsible citizen, he wasn't about to express these suspicions at a time when we were supposed to be hanging tough vis a vis saddam and the inspections. Clark was never against the inspections or taking a tough line against Saddam--and still isn't. He merely argues that there was no hurry to attack Saddam, that we should have attempted the multilateral route first, that all of this was a distraction from fighting terrorism, that Iraq was far less culpable and frightening than, say, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, and that war should always be a last--not a first--resort.
(3) Clark's book is still speculative and theoretical. . .he still doesn't have proof that the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was plotting the overthrow of several countries, which helped push us into the Iraq war. I remember raising similar concerns to john several months ago about PNAC--and he thought it sounded preposterous. I had to agree with John that it did sound preposterous, and Clark probably thought so too. (4) What's changed in the period between the runup to the war and this summer (when he wrote much of the book) is that yes, he's now running for office, but that's not the whole story. By now, the facts have emerged that we probably did go to war under false pretenses, that there don't appear to be any WMD, that we're going to pay a bundle to rebuild Iraq, that we're facing difficult opposition in Iraq and we didn't have an endgame in place (actually, these are points he did raise on CNN and was roundly criticized for at the time), and that our inept leaders have so alienated other countries and the UN, that we can't get any help paying for this debacle or securing Iraq.
Furthermore "immorally bankrupt" generals such as Storming Norman Schwartzkopf and General Zinni (who has consulted for the Dubya administration) are now just as critical of this war as Clark is. And David Hackworth, the nation's most decorated soldier, has gone 180 on the subject of Clark and now has a very high opinion of the general.
Fact is, we were snookered by this administration. Clark found this difficult to believe in the runup to the war (although he was beginning to have his suspicions), and so did a lot of other patriotic folks. So far I'm still impressed by Clark and leaning toward voting for him in the primaries. But I must confess I am a single-issue voter with a single-issue concern: Replace George W. Bush.
12:10:01 AM 
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