Formative years are hard to shake. Distrust of the military, both because of the dissembling during the Vietnam war and because it is half of what Eisenhower identified as the greatest threat to democracy, runs deep. Enter, then, Gen. Clark, a voice I clung to in the general insanity leading up to the invasion of Iraq and the evasion afterwards. Reasonable and humane. Knowledgeable, critical, and patriotic.

I keep thinking about Caesar "saving" the Republic. Is that where we are going? China is aligning South America, saying no to enlightenment politics, saying no to American hegemony, and saying no to American technology. Islam is saying no to secularism, saying no to expansionism, and no to usury. It seems our growth markets are hitting a wall and feeding back on themselves into material obesity. The apparent intractability of problems, like the Middle East, and the murky trade-offs of resource depletion, environmental degradation, and engineered nutrition cloud the intoxicating vision of a manifest destiny. Has the ordered chaos of free voices and votes degenerated to a level of randomness where only authoritarian will can provide direction?

Or is the General a man of his nation, a man who spent a career defending its principles and rights upon which its polity is built? Is this a man who is a citizen first, who can turn his back on the baton and pick up the gavel and weild it properly with incisive thinking, persuasive judgement, and straight talking? Is this a man who, perhaps, is tired of seeing his military turned into the goons of economic greed?

Clearly, he is a man competent in the business of political administration. Clearly he is a man to take very seriously. Less clearly, perhaps the lessons of the formative years need to be reassessed.

I spent a couple of hours searching on Gen. Clark.

From an article in 2002 written by Clark
www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0209.clark.html

What we really need is closer alignment of our police and judicial activities with our friends and allies: greater cooperation in joint police investigations, sharing of evidence, harmonious evidentiary standards and procedures, as well as common definitions of crimes associated with terrorism. Through greater legal, judicial, and police coordination, we need to make the international environment more seamless for us than it is for the international terrorists we seek.

Not a single European election hinges on the success of the war on terrorism. As a consequence, European elected officials simply don't have a personal stake in the outcome.

The United States has the opportunity to use the power of the international institutions it established to triumph over terrorists who threaten not just the United States, but the world. What a tragedy it will be if we walk away from our own efforts, and from 60 years of post-World War II experience, to tackle the problem of terror without using fully the instruments of international law and persuasion that we ourselves created.

From the Christian Science Monitor
www.csmonitor.com/2003/0917/p02s01-uspo.html

While a Clark candidacy might draw some comparisons to that of Dwight Eisenhower, observers point out that Ike was far more of a national hero - and that the Kosovo campaign, which Clark led, was not exactly World War II.

"This is going to come down to a two-man race, Dean and the anti-Dean," says political analyst Charlie Cook. "Someone has to be the anti-Dean.... [and] Clark because of his late start would at least have an excuse why he might not do well in Iowa and New Hampshire."

From YellowTimes.org
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1587

At one point in the bombing campaign it was reported that "[Clark] would rise out of his seat and slap the table. 'I've got to get the maximum violence out of this campaign -- now!'" (Washington Post, 21 September 1999)

And last year found our hero in New Hampshire, endorsing Democrat Katrina Swett for Congress, as reported by the local paper. "Clark, who supports a congressional resolution that would give President Bush authority to use military force against Iraq, said if Swett were in Congress this week, he would advise her to vote for the resolution, but only after vigorous debate." (The Union Leader, Manchester, NH, 10 October 2002)

From FreeRepublic.com: "A Conservative News Forum"
209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/984431/posts

Take Kosovo, the 11-week war, fought exclusively from the air, without a single Nato casualty. The former supreme commander now holds up the campaign against Slobodan Milosevic as a model of modern conflict, a war fought by the US at the head of a multilateral alliance - not as the superpower that launched an unprovoked, almost unilateral war against Iraq. General Clark claims his political skills played a large part in holding together that 19-nation alliance.

Kosovo also casts him in a less flattering light. There was the episode, well remembered in Britain, which pitted him against General Sir Michael Jackson, commander of Nato's K-For. "Sir, I'm not starting World War Three for you," General Jackson replied when ordered by General Clark to prevent a Russian force from occupying the airport at Pristina. General Clark took the refusal to the most senior military commanders in London and Washington, but was overruled in both capitals. Precisely what happened is not clear. But the episode hardly reinforces the image of the cool commander-in-chief with the super-safe pair of hands.

But the question remains. General Clark will certainly liven up the campaign. But will he follow the path of General Eisenhower, who breezed into the presidency almost by popular demand? Or will he be an Alexander Haig, another hard-driving general (and also Nato supreme commander) whose 1988 presidential bid self-destructed in a sea of temper tantrums.

From The Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1045122,00.html

The commentators were similarly divided over the new candidate's illustrious military CV. "Gen Clark's primary political function is to serve as the Democrats' beard on national security," said the New York Post's Eric Fettman. He warned Democrats to think twice before backing a single-issue politician: "A Clark candidacy would mean a campaign based solely on the war at a time when many in the party believe Mr Bush's biggest weakness is the economy - an area in which, like every other domestic issue, Gen Clark has no track record."

From Utah Indymedia
utah.indymedia.org/news/2003/09/6223.php

General Wesley Clark is not a war hero. He is a war criminal, who time after time on CNN defended the bombing of Yugoslavia and choice of targets in an immoral, imperialist war designed to further enrich the ruling elites in the United States. He told lie after lie as all apologists for imperialist wars do and was very truculent in justifying the bombing. No leftist who truly understands the meaning of imperialism could possibly vote for this candidate for president. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing. I have the greatest admiration for the work of Michael Moore, but he needs to investigate the recent history of Yugoslavia more closely before endorsing Wesley Clark.

Two items, tenuously connected.

First, there was the article today in the Guardian quoting sources claiming that the calls for additional NATO troops for deployment in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Balkans is putting a large strain on national resources in the member countries. This is consistent with the recent reports that the U.S. is calling up more reserves to bolster our troop levels in Iraq. Apparently, the western alliances are approaching the limits of police power.

Second is Wesley Clark's article espousing a multilateral foreign policy that reaches out for consensus with other nations and the UN before acting aggressively. What stands out is his overriding emphasis on the role of NATO as our main strategic partner in any multilateral program. His is a strong anglo-saxon / indo-european bias, and one logical extension of his position is that he would support a further entrenchment of the indo-european axis (from America to Europe, then through Israel, Turkey, and India on to Australia and New Zealand) against the Islamicists and Asians.

From Sun Tzu forward, knowing thy enemy has been a core teaching. If it is Islam and the Muslim world that we are against, then we are in an extremely weak position. They know considerably more about us than we know about them. They speak and read our languages. They have studied our beliefs. We don't know there's.

It is time, if for only strategic reasons, that we reach out and infuse their cultures rather than try to impose ours. A hardening of lines will only lead to greater ignorance of the outside (and, almost inevitably, increased scrutiny of the inside) and this will only increase our weakness. Our military resources are already stretched, and more isolation only leads to more demand on those resources to maintain the barrier. Reaching out to Islamists, rather than pro-American Arabs, is the only way that we can acheive a satisfactory security based on an informed understanding of other positions.

Josh Marshall has a couple of entries about the General. First is an interview and then a follow-up rebuttal to a story carried in the NY Sun. It's clear that the General knows what he's talking about.

But as he admits, he's in the fun phase of the campaign, talking with people and pressing the flesh. Time will tell how he reacts to the pressures that will come to bear. Is he a martinet, as detractors claim, or will he remain clear-headed in the clinches?

Gen. Wes has a well-thought out article in the November issue of the Washington Monthly on the role of military, empire and multi-lateralism.

One sentence struck me:

And many foreign policy theorists in and around the White House and the office of the secretary of defense were putting forward the idea that America should embrace its destiny as a new imperial power, using military force as the chief tool to create a more democratic and pro-American world order.

There's a tendency to think that "democracy" and "pro-American" are the same thing, like the tendency to think that "democracy" and "free markets" are the same thing. Unfortunately, that thinking is simplistic and leads to adventures poorly thought out that serve to weaken our economy and democracy, not strengthen it.