Newt Gingrich has a very astute piece in the WSJ OpinionJournal on how Gen. Wesley Clark and Candidate Wesley Clark don’t seem to see eye-to-eye on key issues of security and national defense.
In spring 2001, a few years after his stint as commander of NATO forces in Kosovo, Gen. Clark brought out “Waging Modern War,” in which he outlined the frustrations of trying to serve every other country in the NATO alliance and his own. He wrote about not getting permission to fight a ground campaign, about not managing to persuade the U.S. Army to use Apache helicopters, about working through constant flak from Allied officers and, not least, from Washington and Brussels.
It was, apparently, a maddening assignment, a product of the kind of coalition and alliance warfare that, for some reason, Candidate Clark feels the need to recommend in his new book, “Winning Modern Wars” (PublicAffairs, 200 pages, $25). You could make the argument that the Bush administration, in Afghanistan and Iraq, remembered the frustrations of Gen. Clark much better than Candidate Clark does.
Indeed, I covered similar ground in my review of Wesley Clark’s book (continued here).
Candidate Clark argues that the US needs to have its foreign policy rubber-stamped by the EU and the UN. General Clark lamented that the EU and the UN acted as restraints on the necessary use of rapid military power to combat terrorism. Candidate Clark argues that we either need to pull out of Iraq or increase the number of troops depending on which way the wind is blowing that day. General Clark argued (quite wrongly) that air power alone can win modern wars.
Clark may look attractive the the Democrats, but only a few weeks into his campaign it’s clear that if he gets the nomination he will be running not only against his Bush, but also his own record.
Now, what really annoyed me about this article is that the WSJ originally published in the Weekend Journal- as a book review!
Note to editors: Don’t allow politicians to write “reviews” of books that don’t even review the book, but instead go on a partisan rant against the writer… get a real critic to actually, oh, review the book on it’s own merits. A less biased one, preferably.
Also, here’s another problem I have-
Since when are people NOT allowed to change their minds? I tend to change my mind on at least one issue a month… and I hope to keep myself that flexible for the rest of my life. Hell, if we thought the world was flat, and it was then proven to be round, we’d probably insist that our politicians go on thinking it’s flat, precisely because they’d otherwise be construed as a “waffler”, or doing a “flip-flop”, or as an “opportunist” engaged in “pandering to the round-world crowd”. ;P
Oh, and what about your dear Senator, Norm Coleman… it wasn’t that long ago that he was a Humphrey DFLer… of course, conversions to your side don’t count, now do they…
It’s fine for people to change their minds – however, one also has to consider their motivations for doing so. As recently as January 2002 (and probably after) Wesley Clark was a Republican. His own books elucidates a strategy not at all disimilar to the President’s National Security Strategy. His own rhetoric from that time belies a set of fundamental assumptions about the state of the world.
The fact is that it’s completely obvious that Wesley Clark’s new worldview is entirely about his own political power. Any politician that’s willing to completely abandon their principles for political gain is unfit for office. If the partisan labels were reversed for President Bush Clark would be running as a conservative Republican right now.
Moreover, his own book directly contradicts his current statements. If he really believes that the EU deserves to have a veto on US military policy now and not back then, the very least he owes the American people is an explanation of what caused him to change his mind. Just don’t expect him to have any answers for that.
The more research I do into the former general, the less I like him. He’s exactly the kind of opportunistic hack we don’t need right now.
He’s exactly the kind of opportunistic hack we don’t need right now.
When attempting to ridicule a presidential nominee I would advise that you refrain from words describing the incumbent. It looks pretty bad.
That’s funny… the more research I do into him, he seems like the perfect candidate for me… an implacable maverick. 🙂
Interesting how you chastise Clark for being an untrustworthy political opportunist, but in your very next entry, you praise the man who may be the biggest political chameleon of all-time….Norm Coleman. What makes the slippery behavior of one more justified than the other?
Ever notice how criticism of the existance of a war and criticism of the conduct of a war are completely different things? Just asking.