The Command Post - 2004 US Presidential Election - The Model of a Modern Political General

September 25, 2003

| The Model of a Modern Political General

UPDATE : For a closely-reasoned fact-filled critique of this whole article saying politely why I'm full of it, see the Comments section by a Clark campaigner. Long, Detailed, and definitely worth a read.

As an Australian, you might think that I can be objective about the US Elections. I mean, I can't vote, and why should I care about who gets in as US President any more than people in the US care about whether Costello or Carr succeeds John Howard when he retires?

Well, I'll try to be objective, but please bear in mind George W. Bush's policies on trade, especially as regards Steel Imports, have hurt my country pretty badly in the hip-pocket nerve. And my own personal belief is that a Healthy Democracy needs a Healthy Opposition to "keep the Bastards Honest" as we say here in Oz. Howard Dean... doesn't cut the mustard, and he's the best of a very dreary bunch.

This stuff is important to us.

So I was all ready to greet General Clark as one Democrat who had both some foreign policy nous, and experience of helping to run a humongous organisation, namely, the US Army.

Then I looked "behind the scenes".

(Hat Tip to Thief's Den for tracking this one down)

The picture shows General Clark trading hats with his pal, Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, now an indicted war criminal and fugitive from justice. Have a look at the expression on the face of the British officer to Clark's left.

From the Weekly Standard :

Clark accepted as gifts Mladic's hat, a bottle of brandy, and a pistol inscribed in Cyrillic, U.S. officials said. 'It's like cavorting with Hermann Goering,' one U.S. official complained."

As for what former colleagues, superiors and subordinates have said about him...

... here's an assessment that appeared in the Los Altos Town Crier :

"What do you think of General Wesley Clark and would you support him as a presidential candidate," was the question put to him [General H.Hugh Sheldon, former Chief of the General Staff] by moderator Dick Henning, assuming that all military men stood in support of each other. General Shelton took a drink of water and Henning said, "I noticed you took a drink on that one!"

"That question makes me wish it were vodka," said Shelton. "I've known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I'm not going to say whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat. I'll just say Wes won't get my vote."

Then there's what some former subordinates and co-workers had to say on Counterpunch :

"The poster child for everything that is wrong with the GO (general officer) corps," exclaims one colonel, who has had occasion to observe Clark in action, citing, among other examples, his command of the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood from 1992 to 1994.

[...]

Such strong reactions are common. A major in the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colorado when Clark was in command there in the early 1980s described him as a man who "regards each and every one of his subordinates as a potential threat to his career".

While he regards his junior officers with watchful suspicion, he customarily accords the lower ranks little more than arrogant contempt. A veteran of Clark's tenure at Fort Hood recalls the general's "massive tantrum because the privates and sergeants and wives in the crowded (canteen) checkout lines didn't jump out of the way fast enough to let him through".

As for his judgement in times of crisis - well, it's not often that I'll quote the Grauniad, but this is what they had to say :

As allied troops moved into Kosovo, 200 Russian troops made a surprise dash from Bosnia and occupied Pristina airport, where [UK] General Sir Mike Jackson, the commander of the international K-For peacekeeping force, was to make his headquarters.

Gen Clark ordered Gen Jackson to storm the airport at which point the British commander was reported to have said: "I'm not going to start the third world war for you."

This from a paper not known for its sympathies for the US Republican party. A less immediately condemning version is in Wikipedia :

Clark, in an NPR interview, said that the incident was a surprising moment for him. Clark indicated that his order to block the runways was refused by an emotional Jackson and that he took the matter up the British chain of command. Clark stated that General Sir Charles Guthrie, British Chief of the Defence Staff, agreed with Jackson. Guthrie, according to Clark, also told him that Hugh Shelton the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff also agreed with him. Clark found this very surprising since the original suggestion to block the Russians came from Washington. Clark called the Pentagon, looking for support, and was told by Shelton: "We don't want a confrontation, but I do support you". Clark said that he told Shelton: "Then you've got a policy problem". Clark maintained in the NPR interview that the matter was a difference in the perception of the policy between the US administration and the British government. Clark believed he was carrying out the suggestions of the administration in Washington.

This is a guy who was supposed to be the NATO commander on the scene. OK, so his forward HQ was actually in Brussels, as far away from the action as possible. It took a special dispensation for him to get a Kosovo campaign medal, as he didn't qualify for one. But he's brave all right: One "suggestion" from "somewhere in Washington" and he orders a course of action that would very possibly lead to a shooting war with the Russians.

General Clark is known to play rather fast and loose with the truth when it comes to "suggestions from Washington". Or even "suggestions from one guy in Canada". Again, from the Weekly Standard :

...reporter Tim Harper uncovered the identity of the man who supposedly called Wesley Clark on Sept. 11, 2001, urging him to go on CNN and blame Saddam Hussein for the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Clark, you'll remember, told Tim Russert last June that the attempt to link Saddam and 9/11 "came from the White House, it came from people around the White House, it came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You've got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism.'"

Clark eventually admitted that he never received a call from the White House. Instead, he talked to "a man from a--of a Middle East think tank in Canada, the man who's the brother of a very close friend of mine in Belgium."

[...]

...according to Harper, the man who called Clark was Thomas Hecht, who heads the one-man Montreal office for the Israel-based Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies.

[...]

The retired NATO commander melodramatically said he received the call on 9/11. Hecht says the call was "either Sept. 12 or Sept. 13." Clark said the call was evidence of a conspiracy to link Hussein to 9/11. Hecht says he called to invite the general to give a speech, and in the course of the conversation mentioned possible links between Saddam and international terrorist groups. Hecht, for his part, doesn't understand how his phone call became a central part of Clark's sordid tale of intrigue and corruption at the highest levels of government. "I don't know why I would be confused with the White House," Hecht said. "I don't even have white paint on my house."

So how did this guy get to be where he is today? Because he has some truly outstanding virtues.

First in his class at West Point.

Rhodes Scholar.

And this from David H. Hackworth :

Lt. Gen. James Hollingsworth, one of our Army's most distinguished war heroes, says: "Clark took a burst of AK fire, but didn't stop fighting. He stayed on the field till his mission was accomplished and his boys were safe. He was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. And he earned 'em."

It took months for Clark to get back in shape. He had the perfect excuse, but he didn't quit the Army to scale the corporate peaks as so many of our best and brightest did back then. Instead, he took a demoralized company of short-timers at Fort Knox who were suffering from a Vietnam hangover and made them the best on post - a major challenge in 1970 when our Army was teetering on the edge of anarchy. Then he stuck around to become one of the young Turks who forged the Green Machine into the magnificent sword that Norman Schwarzkopf swung so skillfully during Round One of the Gulf War.

[...]

I took a swing at Clark during the Kosovo campaign when I thought he screwed up the operation, and I called him a "Perfumed Prince". Only years later did I discover from his book and other research that I was wrong - the blame should have been worn by British timidity and William Cohen, U.S. SecDef at the time.

But being a good friend of the Clintons helped even more, I'm sure. He is the very model of a modern Political General - not neccessarily a bad thing in a politician.

As for General Clark's views on "Unilateral Action", they seem change markedly, depending on who is in power. From Col. Jafras USAF (Retd) :

Nancy Hey began the questioning by expressing her opposition to the U.S. being the "World's Policeman." Clark went into a long explanation of how we can't stand by while people are being killed, there's genocide and ethnic cleansing, etc., etc. He acknowledged that we can't be everywhere but in the case of Kosovo we could do something. When Nancy pressed him about not getting involved in other countries' civil wars and internal problems, his reply was, "Shouldn't we have done something about the Holocaust?" I told him that trying to equate Kosovo to the Holocaust was ridiculous. When another person questioned his position that we should have gone in on the ground as one that would have resulted in unacceptable casualties, Clark replied that the Yugoslav Army in Kosovo, which remain hidden to avoid the bombing was demoralized and probable would not fight.

The reason why General Clark has been so opposed to the Iraq war appears to be quite simple : Because it's the Republicans who're doing it.

He has the whole Clinton electoral mafia (I don't use the word perjoratively) behind him. I think he's a shoe-in as Democratic VP candidate - if that's what he'll settle for. He's the consumate politician, and always has been. He knows which way the wind blows, and bends accordingly. A true "Little Napoleon".

The question for US voters is, Do you want a politician - or a leader?

And the answer to that is not just important to the USA, it's important to the whole world.

See my blog for a Postscript.

Posted by Alan Brain at September 25, 2003 06:53 AM | TrackBack

Comments

“A PERPETUAL EAGER-BEAVER
To say Clark was unpopular among his fellow officers in the military is an understatement. As he rapidly rose through the ranks, he was widely regarded as a champion brown-noser and know-it-all, a sort of Eddie Haskell in Army green. In conversation with friends, Colin Powell would privately put down General Clark as “Lieutenant Colonel Clark,” i.e., a perpetual eager-beaver wanna-be. Some officers questioned his judgment. Talking to a high-ranking Clinton administration official, Gen. Hugh Shelton, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who engineered Clark’s firing, bluntly referred to Clark as a “nut.””

http://www.msnbc.com/news/969047.asp

Posted by: Mark Buehner at September 25, 2003 09:33 AM

congratulations

Posted by: Sony at December 14, 2003 08:49 AM

Being a strong Clark supporter myself, I actually found this post quite interesting. I don’t see this sort of conglomeration of what people don’t like often. I can see why you’d draw your conclusion the way you did if this is the information you’re basing it on. However, what you posted isn’t the whole story by a long shot, and the examples you cite have been answered.

Many of your specific points are addressed by General Clark himself at http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3476052&p1=01%7C%7C%7C%7C003 but I’ll post the text here, too.

Also see http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/19/60II/main584548.shtml and http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16795 and www.clarkmyths.com

1) Mladic:

from http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Politics/DailyNews/fieldclark.html

—Responding to a question about a meeting with Serbian Commander General Ratko Mladic on August 26, 1994 where, as one student said in his question, Clark and Mladic exchanged military hats and took photos together smiling. The same student asked Clark — “is that the correct way we should approach genocidal leaders?”
Clark’s summed up response? It was a “fruitful meeting diplomatically.” But here’s how Clark says the exchange played out:
“He wanted to exchange hats. So I thought to myself, I accepted gifts from the Muslims, he’s not indicted, I don’t want to be offensive here, I just want to follow military protocol. And I looked around, I said I guess I can do this, I don’t see any cameras or anything. About that very moment, one of the Serbs, it’s the kind of thing that happens to you when you haven’t done this before — out comes a camera, Bang! He’s got it, and quickly releases it to the press to embarrass and so forth.”

Speaking to MSNBC’s Tim Russert at http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3476052&p1=01%7C%7C%7C%7C003 :

MR. RUSSERT: When you were at Dartmouth last week, a Young Republican raised your role with another war criminal, Mr. Mladic.
GEN. CLARK: Right.
MR. RUSSERT: This was the article back in 1994 in the Washington paper: “A senior Pentagon official has ignored State Department warnings not to meet with Serb officials suspected of ordering deaths of civilians in a campaign known as ethnic cleansing, State Department officials said. Despite the department’s protests, Army Lieutenant General Wesley Clark, the Joint Chiefs of Staff director of strategy, plans and policy, met with Serb General Ratko Mladic, who had been named a war crimes
suspect…”
Here’s a photograph. You’re wearing his hat. He’s wearing yours. The article goes on to say that you had exchanged caps, that he had given you a bottle of brandy and a pistol inscribed in Cyrillic. “‘It’s like cavorting with Hermann Goering,’ one U.S. official complained.’” Hitler’s number two, of course. That was a mistake, wasn’t it?
GEN. CLARK: It was a mistake to accept the gifts. But let me correct the headline in the story, Tim. I was never warned not to see him. In fact, I was advised to get both sides of the story by the people who had preceded me as Balkan policy experts. I had to write the issue paper for the United States government on how we proceed. And at the time, of course, Mladic was not an indicted war criminal. Of course, everybody knew he’d been in command. He was a bad guy. But I’d been that morning over to see the Bosnian soldiers. I’d gone in the trenches above Sarajevo.
We’d looked at the Serbs over there. They’d given me gifts. I had to get the other side of the story, so I went to see Mladic. We were trying to persuade the Serbs at the time to sign a peace agreement, so it seemed to me that, importantly, for the United States to get the policy right, we needed to talk to leaders of both sides. And I was—I thought it was very important that I be able to talk to the general that, if he didn’t comply, we might have to fight someday. So I should not have accepted the gifts.
MR. RUSSERT: Or exchanged hats.
GEN. CLARK: Or exchanged hats. But I did go to see him and I think that was a valid visit. And I was never told not to do it.
MR. RUSSERT: But Secretary of State Eagleburger had said he was a suspected war criminal, however, at that time.
GEN. CLARK: Oh, yeah. I mean, there was no doubt about it. But remember, we’d been negotiating with them, and we’d been trying to get them to sign a peace agreement. And it was still open at that time.

2) Shelton:

From http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/19/60II/main584554.shtml

DAN RATHER: General, again, we have so much ground to cover, but I’m gonna give you an opportunity to answer some of the criticisms, and I’m puzzled by some of them. Gen. Hugh Shelton, whom you know well, a distinguished American man at arms, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Gen. Franks, who brought us the division- level combat victory in Iraq. Each of the three of these American heroes has said in effect, “I don’t want this guy, Clark, to be president.” What’s going on here? Why is that?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, first of all, um, I’ve never worked for Schwarzkopf, so he’s just repeating hearsay. I’ve never worked around Tommy Franks at all. I’ve shaken hands with him a couple of times. He wouldn’t know me on the street from Adam. So what’s he saying?

So, let’s go back to Shelton. Hugh Shelton, I’ve known for 20 years. We were in the War College together. I always liked him. He was a good athlete and seemed like a good guy. And he was well-respected by his contemporaries and did well in the military.

But when he became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and I was the supreme allied commander in Europe, we had a significant difference on policy. He was pursuing a strategy with the secretary of defense that would have the United States prepare actively for war in Korea or the Persian Gulf.

I was charged with making the Dayton Peace Accords for Bosnia work, and obviously part of that was to prevent another war from breaking out in the region. So that was my priority, and as we worked through this period, it just turned out that we had differing views about the importance of preventing another round of genocide and how to do it. I warned them in the Pentagon early in 1998 that we were getting ready to see another war in the Balkans, and I was told, “Thanks, but you know, don’t bother us back here. We got enough on our plates.”

But, Dan, I had been in the Pentagon during the summer of 1994, when 800,000 people were hacked to death by machetes in Rwanda. I was the officer responsible for doing plans and contingencies for the United Nations, and I did a number of those with my staff, and we presented them and we talked about ‘em and you know, we stroked our chins and we worried about things and we thought, you know, “Is this gonna be acceptable?”

But we didn’t do anything. We stood by without inserting ourselves, without asserting ourselves, and 800,000 people died. And at the time we didn’t know that. All we knew is there was trouble. We didn’t — I didn’t have the full feel of the scope of it.

I then went to Bosnia on the Dayton negotiations and talked to people and looked at the devastation there. And I thought, you know, when you’re a senior officer, you have an obligation not just to answer the mail when somebody sends you a letter and say, “Here’s the answer.” But to speak up and to speak out until you’re told not to any longer, until you’re told, “We’re just not gonna do it.” And so I did—

DAN RATHER: So, you think this with General Shelton has to do with policy. That you—

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Oh absolutely. (OVERTALK) It never had anything to do with character and integrity. Dan, when I left the command, I was roundly praised by Secretary Cohen, by Gen. Shelton. When I was told I was leaving early, there was never any mention of integrity or character. In fact, I received a Defense Distinguished Service Medal in a Pentagon ceremony from the secretary of defense for my leadership in the Kosovo campaign in September of 1999, and another Defense Distinguished Service Medal when I gave up command the next spring. And nothing but praise from the secretary of defense and the cairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

So, I was totally mystified when these words floated out. I knew we’d had friction. I knew there’d been policy disagreements, but, you know, there are always disagreements between the field and the headquarters in war.

DAN RATHER: I take that point, but I’m interested in your answer for among other reasons you haven’t mentioned, as you once mentioned, that Gen. Shelton has a relationship with John Edwards, senator from North Carolina, who’s one of your opponents for the nomination. Have you decided that’s not a factor? Or do you still think that may be—

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don’t know whether it’s a factor or not. I think it’s an interesting side light (SIC). I didn’t know it. And when he made this comment, he said, you know, in this speech apparently he refused to give his political affiliation. I have no idea.

I don’t know why he would say something like this. Maybe he didn’t mean to say it. Maybe the words just slipped out. But I know this, that in my work with him, I never was told, I was never given any indication that there was an integrity or character issue. There was friction, and I think he allowed policy differences to become personal

There’s a long analysis at http://blog.forclark.com/story/2003/11/23/203932/69
Also from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16795 Elizaabeth Drew has this to say:

“Several people who are well informed about military politics or who worked with Clark during the Kosovo war believe that his enemies were largely motivated by professional jealousy of a US general who rose so quickly and also got international attention for a war unpopular with many of his colleagues. Some also say that Clark was too cerebral, too much of an intellectual for some of his fellow military officers. Besides, there is an inherent tension in wartime between the commanders on the ground and their superiors in Washington. In 1943 during the fighting in North Africa, Dwight Eisenhower thought he’d be fired. Colin Powell and Schwarzkopf yelled at each other during the Gulf War; and there have been serious strains between Donald Rumsfeld and the field officers in Iraq. Technically, Shelton wasn’t directly superior to Clark in the chain of command, but Cohen used him as a go-between, having Clark report to Shelton, and so most of Cohen’s information about Clark came from Shelton. Politics at the top of the military can be vicious; there are numerous stories of three-star officers not receiving a fourth star or of high-ranking officers taking early retirement because of personal feuds.”

3) Subordinates:

See last paragraph of # 2. Also, where on earth are you going to find someone who is universally liked by his subordinates? People hating their bosses is a long standing stereotype, at least in the U.S. No matter how good someone is you can always find someone who dislikes them. Heck, Ghandi was assassinated, and he was way less likely to offend people than politicians today are. Check out cris.forclark.com to see the blog of General Clark’s Personal Security Officer while Clark was SACEUR. There are a lot of General Clark’s subordinates who really like him.

4) 9/11 call:

Here is Clark’s letter to the NYT available at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE4D81131F930A2575BC0A9659C8B63

To the Editor:
I would like to correct any possible misunderstanding of my remarks on ”Meet the Press,” quoted in Paul Krugman’s July 15 column, about ”people around the White House” seeking to link Sept. 11 to Saddam Hussein.
I received a call from a Middle East think tank outside the country, asking me to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. No one from the White House asked me to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11. Subsequently, I learned that there was much discussion inside the administration in the days immediately after Sept. 11 trying to use 9/11 to go after Saddam Hussein.
In other words, there were many people, inside and outside the government, who tried to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11.

WESLEY K. CLARK

from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/25/ftn/main569990.shtml

“So what I was trying to say on the Tim Russert show and what I think you’ll see if you look back at the transcript and read it like this, there were lots of different people all coming, trying to reach the same conclusion, that Saddam Hussein was implicated, but the fact is there’s no evidence, none, that shows he had any connection whatsoever to 9/11. None.”

5) Clark’s against things b/c they’re Republican.

As a personal note, I laughed when I saw this one just because Dean kept calling Clark a Republican, and we’ve had the toughest time convincing people Clark’s a Democrat. He spoke at a Republican fundraiser a couple years ago and has voted for some Republicans. (He has voted for Democrats and spoken at Democratic events too, but they don’t mention that when they’re painting him as a Republican.) Clark himself has said that he’s not against Bush’s policies because they’re Republican policies, he’s against them because they’re wrong.

6) Pristina Airport/Jackson quote

see http://www.clarkmyths.com/myth4.html

Also, from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16795 (This is a highly respected and well researched series, FYI)

“Much has been made of a single sentence in a long argument that Clark had with General Sir Michael Jackson, the British officer in command on the scene at Pristina airport, who said, “I’m not going to start World War III for you.” Clark devoted an entire chapter to the airport incident in his first book, and his account has been confirmed by others. He explains that at first he had the support of the Clinton White House and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the secretary-general of NATO, Javier Solana. But when the British refused to support him, largely in response to Jackson’s objections, Washington backed down. Clark himself reported Jackson’s now-famous hyperbolic line to Shelton as an example of what he saw as an emotional overreaction. [Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel] Berger says, “To say that Wes was reckless is to misunderstand the context; it’s an absurd notion.””

I could list all the positive Clark stuff, but this post is long enough already. I hope you will check out www.clark04.com and the other links I’ve posted to see why I and others support Clark and feel he is the best candidate for president.

Posted by: ErikaEM at December 14, 2003 06:05 PM

Everybody has an agenda, but folks that just wave vaguely in the direction of “character issues” without specifics make me nervous.

Good discussion of specific pros & cons here.

Posted by: Tinman at December 18, 2003 11:36 AM

This is politically motivated and will be the way the republicans run the 2004 campaign. Read the history of George Bush and his family who made their original family fortune supporting business with Hitler. Then look at Clarks life. You would have to be an idiot to believe the republicans.

Posted by: Christine Schaffer at December 30, 2003 10:36 PM