Centerfield

Clark's Critics

With the Clark boomlet going on, we can expect some negative stories. But this from the Weekly Standard is hardly cutting

Aping Eisenhower, Clark would like to appear nonpartisan. But the truth is Clarke's a moderate Democrat. This isn't too hard to figure out: Speculation about a presidential bid started when Clark met with some Democratic fundraisers in New York City last October. Clark has encouraged Howard Dean's insurgency. And he's voted in Democratic primaries in Arkansas--an act that requires him to be a registered Democrat.

Clark's refusal to admit he's a Democrat points to his biggest liability. He's a slippery character whose public statements remind you of a fellow Rhodes scholar from Arkansas. It turns out that Clark's supporters compare the general to the wrong president. Clark is more Clinton than Eisenhower.

National Review's Rich Lowry faults Clark for misjudgement

Clark thought he had Slobodan Milosevic figured out, and that the mere threat of NATO bombing — and perhaps a day or two of the real thing — would bring him to the negotiating table and force him to be reasonable. When this turned out not to be the case, Clark had no Plan B, because President Clinton had ruled out ground troops from the outset.

So, NATO continued with a limp air campaign that was inadequate to stopping Milosevic's ethnic-cleansing campaign, that appalled other members of the military brass who thought Clark had helped drag the U.S. into a near-fiasco, and that led to such ill-feeling toward Clark in the Pentagon that he was fired at war's end, launching his career as a TV pundit.

In my view, Clark's handling of the Kosovo War doesn't put him in the military Valhalla with MacArthur and Patton, but at least it concluded successfully, and he gained a lot of on-the-job training.

Tacitus provides a link to a nastier attack coming from the far-left Counterpunch which is so anti-NATO that it favored Milosevic in the Kosovo War.

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 far as I can tell, none of these complaints seem to be more than the normal bitching and moaning on hears about the brass. Counterpunch, however, also tries to connect Clark to the fiasco at Waco involving the Branch Davidian cult. It seems pretty scurrilous.

On February 28, 1993 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms launched its disastrous and lethal raid on the Branch Dividian compound outside Waco, Texas. Even before the raid, members of the US Armed Forces, many of them in civilian dress, were around the compound.

In the wake of the Feb 28 debacle Texas governor Anne Richards asked to consult with knowledgeable military personnel. Her request went to the US Army base at Fort Hood, where the commanding officer of the US Army's III corps referred her to the Cavalry Division of the III Corps, whose commander at the time was Wesley Clark.

Posted by rickheller at August 27, 2003 08:53 PM