In a recent column urging Gen. Wesley Clark to
run for president, I
mentioned a friend who questioned his political
skills. Because Clark
failed to recognize her after a couple of meetings
as David Pryor or
Bill Clinton would have, she suspected he lacked
the personal charm to
which Arkansas voters respond. After it appeared,
I got a call from a
book publicist who'd helped Clark with his book
Waging Modern War.
At every appearance, she said, many in the audience
were veterans who'd
served under Clark during his three decades as
an Army officer. The
general, she said, recognized every single one,
greeting them by name.
She'd never seen him hesitate.
Given that Clark's willpower and ambition have
been recognized since he
graduated first in his West Point class in 1966,
this struck me as a telling
anecdote. Not every military hero earns the affection
and respect of his men.
I had two uncles who served as infantry grunts
under Gen. Douglas
MacArthur in the Phillipines and in Korea. They
thought him a vainglorious
megalomaniac who'd sacrificed soldier's lives
to win medals for himself
--not necessarily history's judgement, but theirs.
Interestingly, it's a theme Clark himself discussed
with the authors of
two recent magazine profiles, by Tom Junod in
the current Esquire
and Duncan Murrell in the May/June Oxford American.
Both are worth
looking up for anybody intrigued with the idea
of a Clark candidacy.
Clark told Murrell that Americans' current tendency
to lionize the military
is partly due to post-9/11 fear, partly to lack
of experience with the real thing.
"We've been the beneficiaries of that lack of
familiarity," he said,
sentimentalizing soldiers as patriotic icons
without feeling the necessity
of serving. One result, as Murrell writes, is
politicians who feel free
"to use the military as a symbol, sending soldiers
off to wars that don't
affect most American families directly by putting
their children in harm's way."
Hence the popularity of a manifest fraud
like President Junior--who used
his father's political connections to secure
a cushy spot in the Texas Air
National Guard, got himself grounded after finishing
flight school, and appears
never to have showed up in Alabama to complete
his commitment--swaggering
across an aircraft carrier deck in a flightsuit
with "Commander in Chief"
emblazoned on the front. An earlier generation
would have laughed, but
millions who resented Bill Clinton's artfully
sidestepping Vietnam are thrilled
by George W. Bush's "Top Gun" theatrics.
Now hear Clark, who despite being one of the first
West Point cadets to ask
"Why are we in Vietnam?" his instructors say,
earned a Purple Heart and the
Silver Star in combat there: "I think a time
like this is an interesting point in
American history. Many of the things that we've
taken for granted, that have
shaped our international strategy, our domestic
environment--they're up for
grabs right now. We got walloped on 9/11, and
now Americans are asking
themselves what's out there. They're saying 'Hey!
Man, these people are
supposed to like us! And what happened with Russia
and the Soviet Union?
Where is China?' Ordinary Americans are now much
more interested in the
world beyond. And in combination with the war
on terror, you've got a sort
of rollback to a sort of imperial presidency.,
a presidency that's much more
private, and an investigatory service with greater
authority to come after
ordinary Americans. We thought we put that to
rest after the excesses of
the Nixon administration and Vietnam. I believed
that when I fought in
Vietnam I represented the right of all Americansto
express their views.
So I'm concerned."
As a CNN military analyst, Clark opposed the rush
to substitute Saddam
Hussein for Osama bin Laden as Public Enemy #1.
Like many Army generals,
he thought U.S. forces much too light on the
ground--fearing precisely the chaos
that's enveloped Iraq since Baghdad fell.The
Bush administration, he warned in
April, had "gloated much too soon."
The great theme of the post-Vietnam military reforms
that transformed the
U.S. Army, he explained to Esquire, was personal
accountability. "In the Navy,
when a ship runs aground," he said "the commanding
officer is relieved of duty,
no matter what the reason. Now, I'm not saying
we ought to hold politicians to
that standard, but still..."
He didn't finish the thought, but he did say "the
ultimate consideration for
anyone running for president against George Bush
[is] 'how much pain you
can bear.'" My hope is that watching this administration
of country club toughs
stonewall a proper 9/11 investigation, deceive
the American people about a
non-existent Iraqi nuclear threat, then alibi
that it's not Junior's fault because
the president and his national security advisor
failed to read the "National
Intelligence Estimate," will convince Clark that
his country needs him again.