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"As
I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior
military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on
track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was
being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and
there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then
Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan… I left the Pentagon
that afternoon deeply concerned." – Wesley Clark, page
130, Winning Modern Wars. If Wesley
Clark is to be believed, he kept this Pentagon conversation – and
his deep concerns – to himself for nearly two years, going public
only when it suited his purposes as a purveyor of books and newly-hatched
Democratic candidate for President. There is something – no, there
are many things – very, very wrong, here. Clark’s
version of the truth is that he didn’t want to know the truth. “I
moved the conversation away, for this was not something I wanted
to hear,” he claims to recall. “And it was not something I wanted
to see moving forward, either.”
Yet for
at least a year Clark said and did nothing to indicate that his brain
contained the dreadful knowledge of seven impending wars on
the national horizon. Instead,
he shopped himself as the hero of Kosovo, telling everyone within
elbow grabbing distance that he’d like to run for high office sometime
soon, on some party’s ticket. Clark does not claim to have been conflicted
by concerns to protect the confidences of his buddies at the Pentagon. “Nothing
in this book is derived from classified material nor have I written
anything that could compromise national security," reads the
introduction to Winning Modern Wars, released in late September.
In fact,
the Bush men spent much of the summer of 2002 bragging about their
plans to first, smash Saddam Hussein, then gloriously march on Damascus
and Tehran – dreams they still cherish. Clark now tells us that he knew then that
the Bush men’s threats were understated; that guys like him were
actively preparing a five-year military campaign to subdue great
swaths of Africa and the Middle East. Clark appears in his book as a Walter
Mitty-like character: all of the drama, the angst, the torment, his anxieties
for the future of his country, occurs in his head. In the almost two
years separating the Pentagon revelation and publication of his book,
Clark exhibited no outward signs of inner conflict. But
he was troubled, very troubled. As proof, Clark offers a narrative
of his unchallengeable thoughts: “I left the Pentagon that
afternoon deeply concerned. I hoped the officer was wrong, or that
whoever was pushing this [five-year war plan] would amend his approach. “That did not happen. After
the president delivered his 2002 State of the Union address, the policy
was locked in concrete.” Clark’s lips stayed locked shut, for at least a year.
Finally, in 2003 Clark got his national podium as a military analyst
for CNN. He had the microphone and the cameras, direct access to a
swollen, global TV audience anticipating the onset of war. The Big
One was about to begin, the rolling conflict that would consume parts
of two continents in flame for the next five years. What would the
hero of Kosovo do at such a moment? Clark chose to cheer the war on like the rest of the
media’s retired military consultants, occasionally seasoning his commentary
with the barest hints of misgivings – nothing substantive enough to
rate front page quotation. When he had the opportunity and it might have made
a difference, Clark failed to sound an alarm about an invasion he now
claims to have known to be a prelude to even wider wars. As documented
by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), September 16: Clark explained on CNN (1/21/03) that if he
had been in charge, "I probably wouldn't have made the moves that
got us to this point. But just assuming that we're here at this point,
then I think that the president is going to have to move ahead, despite
the fact that the allies have reservations." As he later elaborated
(CNN, 2/5/03): "The credibility of the United States is on the
line, and Saddam Hussein has these weapons and so, you know, we're
going to go ahead and do this and the rest of the world's got to get
with us.... The U.N. has got to come in and belly up to the bar on
this. But the president of the United States has put his credibility
on the line, too. And so this is the time that these nations around
the world, and the United Nations, are going to have to look at this
evidence and decide who they line up with."
Clark failed to oppose administration policy until
long after the fact and in his own mind – skull-bound sound
and fury, ultimately signifying nothing. We are expected to accept
his published testimony to the inner turmoil he experienced, in direct
contradiction to his actual words and actions at the critical junctures
in the timeline of war.
There is a fundamental difference between the retired
general’s claims and the pleadings of presidential candidates Rep.
Dick Gephardt and Sen. John Kerry. Both now claim they did not intend
that their votes for the War Powers Resolution in October, 2002 would
lead to a unilateral U.S. invasion. Both charge Bush misled them, the
nation and the world about the facts and rationale of the war.
But in his book, Clark purports to have known all
along (or at least since Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech) that the Iraq
invasion was “locked in concrete,” to be followed by wars against six
additional nations that presented no imminent threat to the U.S. Far
from being another victim of bamboozlement, Clark claims to have possessed
an insider’s knowledge of multiple wars in the making.
Did he scream to high heaven, Stop the madness? No,
Clark assumed the pose of mildly skeptical CNN analyst, occasionally
picking here and there at the edges of Bush policy, as if trying to
fine-tune and perfect it. Clark’s misgivings dissolved entirely on April
10. Drunk on “victory,” Clark gushed: “Can
anything be more moving than the joyous throngs swarming the streets
of Baghdad? Memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the defeat
of Milosevic in Belgrade flood back. Statues and images of Saddam are
smashed and defiled. Liberation is at hand.” Did he pause to warn
the public that there were still six more wars to go? That Baghdad
was just the first stopover in a five-year campaign of bloody Shock
and Awe? No, that wouldn’t do. I’ll save it for my book, the
general decided – after intense deliberation with himself.
Iraqi resisters have
wrecked the master plan to which Clark was made privy and complicit
in November, 2001. Amazingly, Clark now invites the reading public
to step into the inner recesses of his mind. What we find there is
cowardice in the face of power, boundless opportunism, and an infinite
capacity for lying – a pathological mix. In sum, Wesley Clark is
a dangerous loon, damned by his own words. Clark can be stopped.
The Democratic presidential candidate who has the courage to confront
Clark with the insane logic of Winning
Modern Wars, will do his
nation and party a great service. This candidate must be willing
to absorb the full wrath of Bill Clinton’s machine – the real power
behind Clark’s campaign – and to abandon any hopes of becoming a
vice-presidential nominee.
Two
names come to mind.
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