Deep Thoughts

Just for the record, I would urge all 16 people who read this blog to read the testimony of Generals Clark, Hoar, Shalikashvili and McInerney before the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 29, 2002. (And pay close attention to the hostility of the Republican Senators toward all the generals except the kool-aid drunk McInerney. Dumb is much too kind a phrase to describe them.)

You will see that General Clark gives a highly nuanced view of the situation in Iraq and that he objects quite strenuously to some language in the newly drafted resolution --- with which Senator John Warner sandbags the generals by asking them for an opinion without giving them the benefit of seeing it before that moment.

It is fair to criticize candidates, and Clark is going to have to find his way through this kind of minefield, so I am not accusing anyone of unfair tactics. Indeed, criticism of Clark’s approach to Iraq is similar to the item that Kerry’s staff distributed about Dean’s “threat” to seniors. Dean explained that he was bluffing his Republican legislature in order to stop them from passing some bad legislation and it worked. Clark’s view (and many others’) on Iraq was that the congress needed to give Bush the tools to get the UN to make a similar bluff to Saddam.

Part of politics, war and diplomacy is playing devils advocate or bluffing your opponents. If you take a literalist approach you will find many odd statements by politicians as they attempt to finesse certain issues publicly. Politicians have to be able to deal with those accusations and frankly, Dean did it a lot better than Clark did yesterday.

But, the issue is pretty much the same. If you read this testimony, you will see that Clark accepted that dealing with Iraq in the near future was a done deal. He expressed reservations about that, but moved quickly on to the importance of multilateral rather than unilateral action, and he spoke at great length about the political risks both in Iraq and around the world of a badly planned post-war and the pre-emption policy in general.

If Joe Lieberman took this testimony as proof that Clark was unreservedly supporting the resolution, he was mistaken.

As I have written before, Clark made the rookie mistake of musing aloud to the NY Times and others about his hypothetical thought processes if he had been a Senator who was required to cast a vote. He allowed them to see him turning over a complex issue in complex terms, something they are incapable of conveying properly. Due to his belief that a resolution of some sort was required to get the UN on board, a very important goal in order to prevent Bush from setting the precedent of pre-emption, like may others, he found the issue challenging.

This was a big mistake. He should have simply said then --- and yesterday --- “I took the president at his word when he said he needed the Senate resolution to get UN backing to force Saddam to allow inspections and disarm. If I had known then that he was misleading the congress and the nation about his true intentions to go to war no matter what, I would not have voted for it.”

Unfortunately, Clark's going to have to learn how to dumb himself down like that if he wants to be a politician in 2003 America. He needs to smile a lot and tell people about what it was like to claw his way back from being seriously wounded in Vietnam. He needs to humbly admit that it was a privilege to personally command the mighty NATO forces to save the Muslims of Kosovo --- all without losing a single American life in combat. That is what sets him apart from the others. That’s his narrative.

His intellectual depth and integrity are (sadly) irrelevant (if not downright liabilities) except as they advance his personal story --- the up from the bootstraps, self-made man stuff. He needs to talk as little as possible about policy prescriptions and concentrate on his vision for America. He needs to get over any modesty he has about being a hero and a born leader. He’s a politician now, which means that bragging and whoring his story is the job description.

Wesley Clark is now in the entertainment industry, just like everybody else in politics.