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Anti-war general targets Oval
Office
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON
- Retired General Wesley Clark's entry into the race for
the Democratic presidential nomination will almost
certainly strengthen anti-war forces determined to
unseat US President George W Bush next year.
 While untested on the
campaign trail, Clark's good looks, media savvy,
military record, and general skepticism over Bush's "war
on terrorism" - particularly the invasion and occupation
of Iraq - make him a particularly strong candidate, at
least on paper. While Clark, 58, who officially
announced his candidacy in his home town of Little Rock,
Arkansas, on Wednesday, faces an uphill fight for the
nomination, his presence in the 10-person Democratic
field ensures that the US occupation in Iraq and Bush's
conduct of his two-year-old "war on terrorism", about
which Clark has been unrelentingly critical, will become
even more of a focus of media and public debate than
before.
Moreover, Clark's "star quality" as a
prominent media commentator on military affairs and the
backing he enjoys from key members of the administration
of former president Bill Clinton, who has encouraged the
former general to run, automatically make him a serious
candidate despite the lateness of his entry into the
race and his political inexperience.
Clark, who
graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point at
the top of his class and eventually rose to supreme
commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) during the war in Kosovo, is also certain to
benefit from the clearly rising unhappiness of the
uniformed military - bitterness in the army's case -
about how Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has
operated.
This was brought home in a remarkably
melodramatic column published in the Washington Post on
Monday by Jeffrey H Smith, a prominent Washington lawyer
who graduated from West Point with Clark in 1966 and
served for many years as general counsel to the
influential Senate Armed Services Committee.
Recounting a recent funeral at West Point for
another graduate of the Class of 1966, the class that
suffered the highest proportion of deaths in the Vietnam
War, Smith noted that the attendees quietly discussed
under a "magnificent old locust tree" after the burial
the similarities in the way the army was treated in that
debacle and the current situation in Iraq.
"A
hushed moment followed," wrote Smith, "and then with
choked voices several classmates said almost in unison,
'Tell Wes to go.'"
With that kind of support,
Clark, who has yet to be tested on the campaign trail,
could go very far, particularly at a time of war, when
neither the sitting president nor his vice president or
top military advisers have any combat experience.
Indeed, it has been clear for several months
that the Bush administration considers the one
Democratic candidate with real combat experience,
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, its most formidable
potential foe precisely because of his military
background and expertise. Clark's candidacy, should he
make it on to the Democratic ticket, even as the
vice-presidential hopeful (which some speculate may be
his aim given his late entry), raises even greater fears
in that regard.
In the short term, Clark's
announcement is likely not only to heighten media
attention to what has been seen as a largely
uninteresting contest for the nomination, but also to
change its dynamics.
Given his military stature,
Clark will almost certainly affect Kerry's support,
precisely because his military record was considered a
strong selling point for the 2004 race. He may also
further dampen the hopes of Senator Joseph Lieberman,
who was former vice president Al Gore's running mate in
2000 and has campaigned as a hardliner on national
security.
As a native Arkansian, Clark's
presence is also likely to detract from the campaigns of
two southern senators, John Edwards of North Carolina
and Bob Graham of Florida, who have benefited from the
fact that the three last Democratic candidates to be
elected president - Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and
Bill Clinton, who was also from Arkansas - all hailed
from the South.
Most important in the short
term, Clark's entry into the race may also slow the
momentum of Vermont Governor Howard Dean, the candidate
whose anti-war positions and Internet fundraising have
propelled him into the lead in surveys of Democrats in
several battleground states whose primary elections will
likely eliminate several of the lesser-known aspirants.
In many ways, Clark's criticism of the "war on
terrorism" has been similar to that of Dean, a medical
doctor with limited political experience and, until his
recent fundraising success, virtually no national media
exposure. But, with so much military and international
experience, Clark is generally seen as a much more
credible critic of Bush's policy.
Moreover, he
has received support from two particularly interesting
figures on the left side of the political spectrum.
The longtime representative of Harlem and a
leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, Charles
Rangel, has spoken out strongly in favor of the general,
as has award-winning film director and author Michael
Moore, whose Stupid White Men ... And Other Sorry
Excuses for the State of the Nation still tops the
country's non-fiction best-seller lists in its second
year.
In a letter to Clark that is being widely
circulated on the Internet, the maker of the films
Roger and Me and Bowling for Columbine
commended the former general for coming to his defense
on national television immediately after Moore had
issued a strong attack on Bush during an interview
shortly after the president launched the Iraq war.
"You boldly said that my dissent was necessary
and welcome, and you pointed out that I was against Bush
and his 'policies', not the kids in the service. I sat
in Flint [Michigan] with the earpiece still in my ear
and I was floored - a GENERAL standing up for me and, in
effect, for all the millions who were opposed to the war
but had been bullied into silence," Moore wrote.
He added that, as he explored Clark's other
positions - he opposes the USA Patriot Act that expands
the powers of security agencies to look into previously
private matters, is pro-choice on abortion issues,
favors affirmative action for disadvantaged groups, and
opposes Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, among others -
he concluded: "I am sure there are things you and I
don't see eye to eye on, but now is the time for all
good people from the far left to the middle of the road
to bury the damn hatchet and get together behind someone
who is not only good on the issues but can beat George W
Bush.
"And where I come from in the Midwest,
General, I know you are the kind of candidate that the
average American will vote for."
(Inter Press
Service)
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