Retired general and erstwhile Presidential candidate Wesley Clark stated on Fox News the other day that he felt that al Gore would make an excellent commander-in chief.
No, not the Geena Davis type on TV, but the real, honest to goodness type of hardnosed slug-it-out kind of leader. a Wild Bill Hickok type attired in buckskins, toting a Winchester, daring the punks from al-Qaeda to come on in and take their medicine and die like men or dogs, the choice is up to them. Or something to that effect.
al Gore, for his part, back in april of 2000, while addressing the various editors and staffs of the Military Times magazines at the Naval Observatory, explained that, "I think that President Bill Clinton has been an outstanding commander-in chief."
Sure, Bill may have had an off minute or two, what with playing golf when we had Osama in our sights and going for the next critical putt rather than bin Laden. Or with sending the FBI overseas and not the Marines after a good old fashioned bombing that killed some americans, but he didn't want to ruffle any feathers, bruise the legacy, or upset the dainty arab street. There were reasons for restraint and the little people, the small people, the tiny people, just didn't understand the pressures of the job and the concerns about the growing pressure on the heritage--how could they?
Wes Clark was a Rhodes Scholar from august of 1966 to august of 1968, and finished the course of study, immediately preceding Clinton, who attended from 1968 to 1970.
and it was thanks to Bill Clinton, the scholarship connection, and the fact that he hails from Little Rock, arkansas, that Wes Clark must owe his meteoric rise in the army leadership cadre.
Clinton was noted for packing the White House with Rhodies, including such notable liberals as Robert Reich, Ira Magaziner, James Woolsey, Bruce Reed, George Stephanopoulos, and Bill Clinton's roommate, Strobe Talbot. and why not toss a military man into the mix, as long as he walked the walk and talked the talk and, for all I know, sang all the magic songs.
Despite being first in his class at West Point, Clark never held a combat command, unless you call his attempts to get the British to bomb the Russians at the airport in Bosnia one, which they luckily said no to. His upward climb accelerated under the Clinton/Gore Presidency to his eventual slot as Supreme allied Commander Europe.
General Clark commanded the opposing forces (OPFOR) at the National Military Training Center in California from 1989-1991, where it has often been reported that rather than operate as usual, with highly unconventional tactics designed to test the extremes of land combat, the ever career minded Wes, fearing the defeats he might inflict on officers of a higher rank who might one day sign off on his future promotions, ordered conventional attacks with resulting high losses to his own forces. Though these activities earned him the animosity of his gung-ho younger subordinates, they apparently soothed the tortured psyches of those who opposed him and helped his steady upward climb.
Later, when Clark commanded the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood Texas from 1992 to 1994, in the early Clinton years, while bucking for his third star, he faced a leaner OPFOR when it was his turn, by as much as half, in the desert, thus enabling Clark to triumph despite his own mediocre thrashing about in the dust, thanks to the intercession of someone with great power.
Clark continued upstairs, where his intense occupation with his image, the immense growth of his personal entourage and his overweening heedfulness about his legacy, often to the point of tantrums, marked him and his President as two peas in a pod.
This is not to say that there weren't few gaffes rivaling those of Moe Howard along the path.
In 1994, while wearing the three stars and nicknamed the Perfumed Prince by the kindest of his British military colleagues, while ignoring direct military orders not to meet with any Serbian leaders, Wes got conned by the suspected war criminal, Ratko Mladic, into a joint photo op in the small town of Banja Luka.
The wiley Ratko, known for the comedic pranks he pulled on the unwitting, got the stultified Wes, shown mugging it up in the famous snapshot, while standing next to a horrified UN peacekeeper, to trade kepis with the Serb while the cameras rolled, with the film of the aping duo ending up in the international press, throwing the Pentagon into a tizzy, doubts on Clark's sanity and water on the carefully crafted persona of a modern alexander.
Then, of course there was the June of 2003 dust up about Wes's secret call from the White House about the 9/11 attack and its links to Saddam and its revelation to Tim Russert on TV by a gabbling seemingly befuddled Wes.
But the whole thing was smoothed over by the Toronto Star, which later revealed that Clark's source was a certain Thomas Hecht, who doesn't live in a white house, and not the White House, which is, and it wasn't Saddam directly involved, and what ever.
anyway, so the retired general now says that al Gore's the main man, apparently giving up on his earlier quest for the top slot himself, and al says that as commander chief there's a few serious factors that he's really pretty doggone sure he'd weigh before he'd commit US troops anywhere, like, as he asked at the Naval Observatory to a military audience, is there a dominant national interest, who are our friends, can our troops really attain the objective, how much is it going to cost, what things might crop up that we haven't already thought of and is force really the only thing we can use?
Nowhere in any of al's heated intellectual discourse, dreamed up after his serving next to a real commander-in chief for eight years, do I spy a mention of what he'd do to protect the citizens of the United States of america from an immediate life-threatening danger. all I see is a lot of dancing around the issue and a lot of ifs, ands and buts and how to string the game along, find allies and consensus, and how to hand the ball off to somebody else to do the dirty work if at all possible and talk, talk, talk.
and al's naming Clinton as an excellent commander-in-chief closes the circle and brings us back to Wes, Clinton's and Gore's made man, and his selection by Clinton and Gore for four stars, and his naming of Gore as the true genius.
There was a song from the sixties I dimly remember, something about going 'round and 'round and 'round in the circle game.
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