Though Clinton is considered to be the poster boy for the “New Democrat,”
historians may end up labeling him as the symbol of the Last Democrat.
By out GOP-ing the Republicans during Clinton’s two terms in office, the Donkey Party is now facing an identity crisis. And the field of candidates out there right now, with Howard Dean leading the mule pack, don’t appear to have enough guts or vision to appeal to the millions of disillusioned, war-weary, unemployed and underemployed would-be Democratic voters in America itching for “regime change” in Washington D.C.
The notable exception is Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who presently, if truth be told, has a slightly better chance of winning his party’s nomination than actor Gary Coleman has at winning the California gubernatorial re-call election, thanks to a “liberal” news media who has helped to keep the Kucinich campaign far away from the consciousness of the news starved masses.
Actually, Gary Coleman’s trademark question from his “Different Strokes” days is entirely appropriate to ask of Clinton’s Rhodes Scholar buddy, retired General Wesley Clark – the most recent addition to the field of Democratic presidential hopefuls. What you talkin’ bout Wes?
Oh sure, on the surface he looks like a strong candidate with the potential to uproot Bush come November 2004 in a showdown that pits “The General vs. the Texas Air Na-tional Guard deserter,” as Michael Moore puts it.
While it would be nice to see Mr. “Either-You’re-With-Us-Or-Against-Us” unable to cower Clark into silence with right-wing ad hominem attacks that call into question someone’s patriotism for making the perfectly reasonable distinction between people and policy, Democrats shouldn’t start licking their lamb chops quite yet.
(Is it just me or is it a peculiar political anomaly that while so many people seem to get the theological wisdom of loving the sinner while hating the sin, a majority of Ameri-cans are apparently having a difficult time applying that logic to war policies i.e. Love the policy-maker but hate the policy).
Though Michael Moore was encouraged when Clark defended his right to criticize and acknowledged on CNN that dissent, especially when it comes to going to war, is a healthy thing for this country, after learning a little about the background of Clark, the ponderous voter is left to wonder if Clark’s defense of dissent is a mere sham.
Given our collective re-occurring political amnesia, allow me to remind you of our war against the former Yugoslavia – billed by the Pentagon and the our free press as a “humanitarian” intervention.
One bit of “collateral damage” in that war were those 20 journalists killed when NATO bombs hit a Belgrade TV station.
Back in August 1999, our British friends at The Guardian offered an eye-opening re-port on Gen. Clark’s role as Supreme Allied Commander – a post that will surely be viewed by many in the mainstream U.S. political arena as Clark’s major qualification to be our 44th president.
“NATO justified the bombing of the Belgrade TV station, saying it was a legitimate military target. ‘We’ve struck at his TV stations and transmitters because they’re as much a part of his military machine prolonging and promoting this conflict as his army and security forces,’ U.S. General Wesley Clark explained – ‘his,’ of course, referring to Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic. It wasn’t Milosevic, however, who was killed when the Belgrade studios were bombed on April 23, but rather 20 journalists, technicians and other civilians.”
“Clark’s logic is exactly the same as that of the death squad commander who orders the assassination of a journalist or a publisher whose opposition newspaper supports the goals of a guerrilla movement. The targeting of the studio was a war crime, perhaps the most indisputable of several war crimes committed by NATO in its war against Yugoslavia.”
If you think The Guardian editors were being unfair in describing the bombing as a “war crime,” let’s remember that a panel of 16 judges from 11 countries who, at a peo-ple’s tribunal meeting in New York, before 500 witnesses, U.S. and NATO political and military leaders were found guilty of war crimes against Yugoslavia in the March 24 to June 10, 1999 “humanitarian” attack on that country.
As for Clark’s reputation among the rank and file in our military establishment, the highly decorated and straight-talking Col. David Hackworth has written that Clark is “known by those who’ve served with him as the ‘Ultimate Perfumed Prince,’ (Clark) is far more comfortable in a drawing room discussing political theories than hunkering down in the trenches where bullets fly and soldiers die.”
And we haven’t even scratched the surface in discussing Clark’s idealization of the Powell Doctrine, which led to NATO forces dumping tons of depleted uranium ordi-nances into Kosovo creating widespread sickness as a result of contamination associ-ated with DU.
(I’d love to see a copy of the Pentagon’s bombing target lists going back to the Persian Gulf War in 1991.I mean, U.S. planners bombed Iraq’s civilian infrastructure during the Per-sian Gulf War, which directly led to the catastrophic death toll in Iraq due to water-bourne illnesses. Public ignorance of these things is what allows Rumsfeld to be able to say with a straight face that Saddam’s regime is solely responsible for Iraqi civilian suf-fering. As brutally despicable as the Ba’ath Party regime was, it is just plain dishonest to disavow any responsibility for having destroyed the civilian infrastructure that ordinary Iraqis so desperately need to survive).
So why is Wes running? Political analyst Lloyd Hart’s theorizes: “I believe Gen. Wesley Clark is Bill Clinton’s wrecking ball to destroy the work of the progressives in the Democratic Party…so that Bush can have his second term and the DLC can put up their candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton.”
However this all turns out, the Democrats better hope Condi Rice doesn’t run. Imag-ine: a black female Republican conservative hawk gunning for the presidency in 2008. It’s a PC-conscious Democrats worst nightmare.
ZNet Commentator Sean Gonsalves is also a Cape Cod Times reporter and syndicated columnist. E-mail him at [email protected]
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