Actually no he didn't. So I'll do it for him. Because
don'tkickthebaby here on dKos has been running around posting this interesting equation. See if you can follow it:
- Clinton fired Clark ignominiously (dktb says "fired his sorry ass")
- So now Clark is Clinton's sock puppet
Riiiiight. A guy gets fired, so first thing the guy's going to do in politics is whatever the guy who fired him says.
But wait! It get's better. dktb then says Clinton won't let Clark talk about it. Riiiiight.
That is the height of dktb's analysis. So it seems to me high time to post some arguments for the less unhinged here. This is an article by Georgie Anne Geyer, who most of you may know as a UPI correspondent who is usually pro-Democrat but who also calls it like she sees it.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK WAS RIGHT -- AND SO HE MUST GO
July 30, 1999
Washington -- If there is one thing that our supremely politicized and overbureacratized Pentagon just hates these days, it is the concept of victory.
...
No wonder these generals and admirals in what once was called the War Department got rid of the one genuine military thinker and hero we have, Gen. Wesley K. Clark. What did he think he was doing, insisting upon winning?
Now, the Pentagon and the White House insist, vociferously but lamely, that Clark, the supreme commander of NATO, is being let go three months early, next April, because of scheduling problems. Sort of like, "We're not going to be home on Tuesday when the plumber comes, so make it Monday!"
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The problem with Gen. Clark was simple: It was that he was right...But it was the "go-slow" guys, the "they'll give in with a just little more punishment" chaps (in fact, the very same mentality that gave us Vietnam!), the ones who would rewrite all of the dictums of von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu about the need to strike hard, fast and unrelentingly, who were unquestionably and provably wrong -- and whose political caution cost tens of thousands of lives and came close to losing the war for NATO.
So who goes? Wesley Clark!
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I have interviewed Gen. Clark, both in Panama and at his office in Belgium soon after the war started, and I know how careful he has been in everything he has said. As we sat last April in his office in Mons, I kept trying to get him to say something even moderately revealing, but he wouldn't.
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Everything points to the fact that, far from getting rid of Gen. Clark, what we really need is to get rid of this jealous bureacratic mentality at the top of our military establishment.For if what they are really saying with these acts is that there is no place for a Wesley Clark in the U.S. armed forces, then we're in deep trouble."
The
following article was written James R. Hooper, and published in that bastion of pro-Clark propaganda, The Washington Times on Friday, August 13, 1999.
WASHINGTON'S LONG KNIVES
The Clinton administration's decision not to reappoint Gen. Wesley Clark for a second term as Supreme Allied Commander (SACEUR) of NATO forces following his victory over Serbia in the Kosovo war reveals the state of high-level Washington confusion over fundamental Balkan policy aims.
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The removal of Gen. Clark three months shy of the end of his first term has been portrayed by the Pentagon as a regrettable technical necessity to make room for the appointment of Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, the deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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So much for the People magazine view of Washington personnel decision-making. The real story, of course, is that Gen. Clark was not reappointed because he had ruffled too much senior Washington plumage in achieving NATO's victory. The administration expected that a brief and light NATO bombing campaign would bring Mr. Milosevic to heel, put a lid on the violence in Kosovo, and enable the United States to restore the frayed credibility of its European leadership role and the viability of the alliance itself. All at little price and minimal risk.
Belgrade's decision to intensify the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo that it had begun the previous year, when over 500,000 Kosovo Albanians were displaced from their homes and 500 villages destroyed, challenged these comfortable assumptions. The alliance could either make peace with Mr. Milosevic on his terms, or adapt its strategy and tactics to the new Belgrade-driven realities. Washington hesitated, Gen. Clark did not.
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Any conflict produces inevitable tensions between field commanders and headquarters. Those tensions are multiplied when the alliance is as disparate as the 19 member nations of NATO. Gen. Clark's achievement was to provide the NATO alliance with the will, vision and strategy to win and not let tactical obstacles overwhelm his strategic objectives.
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Gen. Wesley Clark has earned the nation's gratitude. He learned well the lesson of using force to prevail in the Balkan snake pit and emerged as a genuine allied commander of stature. In so doing, however, even a leader of his talents and professionalism was unable to survive the more harsh and unforgiving Washington snake pit. He will depart NATO next April as the shortest-tenured SACEUR since Dwight Eisenhower. That's not bad company to be in.
Clark was a victim of the kind of politicking and dirty tricks that Dean says is what's wrong with Washington. And I have to say, he's right.