OPINION & EDITORIAL
Clark begins presidential campaign
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Also by Thomas Lang:
- Clark begins presidential campaign (September 26, 2003)
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by Thomas Lang
Friday, September 26, 2003
Democratic presidential hopeful General Wesley Clark announced his candidacy Wednesday after months of speculation spurred by a massive “webroots” movement. The fantasy is that his silver stars will be the savoring stars for a weakened democratic party. It’s easy to buy into this rhetoric, because, after all, when was the last time an accomplished, honest general ran for the Democratic party nomination?
Clark’s résumé suffers because he has never run for office — not even a student council election. But no one really knows what kind of candidate he will be — not even Clark.
This arrogant ignorance is one of Clark’s character traits. As a high British officer reported, “[Clark] may be very driven without really knowing why he’s so driven.”
Clark’s announcement speech lent no insight to his upcoming campaign, other than that he is going to blame a lot of the country’s problems on Bush. That’s nothing new. In fact, chances are there will be little “new” heard from Clark until his promised speech on his economic plan, followed by a speech on national security. Although Clark made it sound like he would present these speeches sooner rather than later, it may be some time. When Clinton announced his candidacy in early October of 1991, it took him until late November to deliver similar speeches in a series at Georgetown. Clinton, like Clark will, outlined his economic plan first and then moved on to national security.
The public is already anxious to hear Clark’s first stab at domestic policy. However, until Clark actively defines his candidacy, others are going to do it for him. The “webroot” supporters championed Clark as a Kosovo war hero. This identity will be tested by forces stronger than the winds of Hurricane Isabel: the liberal Democrats and the conservative Republicans. Furthermore, for Clark to survive on Kosovo, he is going to have to convince the American public that he was a war hero and, perhaps more importantly, that Kosovo was a meaningful war.
Back in March of 1999, at the beginning of the war in Kosovo, the U.S. public had little interest for overseas conflict. Clinton’s early foreign policy debacles had reinforced the Vietnam Syndrome, and when Clinton authorized NATO air strikes March 24 only 48 percent of the public supported the move.
This is a pathetic statistic compared to the 79 percent approval Bush garnered in striking Iraq. Throughout the war in Kosovo, the American public was disinterested, even upon Clinton’s calls for Americans to “literally get down an atlas and look at the map, pay a little closer attention to the news reports, think about the arguments that I’ve made.”
Kosovo was a crucial battleground in Clinton’s humanitarian wars of the 1990s, and Clark’s leadership played an integral role in its success. According to historian Samantha Power, “The man who probably contributed more than any other single individual to Milosevic’s battlefield defeat was General Wesley Clark.”
But the Kosovo victory was far from a perfectly executed war. And it will not be surprising if, during his campaign, Clark is held responsible for everything that went wrong, whether it was his fault or not.
The inquisition could begin with Clinton’s announcement March 24, 1999 that U.S. ground troops would not be deployed into Kosovo. This was a horrible misjudgment by Clinton that greatly handcuffed Clark’s ability to threaten his opponent with sufficient force. Now Clark is in the spotlight, and he will bear the grunt of Clinton’s mistakes. Critics, most likely hawkish republicans, will question if Clark has the temperament to wage a war in the likes of Afghanistan and Iraq if he was afraid of sending his boys into combat during Kosovo.
Republicans will also bash Clark about the specifics of the war. After NATO commenced bombing, Milosevic expelled 1.3 million ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. Clark’s presence did little to deter the evil dictator. Then, May 7, 1999, the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade became the accidental target of U.S. B-2 bombers. The tragedy, which occurred because of faulty intelligence based on old maps, killed three Chinese nationals and 25 others. From this viewpoint, Clark, the leader of the campaign, was unable to stop a massive ethnic cleansing and lacked the management skills to ensure sound intelligence.
Furthermore, critics will paint the picture that Clark was weak and simply in the right place at the right time. Clark made repeated requests to Clinton officials for better armor and reiterated the need to put ground forces on the table. However, the commander of NATO operations in Kosovo could rarely persuade anyone that he knew what was best for the situation.
Even when Clark won approval for the delivery of 24 Apache helicopters, he never received the permission to use them. Critics will say he didn’t work well with others and will note that at war’s end, the supposed war hero was forced into early retirement.
Moreover, the amazing statistic that after 34,000 sorties, only two NATO planes had been shot down, with no allied casualties, could be turned against him. Clark will be depicted as a man only capable of fighting a “bloodless” war, unable to exert force.
The truth is that Clark’s accomplishments in Kosovo were amazing. He managed to win a humanitarian war that had little support from the U.S. public or from the administration that authorized its commencement. Clark artfully practiced the politics of NATO coalition building, a skill that has little precedence, but much relevance, for the conflicts in the War on Terror.
If the United States is going to succeed, it must not do it alone. The aftermath of Iraq has certainly proven this true. As Clark’s critics attack Kosovo’s shortcomings, he must competently promote his successes — the successes that the American public is willing to care about. Chances are they still will not care about Kosovo. But they will care about and support a man who can make his past seem like it’s a solution to Afghanistan, Iraq and al-Quaeda.
Thomas Lang (tlang@prospect.org) is a UW alum interning for the American Prospect in Washington, D.C.
