Wesley Clark: A Clinton by Another Name?

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY HAS “TWO STARS,” Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and retired four-star General Wesley Clark. This is what former President Bill Clinton, according to the New York Times, told a gathering of big campaign donors in Chappaqua in early September.

General Clark now says he will announce his candidacy for President near his home in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Wednesday, September 17. At his side, reports Fox News Channel, will be the co-chair of his campaign, former First Lady of Arkansas and the United States Hillary Clinton, although the Clark campaign now says they may have “misunderstood” the freshman senator from New York..



These “two stars” could become the 2004 Democratic “dream ticket,” if they can agree who should be on top and who on the bottom. Both were born in Illinois and moved to Arkansas, but their star-crossed paths would be very different.



Hillary Clinton began as a “Goldwater Girl” who at first followed her father’s Republican inclinations. The 1960s at Wellesley College and Yale Law School radicalized her. Hillary Rodham became an activist supporter of the Black Panthers, a law intern in the office of the attorneys for the Communist Party USA, and the young bride of an aspiring politician in the one-party Democratic State of Arkansas.



Wesley Clark was taken to Arkansas at age five after the death of his father. He would attend West Point, graduating first in his class in 1966. He then attended Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar, like Bill Clinton. But where Clinton womanized and led anti-war demonstrations in Europe against the United States, Clark studied and earned a Masters Degree.



While America was rocked by anti-war and anti-military demonstrations during the 1960s, Clark served in Vietnam, where he was wounded in combat and earned both Bronze and Silver Stars. His military career bridges 34 years, including service as commander of all U.S. forces in Latin America and NATO Europe, as well as command of the Serbia-Kosovo conflict.



In keeping with the apolitical traditions of our military, Clark, 58, did not decide he was, or register as, a member of the Democratic Party until August 2003.



But analysts calculate that the moment he announces his candidacy, Clark will rank among the top five out of 10 prominent Democrats seeking the Presidency. A Southerner, he will vault past Senators such as Bob Graham of Florida and John Edwards of North Carolina, both of whom will thus see their hopes of being the traditional Southern “ticket-balancers” for northern candidates dashed.



If Clark enters the race, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll found, he would likely immediately peel off two points from the 15 percent of Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO), two points from the 13 of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, one point from the 12 of Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and three points from the 11 percent support of Senator John Forbes Kerry (D-MA), the one other Democrat running as a decorated Vietnam War veteran. This would deflate more than a quarter of Kerry’s support, dealing what could be a fatal blow to his flagging campaign. Clark would enter the race with nine percent support.



“I’ve got some heavy artillery that can come in. I’ve got good logistics, and I’ve got strategic mobility,” said Clark to Newsweek Magazine, using metaphors sure to appeal to antiwar peacenik Democrats.



In fact he does appear to be supported by much of the Clintons’ political war machine. Among those flocking to his campaign are Clinton veteran gutter fighters Mark Fabiani, Bruce Lindsey, Bill Oldaker, Vanessa Weaver, George Bruno, Skip Rutherford, Peter Knight, Ron Klain and perhaps even former Clinton deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes, among others.



The Clintons’ sock puppet installed by them to head the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, had already ordered an extra podium for General Clark for the scheduled September 25 New York City debate among Democratic presidential aspirants.



In addition to Hillary as his campaign co-chair, the General’s Draft Clark for President 2004 organization reportedly already has 166 professional coordinators in all 50 states.



The Clinton “orchestration” behind Clark’s campaign is so apparent that commentators are already speculating whether General Clark is running for himself – or as a stalking horse for Hillary and/or as a puppet for Bill. Is all this being arranged to knock down rivals and clear the way for a Clinton-Clark “C-C Rider” ticket in 2004?



The Achilles Heel for Democrats has been their widely-perceived weakness on national defense and national security issues. President Bill Clinton tried to remedy this with strange military interventions, from Haiti to Kosovo. (He likewise tried to remedy the Democrats’ perceived soft-on-crime image with his symbolic “100,000 cops” campaign and support for the death penalty.)



Having a General Wesley Clark on the 2004 ticket to cover Democratic shortcomings could help conceal this weakness. Indeed, hardcore Lefties such as Michael Moore become almost orgasmic when they envision a debate between General Clark and Texas Air National Guard veteran President George W. Bush. “I know,” writes Moore, “who the winner is going to be.”



But those like Moore might be going off half-cocked with such enthusiasm for a host of reasons.



As this column documented almost three weeks ago, General Wesley Clark “is a very peculiar man with facets to his personality, behavior and history that will seem creepy and frightening to people of both the Right and Left. To know him is not to love him.”



While commanding NATO troops in defense of Muslim Kosovo and against Serbian Christians, for example, the hot-headed Clark commanded a subordinate British General to attack Russian troops that had landed without NATO permission at the airport in Kosovo’s capital. (Clark speaks fluent Russian but chose not even to talk with the Russian troops before attacking them.)



The British General Sir Mike Jackson reportedly refused Clark’s risky orders, saying: “I’m not going to start the Third World War for you!”



Others who interviewed Gen. Clark in Kosovo were shocked by his casual talk about how he would launch military strikes against Hungary if it tried to send fuel to the Christian Serbians, or against Russian ships if they entered the war zone.



Gen. Clark in the Balkans also pursued policies that increased civilian casualties, such as deliberate bombing from high altitude and his policy to cut off fuel, food and energy from the civilians of Belgrade in wintertime. Clark also cozied up to at least one man accused of war crimes and ethnic cleansing, Bosnian commander Ratko Mladic.



“How,” investigative reporter Robert Novak quotes one diplomat as saying of Wesley Clark, “could they let a man with such a lack of judgment be (Supreme Allied Commander of Europe)?”



Do antiwar, peace-activist supporters of Howard Dean really want this kind of twitchy-fingered militarist hot-head a heartbeat away from the nuclear button? Would they really want a Commander-in-Chief Wesley Clark?



Clark’s incompetence, disregard for human life, dishonesty and criticism of Clinton policies cost him his command. President Clinton and Defense Secretary William Cohen removed Clark months ahead of schedule.



But this did not alter the special bond between Clark and the Clintons that began in 1993, and that is evident today in their effort to control his presidential campaign.



What the national media are not telling you, of course, is that General Clark’s ascent to military four-stardom was itself a political act orchestrated by the Clintons.



This might have been motivated by gratitude, an emotion the Clintons scarcely ever feel for those of their servants they routinely betray. More likely it was satisfaction to find a high-ranking military man who would serve them with more loyalty than he showed to his oath or to the Constitution or to the military that the Clintons loathe (and that in turn loathes them).



This was, after all, the Clinton era, in which officers in U.S. Marines commando training were given mysterious questionnaires asking if they would obey a command to shoot American citizens who disobeyed a law that required them to disarm. By a similar method, Communist China selected the elite troops who could be trusted to gun down 1989 student protestors at Tiananmen Square.



In 1993 Wesley Clark, after a solid-but-not-stellar military career, was commanding the 1st Cavalry Division at a sweaty 339-square-mile base in Texas called Fort Hood. On a late winter day his office got a call from Democratic Texas Governor Ann Richards (later defeated and replaced by George W. Bush).



The Governor had an urgent matter to discuss. Crazies about 40 miles north of Fort Hood in Waco, Texas, had killed Federal agents, she said. If newly sworn-in President Bill Clinton signed a waiver setting aside the Posse Commitatus Act, which generally prohibits our military from using its arms against American citizens inside our borders, could Fort Hood supply tanks, men, and equipment to deal with the wackos at Waco?



Wesley Clark’s command at Fort Hood “lent” 17 pieces of armor and 15 active service personnel under his command to the Waco Branch Davidian operation. Whether Clark himself helped direct the assault on the Davidian church using this military force at Waco has not been documented, but it certainly came from his command with his approval.



Eighty-two men, women, children and babies – including two babies “fire aborted” as their mothers’ bodies writhed in the flames of that Clinton holocaust – died from the attack using military equipment from Clark’s command.



“Planning for this final assault involved a meeting between Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno and two military officers,” this column reported, “who developed the tactical plan used but who have never been identified. Some evidence and analysis suggests that Wesley Clark was one of these two who devised what happened at Waco.”



“Clark is more Clinton than Eisenhower,” writes Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard. His career advanced via politics, not the battlefield.



After Waco, Clark in April 1994 was promoted to Director of Strategic Plans and Policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, which meant he could see and consult with the Clintons easily. Soon thereafter he was promoted to Commander of all U.S. Latin American Forces, and a year thereafter to the ultimate title of SACEUR, commander of all the NATO forces in Europe, a position Clark would hold until he retired in May 2000.



Even Clark’s vaunted fourth star as a general was unearned, according to Robert Novak. It was twice rejected as undeserved by Pentagon brass, but then was awarded by his patron Bill Clinton after Clark begged the President for it.



“Clark,” wrote Novak, “is the perfect model of a 1990s political four-star general.” The Clintons love him. The troops he has commanded, by contrast, call him the “Ultimate Perfumed Prince.”



But his promotion to a four-star general, and now to a Presidential candidate, must have involved more than Clark’s slavish obedience to the Clintons and their agenda, and more than his background as a fellow Little Rocker Arkansan. The Clintons, as their use of private detectives and secret police attests, like to use people they can blackmail – people over whom they hold some dark secret as a threat.



Perhaps General Wesley Clark was more intimately and directly involved in the deaths at Waco than anybody has reported. Perhaps he has some other secret shame or disgrace. For whatever reason, the Clintons seem confident that they have him under their complete control.



This megalomaniacal, manipulative couple would not be advancing the candidacy of General Wesley Clark unless they were sure that they control him – and that his candidacy will serve their own selfish interests.