The O'Clarkies among us know that Barack Obama has the judgment to take a wide variety of opinions and disparate facts and make sound decisions.
An article yesterday at Huffington Post describes a few of the characteristics of General Wesley Clark that the good people of Clarkdom have understood about his appeal to Americans for some time, but it's more than that.
What we're after is exactly the same standard that General Clark recently held to John McCain:
How has his experience informed his personal judgment?
Murray Fromson talks about some of the job titles and a few of the awards he earned in his varied capacities through the years:
The real deal is retired General Wesley Clark whose battlefield credentials truly are impressive. He would help Obama's run for the White House enormously and neutralize McCain's exaggerated claim to expertise as a military expert. At West Point, Clark ranked high in his graduating class compared to McCain's ranking at the bottom of his at the U.S. Naval Academy. Clark was battle-tested and wounded four times in Vietnam for which he received a Purple Heart and a Silver Star. Eventually, he turned to academia as a Rhodes Scholar in England. He also was the NATO commander in Bosnia, commander of Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers in Europe and head of the U.S. Southern Command.
In short, he has been responsible as a commander of large forces that McCain never has. When American military experience was needed to face the diplomatic and military challenges that emerged in the heart of Europe, Clark was the man NATO turned to unquestionably. As a military strategist and one who truly understands national security issues, he would bring far greater knowledge of military and diplomatic savvy to the debate than McCain ever could.
h/t WesDem
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
while I understand that a full assessment of General Clark's background, ethic and character would require a Time Life series, the importance of his experience lies with the positions and vision he's been advocating since his retirement in 2000.
"Conditions of poverty, disease, despair and hopelessness in Africa and elsewhere will affect us. We can't have the benefits of globalism without helping build the safety net that lets us have those benefits. Nov 14, 2001"
"We live in a liberal democracy! That's what we created in this country. That's our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution!
We should be very clear on this... this country was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment. It was the idea that people could talk, reason, have dialogue, discuss the issues. It wasn't founded on the idea that someone would get stuck by divine inspiration and know everything, right from wrong. People who founded this country had religion, they had strong beliefs, but they believed in reason, in dialogue, and civil discourse.
We can't lose that in this country. We've got to get it back."
If you have a disagreement with people, you should talk to them. This administration has refused to talk to Iran.
Much of America is one family emergency away from no savings and bankruptcy.
The Army is 60% or more married, and so, their housing, the schools their children went to, the availability of health care, the time off they had with their families, the ability to get the children baby-sitters, or later child development centers.. All that was very important to being able to build a unit and a team.. When I was Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, I had 44,000 school children located in England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Italy and Turkey, and we worried about those schools.
I'm very disturbed that a number of people who are looking at the highest office in the land have supported an act which, advertently or inadvertently, authorizes the admission into evidence of information gained through torture.
That's not the America that I believe in.
And the America that I believe in doesn't detain people indefinitely without charges.
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Essentially, you cannot win the war on terror by military force. It is first and foremost a battle of ideas, is is secondly a law enforcement effort; a cooperative effort among nations. And only as a last resort do you use military force.
But of course, everyone already knows the ultimate credibility that General Clark brings.
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I met a few people just last week, and as we talked a bit about things political, they said that they were probably a bit more liberal leaning than I was, considering I support General Clark.
Nothing new here, it is the basic assumption of all things military.. and it's a false one, and more importantly a dangerous one.
Many at the top of the chain of command are more geared toward Democratic principles. After all, they understand that it's the people that matter, it's the talent that matters. It the achievement of human potential that matters. "Be all that you can be."
And this is why General Clark is one of the most important people to be speaking to Democratic issues and concerns in the years and months to come, because the basic misunderstanding of the values of those in the military, at all levels of command, is a critical deficiency when it comes to rallying Americans.
This misunderstanding seeps into the American understanding of foreign policy, it injects itself into the timbre of American power, and it projects itself onto the "Why" of the use of force when it can be critical. In Yugoslavia or Darfur. No party has a monopoly on the best use of military power. And no party better understands and the use of our other tools, tools that are sometimes complementary, and most times the tools that prevent the use of force in the first place.
Whether General Clark is selected as Vice President, Secretary of State, National Security Adviser.. whatever.. is irrelevant. General Clark's guidance.. General Clark's involvement.. is required in the years to come, both in Washington DC and on the TeeVee news.