PAGING GENERAL CONFUSION
September 20, 2003 -- Wesley Clark was first in his class at West Point and a Rhodes scholar. He is a decorated combat veteran of Vietnam and was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO before he was fired after a confrontation with Washington superiors.
Wednesday, when Clark announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, he quickly was compared to another soldier who commanded NATO - and went on to become president of the United States.
That is, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
It's a problematic comparison.
To put it mildly.
Not just because Eisenhower was commander-in-chief of Anglo-American forces in Europe during the greatest military struggle in human history - while Clark's moment in the sun was the brief, no-boots-on-the-ground aerial war over Kosovo.
Eisenhower repeatedly demonstrated wisdom, leadership and diplomatic skills long before he ran for office.
Clark's record as a soldier is problematic on all three counts.
Indeed, a better historical analogy might be with Douglas MacArthur - a brilliant, ambitious, autocratic officer with highly questionable judgment.
In any event, it's worth recalling that while Eisenhower maintained a working relationship with his infuriatingly fractious British deputy, Gen. Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, Clark provoked what amounted to a mutiny from his own Brit deputy during the Kosovo war.
At that point - in June 1999 - Clark was head of NATO and Gen. Sir MichaelJackson was in charge of NATO peace-keepers in Kosovo.
On hearing that Russian troops had arrived in Kosovo, and that a Russian general had dispatched a column to the key airport at Pristina, Clark ordered Jackson to send paratroopers to the airport to keep the Russians out.
Jackson (and, it turned out, Clark's bosses in Washington) thought that this would be a foolish time and place to militarily confront the Russians.
The British general simply refused Clark's order: "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you," he said.
As it turned out, the Russians cooperated fully with the NATO peacekeeping effort in Kosovo.
These days, Clark heaps contempt on the current army leadership, the top people at the Pentagon - and, of course, the Bush administration.
He also appears to be slightly woozy regarding Operation Iraqi Freedom.
He criticizes it at every opportunity, but told reporters Thursday that he would have voted for the resolution authorizing it, had he been in Congress last year. Then, yesterday, he declared that he "never would have voted for this war."
Hello? Anybody home, general?
Dwight Eisenhower famously sowed confusion as a means of controlling the debate, and his political foes.
Wesley Clark doesn't seem nearly so sophisticated.
Just confused.
And more than a little unstable.
His 15 minutes are about up.
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