Just passing along something about my favourite sadistic war criminal
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NATO's Wesley Clark is not the Iron Duke, nor is he Stormin' Norman. Unlike
Wellington and Schwarzkopf, Clark's not a muddy boots soldier. He's a
military politician, without the right stuff to produce victory over Serbia.
Known by those who've served with him as the "Ultimate Perfumed Prince,"
he's far more comfortable in a drawing room discussing political theories
than hunkering down in the trenches where bullets fly and soldiers die. An
intellectual in warrior's gear.
A saying attributed to General George Patton was that it took 10 years with
troops alone before an officer knew how to empty a bucket of spit. As a
serving soldier with 33 years of active duty under his pistol belt, Clark's
commanded combat units -- rifle platoon to tank division -- for only seven
years. The rest of his career's been spent as an aide, an executive, a
student, a teacher and a staff weenie.
Very much like generals Maxwell Taylor and William Westmoreland, the
architect and carpenter of the Vietnam disaster, Clark was earmarked and
then groomed early in his career for big things. At West Point he graduated
No. 1 in his class, and even though the Vietnam War was raging and chewing
up lieutenants faster than a machine gun can spit death, he was seconded to
Oxford for two years of contemplating instead of to the trenches to lead a
platoon.
A year after graduating Oxford, he was sent to Vietnam, where, as a combat
leader for several months, he was bloodied and muddied. Unlike most of his
classmates, who did multiple combat tours in the killing fields of Southeast
Asia, he spent the rest of the war sheltered in the ivy towers of West Point
or learning power games first hand as a White House fellow.
The war with Serbia has been going full tilt for almost a month and Clark's
NATO is like a giant standing on a concrete pad wielding a sledgehammer
crushing Serbian ants. Yet, with all its awesome might, NATO hasn't won a
round. Instead, Milosevic is still calling all the shots from his Belgrade
bunker, and all that's left for Clark is to react.
Milosevic plays the fiddle and Clark dances the jig. 'Stormin' Norman or any
good infantry sergeant major would have told Clark that conventional air
power alone could never win a war -- it must be accompanied by boots on the
ground.
German air power didn't beat Britain. Allied air power didn't beat Germany.
More air power than was used against the Japanese and Germans combined
didn't win in Vietnam. Forty-three days of pummeling in the open desert
where there was no place to hide didn't KO Saddam. That fight ended only
when Schwarzkopf unleashed the steel ground fist he'd carefully positioned
before the first bomb fell.
Doing military things exactly backwards, the scholar general is now,
according to a high ranking Pentagon source, in "total panic mode" as he
tries to mass the air and ground forces he finally figured out he needs to
win the initiative. Mass is a principle of war. Clark has violated this rule
along with the other eight vital principles. Any mud soldier will tell you
if you don't follow the principles of war you lose.
One of the salient reasons Wellington whipped Napoleon in 1815 at Waterloo
was that the Corsican piecemealed his forces. Clark's done the same thing
with his air power. He started with leisurely pinpricks and now is
attempting to increase the pain against an opponent with an almost unlimited
threshold. Similar gradualism was one of the reasons for defeat in Vietnam.
Another mistake Clark's made is not knowing his enemy. Taylor and
Westmoreland made this same error in Vietnam. Like the Vietnamese, the Serbs
are fanatic warriors who know better than to fight conventionally in open
formations. They'll use the rugged terrain and bomber bad weather to conduct
the guerrilla operations they've been preparing for over 50 years. And
they're damn good at partisan warfare. Just ask any German 70 years or older
if a fight in Serbia will be another Desert Storm.
It's the smart general who knows when to retreat. If Clark lets pride stand
in the way of military judgment, expect a long and bloody war.
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