A columnist for the Miami Herald comments on Wesley Clark
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The following letter was found posted at:
draftwesleyclark.com
Joy-Ann Reid
pembroke pines
Florida
"An Open Letter To General Clark"
General Clark,
I understand that you are considering a run for president in
2004. I am writing to humbly ask that you do more than
consider it. Many of us who cling to this nation's values,
are watching with alarm as our country -- fresh from an
unprecedented war of preemptive choice, apparently waged
without immediate necessity -- changes into something we
hardly recognize, or recognize all too well.
Many of us watch in frustration and horror as the war
against terror, and against the poverty, hatred and fear
that breed it abroad, and at home, are shoved aside by
ideologues, whose decisions bear not on their own, but on
ordinary people like us. The men and women of our armed
forces are asked to go bravely into suspect wars to satisfy
the old agendas of men who wouldn't even wear the uniform
when they had a chance. And when they come home to their
families, to their sub-standard base housing and sub-par
pay, they face the indignity of discovering that they fall
among the unworthy when it comes time to ease the burden of
taxation on the people they sacrifice their lives to defend.
Meanwhile, many of us struggle to explain to our children
how they can put aside the fear and uncertainty that 9/11
created, while all around them this country is bathed in
fear. We can't find the words to explain secret detentions
and barbed wire camps, the probing eye of government at the
library or on the Internet, the deaths of gung-ho Marines
and Iraqi children and the stoking of war fever with
forgeries and tricks that paint the image of a tin-pot
dictator on the ruins of the Twin Towers. Yes, too many
Americans give only a cursory thought to history or to the
broad strokes of international events. And too many of us
have been eager to believe that the war on terror could be
won by toppling the odd Middle Eastern bad buy or by talking
tough with the Arabs. But many of us, who love this country
and believe in its fundamental mission, believe that there
must be another way.
More to the point, we do not believe in the way chosen by
our current leadership. We find them arrogant, but not wise;
decisive, but not canny; tough but not credible, and we
believe that at this critical moment in history, with so
many wars to be fought and so many lives at stake, that it
is time to ask for new leadership. We don't need a
politician dressed up in a flight suit, landing on the deck
of an aircraft carrier for show. We need someone who has
worn the uniform and smelled the blood on the battlefield,
who can take up the challenge of leading us -- as a nation
-- into battle. We don't need leadership that makes
decisions first and seeks the justifications later, or that
shades the truth to wed us to murky goals. And we don't need
wars of national pride, that truss up our sense of might but
leave us no safer.
We need leadership that can choose America's battles wisely,
then galvanize the nation, and the world, to follow.
Americans are starved for leadership. Why else would so many
close their eyes to the possibility that our government, at
the highest levels, took us to war -- into the most drastic
of acts -- on hype and half-truths? How can so many
Americans not even bother to ask why our soldiers have died?
Maybe it's because after the unprecedented shock of 9/11,
many Americans simply crave to be led, to see their country
do something; to feel that we are not weak, or helpless.
George W. Bush has given us that, but has he given us real
security, true safety from harm? Those of us who believed
that Afghanistan was an appropriate, if scattershot,
response, but that Iraq was a wholly unjustified one, are
now looking into the abyss. We see a population willfully
closing its eyes to the horrible possibility that more than
200 American and British and countless Iraqi lives were
wasted.
We see a pliant press that gently nudges the administration
with one hand while holding the other out to the FCC. We see
an opposition too craven even to demand, under its
constitutional mandate as a co-equal branch of government,
that the president tell congress, let alone the American
people, the truth. And we see an administration so secretive
it would make Orwell blush; seeking four more years to carry
on eviscerating federal services, gutting the environment,
turning the courts into instruments of religious zealotry
and handing out the contents of the national tiller to its
friends in a manner more brazen than anything Taft or Hoover
could have contemplated. For many of us, this is not
leadership; it is nothing short of the undoing of the
American contract.
And so we, who are on the other side of history; are also
hungry for leadership -- for someone we can respect and
believe in. Someone with the experience, intellectual depth
and deft touch to begin healing the wounds this
administration has wrought with our allies, and restoring
America's place as a nation respected and admired, rather
than feared and loathed, by the world. America, today, is
led by men who avoided war themselves, but who are hell bent
on implementing decades-old agendas for which war is the
only outcome. They graft their agenda onto our Fireman's
War. They thrust their ideology upon an untutored president,
a man too eager for history, too hungry for power, too
thirsty for the adulation of battle, and too shallow in
knowledge, to resist. These men defy democracy, they defy
the constitution, and they are leading the current
president, and our nation, in the wrong direction.
As for the Democratic Party, it needs to come to grips with
the reality and sometime necessity of war, and the
responsibility of government to wage it or not, but not to
cower in its shadows and sullenly pass the rifle into the
president's hands. The Democrats need to regain the trust of
the American people. They must prove that they have not just
complaints, but convictions, and that they have the courage
to act on them. They need to convince the mass of us that if
necessary, they have the fortitude to wage just wars, and
the integrity to refuse to wage ideological ones. And so
their nominee in 2004 must be able to demonstrate that he or
she will not shrink from war, but that neither will he
breathlessly accede to it as a matter of political
expediency.
And as much as some of us admire the service of a John
Kerry, the enthusiasm of a John Edwards, the experience of a
Dick Gephardt, the doggedness of a Bob Graham or the pluck
of a Howard Dean, none of these men are breaking through.
None of them is delivering a compelling reason for America
to step back from the brink. Our next president need not be
perfect -- some of us don't demand perfection in all things
-- but he needs to be decisive, intelligent, coherent,
experienced, honorable, and capable of nuance. He should
stand by his decisions, but be willing to put those
decisions through rigorous tests before they're made. It
would help if he could speak coherently, and explain clearly
and succinctly what we are facing, and how the government
proposes to deal with it -- less John Wayne and more Atticus
Finch.
We need a president who can cut through the partisan bile of
Washington and cable television news. Mr. Bush came into
office promising to heal the divisions of our country, yet
even after 9/11 he has morphed into the most polarizing
political figure in the country. Republicans are so fiercely
loyal to him it borders on worship that produces a dangerous
conformity. Democrats seethe with rage at the mere mention
of his name. We need a leader all Americans can be proud of,
and whom all Americans can respect. One whose legitimacy
everyone can accept.
Many of us have seen those qualities in you, sir. And so,
General Clarke, for your country, for those of us who still
believe in the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy... For the
idea that America is not a collection of political and
corporate interests, but a harvester of the potential of all
its people... For the notion that the president is not
Julius Caesar, but rather a servant of the Constitution...
For the hope that prosperity is not a reward for good
behavior, but the harvest of a great and compassionate
people, and that poverty is not a sin, but a changeable
condition... For the truth that freedom and ravaged civil
liberties cannot live together in the same book of laws...
For the principle that politics is not war. And for the
belief that the war on terrorism can be won without the loss
of our national character, our sacred honor, or our
collective soul... We hope that you will stand for the
Democratic Party nomination for the office of President of
the United States.
Respectfully,
Joy-Ann Reid,
columnist, Miami Herald
joyannreid@hotmail.com |
