Can we talk about Wes Clark for a minute?

[End Of The Road]

Is it true that he is a top choice for VP for both Obama and Clinton?

Some of you may have been active in his '04 campaign -- please tell me about him. Do we like him? Trust him? He never made it onto my radar in '04 since he had withdrawn weeks before the primaries got to my state. I've googled him and not turned up as much info as I would like.

I know what he's said about the Iraq war, but I don't know enough about what he envisions for our immediate future.

Why does a four-star general in the exec branch make me nervous?

[robbedvoter]

1. I'd love if it were true. And you're nervous because you don't know he's anti-war

He opposed starting the Iraq war and is more progressive than both Clinton and Obama.
His platform when he ran in 2004 was the most progressive of all.(it's him Edwards tried to emulate - but was slipping into the old habit of declaring war on Iran here and there)
I sorta doubt Obama would be considering him, as he endorsed Hillary, but if he did, it would raise my respect for him even more.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. Here is a link --

http://www.clark04.com/about/

In 1962, Wes Clark was admitted to the United States Military Academy and began a 38-year career of public service in the United States Army, where he became a four-star general, a trainer of soldiers, a leader of troops, equally accomplished in war and in peace.

When thousands of Americans launched a campaign in early 2003 to draft General Clark to run for President, he consulted a minister friend, who told him: "The right job for you is where the world's deepest need meets your heart's greatest gladness." General Clark has said: "My heart's greatest gladness has always been answering the call and defending the country."

Wes Clark was born in Chicago in December 1944, the only child of Veneta and Benjamin Kanne. His father -- a prosecutor, democratic politician and World War I veteran -- died when Wes was a young child. He and his mother then moved to Little Rock, where they lived in a rented house with his grandparents while his mother got a job as a secretary in a bank. Using his father's deceased veterans benefits, they bought a small house where Wes grew up and became a star swimmer and top student at Little Rock's Hall High School. In 1954, his mother married Victor Clark, who became Wes's stepfather.

[TwilightZone]

3. Start here:

http://stopiranwar.com/

His positions on many issues are available at his web site: http://securingamerica.com/

[itsrobert]

4. I was a supporter of Wes Clark

but his lack of judgment in his backing of Hillary Clinton is troubling.

[acmavm]

That's exactly how I feel.

[onehandle]

8. They have a long history. I'd still welcome Wes as President Edwards' VP.

Unlikely he'd be his pick now.

I wonder who is on John's short list?

[Snotcicles]

14. John Edwards is in the best position to pick a great outsider to be VP because he owes no favors

and I like it nice and clean like that. We could end up with the best team in history if America wakes up and starts backing the people who represent them most.

[Ghost Dog]

5. It has looked like plenty of people would trust him in such a position.

From a Brit perspective, though, there was that little problem in, was it Bosnia, when for a moment he seemed to be prepared to start a war (or, at least, a "serious diplomatic incident") with Russia when they (the Russians) decided to temporalilly fly in and take control of an air base in the Balkans.

The British General Mike Rose had to stand up to him and convince him that it was better to just let it go...

Wes has probably learned from that, and many other experiences, since then (and especially since he decided to get into US politics).

He could well now be considered to be a potentially "safe hand on the tiller" (but then so would be Biden, many opine) as a number two to the right number one.

(Just in my (without a vote) humble opinion (which tries to be well-informed)).

[Ghost Dog]

10. Right. Correction here: I'm talking about General Mike Jackson,

Not Mike Rose.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Jackson

And we're talking about Pristina airbase, Kosovo. The story can be read, for example, here: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?pid=945

"On June 12, 1999, in the immediate aftermath of NATO's air war against Yugoslavia, a small contingent of Russian troops dashed to occupy the Pristina airfield in Kosovo. Clark was so anxious to stop the Russians that he ordered an airborne assault to confront these units--an order which could have unleashed the most frightening showdown with Moscow since the end of the Cold War. Hyperbole? You can decide. But British General Michael Jackson, the three-star general and commander of K-FOR, the international force organized and commanded by NATO to enforce an agreement in Kosovo, told Clark: "Sir, I'm not starting world war three for you," when refusing to accept his order to prevent Russian forces from taking over the airport. (Jackson was rightly worried that any precipitous NATO action could risk a confrontation with a nuclear- armed Russia and upset the NATO-led peacekeeping plan just getting underway with the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo.)

"After being rebuffed by Jackson, Clark, according to various media reports at the time, then ordered Admiral James Ellis, the American in charge of NATO's southern command, to use Apache helicopters to occupy the airfield. Ellis didn't comply--replying that British General Jackson would oppose such a move. Had Clark's orders been followed, the subsequent NATO- negotiated compromise with the Russians--a positive element in the roller- coaster relationship between Moscow and Washington, which eventually incorporated Russian troops into peacekeeping operations--might well have been undermined... "

(Sorry about my delay. My internet connection cut out again. But maybe I finally have that problem solved, now... fingers crossed)

[spooky3]

6. I think he'd be an VP excellent choice for any presidential candidate.

[rox63]

7. I think he'd make a fantastic VP

He would add a wealth of military and foreign relations experience to any presidential ticket.

[Schema Thing]

9. Read his books

You'll get to know him and learn a lot at the same time. You may even be inspired.

[Sparkly]

11. I have enormous respect and admiration for General Clark.

He is an amazing person, and genius-smart.

What bothered me most about his endorsement of Clinton is that I feared it limited his own chances for a VP spot with any other candidate. Not sure if that's true, but I'd imagine it is. ("Why did you choose a running mate that didn't even support your nomination, but preferred someone else?")

(Of course, it also signaled that he himself wasn't running, and that was really sad to me.)

If not VP, then I hope Secretary of State.

He'd have made a helluva president... :cry:

[Bread and Circus]

12. If Clinton picked Clark as VP I'd be shocked, amazed, and happy

[CarolNYC]

13. Sure thing, End of the Road....

Who knows if Hillary or Obama would chose him for VP. There is talk that he's on the short list for Hillary but none of that talk is coming from the Clinton camp so it's all speculation.

I will say that shortly after Wes endorsed her, Hillary invited him to appear with her at a Town Hall event in midtown Manhattan and I attended. After she introduced him to the crowd, she asked him to remain onstage with her throughout the question and answer period and I really thought she was wonderful with him. They looked very comfortable together and she deferred to him when something she thought he could comment on came up and made sure he was kept a part of the whole conversation. It made me feel a lot better about the endorsement. She seemed to really respect and listen to him. Will she pick him as VP if she gets the nomination? I would love that and I think she'd be smart to but I'm guessing she won't.

As for Wes Clark and his ideas, yes, I echo the poster who said read his books. He has three, the last being "A Time To Lead". All are interesting and give insight into Clark. There's also a short very readable (and very positive) biography by Antonia Felix that's worth a read for a quick overview of his life.

As for some of his domestic ideas, I posted this a while ago from a Q & A session he'd done with members of CMU's campus media:

Q: What are some issues that you would like to see tackled domestically?

WKC: Health care, a better business environment, a revised labor policy in America, a real energy policy in America and an investment in America’s future through technology and the environment. So, all of that, and all of that has to be done in a way of engaging our people more in our form of government. So let me just tick off a couple of things.

Education. Start with pre-school. Every child in America should have pre-school before kindergarten, a real learning experience. And we need to fix Americans’ secondary education through improved parent-teacher work at the elementary school level and additional programs to emphasize high school graduation and competency. There shouldn’t be a child in America who’s qualified to go to college who can’t go because they lack money. We’re the wealthiest society in the world and we’ve got to invest in our future and the best way to do that’s through education. And then the fourth plank I would say is that there must be continuing adult education. Americans today can’t expect to stay in the same job or even the same profession for the majority of their working lives and so they have to graduate from high school or college with the expectation of continuing adult growth which will include periods of classroom education, online education or other skill and knowledge acquiring efforts throughout a lifetime of personal growth and development. So, that’s the education piece.

Health care. I’m in favor of, first of all, making sure that every person has access to affordable, meaningful health insurance by expanding the Children’s Health Insurance Programs from the bottom, working Medicare from the top, and moving toward a national single payer system. I think we’ve got to be able to reduce the costs in health care through greater reliance on evidence-based medicine and with evidence-based medicine there will come some reform in the legal processes and also some reform in the provision of malpractice insurance. The next element in health care that I want to emphasize is preventive and diagnostic care. I think that we’ve got to really work to reward people’s good health behavior and ensure that every American, as they hit the magic age of 40 or maybe 38, they get the kind of preventive and diagnostic care that can work to inform them and offset, or educate them on how to beat the sort of debilitating aging illnesses like hardening of the arteries or diabetes, these kinds of preventable aging diseases which are responsible for so much hardship in America.

A better business environment. I think we’ve got to make this country the country of choice for every energetic entrepreneurial young person in the world. Whether that’s reform of the visa system alone or whether it means provision of greater public-private partnerships, greater opportunities for university associations, more government money put into small business administration to provide lower cost small business loans for high technology companies, we’ve got to grow jobs in this country that are meaningful jobs with real technology.

Labor unions have played an important part in America’s economic future but now it’s about more than collective bargaining, because we’re really in a global labor market. Corporations go where they can produce for the least and then they use transportation to send goods or ideas back across borders. So what we’ve got to do is, we’ve got to be able to help the working people in America grow, not being dependent on a corporation but being dependent on their own support network, whether this comes from unions or some union-like, quasi-union-like, concept like a guild where people can go in and receive employment counseling, education counseling, personal development counseling, support for moving...(phone rings)These are all things that can be done and should be done inside the American labor movement.

I talked about energy. We should be 20% sustainable by 2020 and that means we’ve got to move more toward wind and solar. We’ve got to really work carbon capture so we can use America’s coal reserves. And we’ve got to improve the efficiency of energy usage in America.

And then technology. We need to move beyond the defense technology. We need to be looking at other kinds of technology--material, science, green technology, new alternative energy systems, batteries, many other types of technology need to be exploited, supported by the government and moved out, as well as life science technology.

Those are some of my ideas.

Later in the press conference, a questioner asks about nuclear energy....

Q: (regarding energy policy) would nuclear fit into that at all?

WKC: We’ve a got a little bit more work to do on nuclear. We’re fortunate. We’ve got nuclear now and since Three Mile Island we haven’t had any problems but we are building up residues of spent nuclear fuel and we don’t really have an adequate means of handling nuclear fuel in America. If you were to go out to Nevada and ask that question, people in Nevada would tell you 12,000 years is not long enough to protect the ground water under my land and they’d be right in speaking it because we just don’t know. Nuclear materials are highly corrosive and they’re very dangerous and the danger is very long lasting. So I’d like to see us do a lot more research on materials required to safeguard spent nuclear fuel--things like carbon fiber, new carbon fiber, bucky tubes and that sort of thing which are very very strong but not able to be corroded by the kinds of heat and acidity that typically comes with the spent fuel.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=3327615

There is "On the Issues" info from his '04 campaign on his archived '04 site here: http://clark04.com/issues/

Regarding General Mike Jackson and the Pristina airport incident, you'd be wise to read the info here: http://www.rapidfire-silverbullets.com/2006/10/smear_debunked_clark_would_hav.html#more

Finally, I've met Wes a number of times, at campaign events, fundraisers, speeches he's given, etc. He never fails to astound me. He is funny and smart and well informed and fearless and as gracious a man as you'll ever meet. It's funny because so many here accuse Clarkies of being blinded by "the uniform". Yet it was the uniform that was hardest for me to get past when I was coming around to supporting him. It was VERY hard for me to throw my full support behind a career miltaryman but the more I found out about him, the more impressed I became and the more I realized that I didn't know as much as I thought I knew about militarymen (and women). Eventually, I got past it and he hasn't disappointed me since.

There are a number of firsthand accounts of people meeting Wes on his blog here:
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/taxonomy/term/5

Here are two of my longer ones.....

Wes addressing the Oxonian Society this past fall:
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/13371

Wes with Amy Goodman a while ago:
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/11235

[End Of The Road]

15. Thanks

Very helpful. I'll read all the links carefully. I appreciate your time and effort here.

[CarolNYC]

16. You're welcome....

Thanks for reading.

It was nice to be able to take a few moments from all of the bashing going on here to write up something positive.

As for Obama or Edwards, I don't know that Wes would end up on either of those tickets either. One thing I do know is that whoever wins the nomination, Wes will work his hardest to get them elected, whether or not he's given a prominent place in their Administration...but I really hope that whoever is the nominee does give him a place...We could do a lot wose.