General Wesley Clark has a media problem. The NY Times does not like him, and is continuing their evil practice of deriision by quotation. In a grand wrap-up of the various candidates' foreign policy views, David Sanger puts the General on the front page with this:
Navigating the frozen back roads of New Hampshire the other morning, Gen. Wesley K. Clark said that had he been in the Oval Office over the past year, he would have dealt with the North Korean nuclear threat before focusing on Iraq, and toppled Saddam Hussein another way: by indicting him.
"Present the evidence," General Clark said, "call for his arrest, and arrest him." He did not say how the United States could have executed the arrest before Mr. Hussein's regime was toppled.
D'oh! If only Neville Chamberlain had possessed such insight, and had flown back from Munich with Hitler in handcuffs. We can see him waving to a cheering crowd: "I believe it is peace in our time - book 'im!"
Oh, well. Look, the General is very well informed on these subjects, and is, we presume from his resume and many testimonials, a very intelligent man. He surely had a serious idea hidden in this soundbite, and it was probaly something similar to his concept for getting Osama as described in a 2002 Washington Monthly article. Now, this approach was criticized by A Sullivan and others as hopelessly multilateral, but it is not nearly as silly sounding as "Arrest Saddam!".
So, part one of his media problem - he needs to figure out, quickly, that the media wants soundbites, not insights. If he delivers a silly quote, there's the headline, and any supporting Deep Thought will be overlooked in the ensuing hilarity. Ross Perot was vocal on this subject, we recall. In fact, the General seems intent on wearing the Perotian mantle - ambitious, highly intelligent, self-made, a great American patriot, and possesed of a regrettable tendency to spend a bit too much time on the wrong side of the line dividing "Colorful" from "Kooky". When the Village Voice is calling your comments "bizzare", that's bad. Their readership may not be naturally sympathetic to a General, but they are Democrats, so presumably they are live targets. Uhh, in a non-military sense.
MORE: Links stolen from Mickey Kaus, Glenn Reynolds, and Billy Beck.
UPDATE: More free advice - if you have a chance to appear on NBC News and chat with Tom Brokaw after the President's State of the Union Address, DO avoid obviously false statements, and DO NOT argue with Trusted Tom when he corrects you. Following this advice will help prevent ghastly exchanges on live national television such as the following, transcribed via TiVo:
Gen. Clark: We were told, or it was implied, that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United Sates, and there was a connection to the war on terror. Neither of those implications has been proven out in fact. Saddam Hussein was not an imminent threat to the United States. There were other ways to have dealt with Saddam Hussein rather than invading him with our armed forces and Saddam Hussein was not directly connected to the attackers that brought the attack to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Tom Brokaw: But General, you were supportive of those efforts in your appearances on behalf of the Commander in Chief...
Clark: No, sir.
Brokaw: Well, on behalf of the Commander in Chief, and by the way, the phrase that he used was not an "imminent threat" but a "gathering threat". But you praised him at fundraisers in Arkansas...
Clark: Tom, be careful, be careful...
Brokaw: And as you began your campaign, you couldn't decide if you were for the authorization of the war or not. Go back over that again.
Not good. The General explains his appearance at a Republican fundraiser in 2001 by saying that, of course he wants every new administration to succeed, but this one has failed. He then says:
Clark: I just want to be very clear, I was never for this war. The first time I was told, two weeks after 9/11, inside the Pentagon, that the President had made up his mind... the Pentagon had made up their mind they were going to attack Saddam Hussein whether or not he was connected to 9/11, it didn't make any sense to me then, it never made sense to me, and I have never been in favor of it.
Oh, boy. Now it's conspiracy theories. The Pentagon drove this decision? Presumably, he means Wolfowitz and Co.
Let's dredge up his letter from April 2003 for an alternative view, and we express our thanks to Cecil Turner.
And we have more from the Hammer! Clark vowed that, if he were president, Osama bin Laden would already be captured or dead.
Maybe he can tell us his timetable for capturing Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb political and military leaders during his famous victory. Additional commentary on the NATO-led effort in Serbia might also be helpful.
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