Robert Scheer: Sometimes the generals know best how to wage peace...

[wyldwolf]

By Robert Scheer, AlterNet


I think of retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark as potentially another Eisenhower, a leader for tense times who is properly cautious about the deadly follies of war.

Sometimes... it is the generals who know best how to wage peace.

This is not to take any credit away from Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich or other Democratic candidates waging an uphill fight to get their party to do its duty to hold the Bush administration accountable for lying us into the disastrous occupation of Iraq. Their consistency has kept the Democrats on course, as opposed to the likes of Joe Lieberman, who still defends the Iraq War. But in the very least it is enormously clarifying to have a battle-scarred former general front and center to explain why the president's reckless policies are weakening the nation's security.

I don't care if Clark is a "pure" Democrat, a question that seems to trouble some of his Democratic opponents. Pure Democrats like Lyndon Johnson have also ensnared us in disastrous wars. On domestic issues, Clark demonstrated a commitment to the party's progressive wing Friday, telling the Democratic National Committee, "I want to make one thing clear: I'm pro-choice, I'm pro-affirmative action, I'm pro-environment, pro-education, pro-health care and pro-labor. And if that ain't a Democrat, then I must be at the wrong meeting."


But clearly Clark's main strength is in challenging the neo-conservative clique that has brainwashed our naive president into a hare-brained scheme of remaking the world into an American empire. In the process, they have declared war as Clark noted "against anyone who expresses dissent, questions their facts or challenges their logic."

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16916

[teryang]

1. "brainwashed naive *resident?"

Don't think so. He's participating willingly and loving it.

[SWPAdem]

2. As we all know,

Scheer is not a "REAL" liberal democrat, but another PNAC plant. LOL!
Thanks, Wyldwolf...it's a great article...saw it in the LA times.

[wyldwolf]

3. Great Wes Clark t-shirt line?

Sometimes... it is the generals who know best how to wage peace.

[DemCam]

4. "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry ..

...can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

Now there is an incredible quote from Ike. I confess...I don't know much about the benign general..apart from his liking to play golf. My family were yellow dog FDR Dems...and...as Wes Clark says in the preface to Waging Modern War...our early training stays with us. He was from the bleak past filled with McCarthyism and the beginning of the fears of the bomb...from deadly history classes.

I am glad to see that I would have agreed with his warning of MIC.

I also agree...so far...that Wes Clark just may be the man to chart a new course...to define the course for the next phase--postColdWar and post 9/11. The Neo-Cons are incapable of it.

In spite of the dire fears of some of us...we need to give him a all due consideration. The stakes are huge.

We cannot sink into "goose-stepping" thuggery and unilateralism.

[leftchick]

5. I love to hear Scheer's perspective

Thanks! :)