Four Shiny Silver Stars

Dual indictments from Wesley Clark:

[T]he United States' top generals must understand that their duty is to win, not just to get along. They must have the insight and character to demand the resources necessary to succeed -- and have the guts to either obtain what they need or to resign. If they get their way and still don't emerge victorious, they must be replaced. That is the lot they accepted when they pinned on those four shiny silver stars.

Above all else, we Americans must understand that the goal of war is to achieve a specific purpose for the nation. In this respect, the military is simply a tool of statecraft, one that must work in tandem with diplomacy, economic suasion, intelligence and other instruments of U.S. power. How tragic it is to see old men who are unwilling to talk to potential adversaries but seem ready to dispatch young people to fight and die.

I think we all are clear on the craven, buffoonish nature of men like Dick Cheney by this point. Their hands grown too accustomed to the levers of power, their minds too steeped in ideologies of force, they're the ones who lunge forward at a moment of national crisis and steer the country down a dead-end path. We've about come to the end of the road, and the political story of the next decade will be trying to come back from what the necons plunged us into after 9/11.

But Clark's other point is about the integrity of military officers. Power and the ambition for more of it corrupts them, too. Not the corruption of greed, but the corruption of the replacement of their principle of service with arrogance and self-importance.  Any officer who attains those four stars has consciously worked very hard to get them, and having achieved them, wants to retain the favor of those above him. But as Clark says, it is fatal for any officer to put pleasing his superiors above the duty to see the situation clearly. I am not saying David Petraeus lies. I am saying that it's far more likely, and insidious, to unknowingly betray the country through weakness of character than through intentionally not telling the truth. Westmoreland did it in Vietnam. Franks did it in Afghanistan. And now Petraeus is doing it in Iraq.

Update 9/16/07:

Clark endorses Hillary.

Whattya think? Clinton/Clark '08?

Comments

[j robertson]

Wesley Clark is a refuted former general who can't win a battle.
He failed in Waco (yes he did), he failed in Bosnia
and he failed at his presidential bid, where we Americans found out he was a slick, liar, and roundly condemned by his peers and those who have watched his career.
Now he's just another liberal crying
cause he can't win and no one takes him seriously anymore.
phutuuuey!!!

[Mithras]

phutuuey! How do you say that? Is that like phooey? Or is it the sound of spitting?

Conservatives sure are good at spitting on war heroes they don't like. Ask Max Cleland. Or John Kerry.

[Tiny Tyrant]

sound of spitting, f'sure. yeah, that's how I would've spelt it, though I reckon it'd be easier to read and comprehend if you just type *spit*, or something. seems less comical and more Clint Eastwood.

BTW, Hillary isn't for war these days? I always thought she was more a 'not in this way' type of qualified warmonger.

[Mithras]

Hillary isn't for war these days? I always thought she was more a 'not in this way' type of qualified warmonger.

Yup. I see nothing in Clark's statement (or in my post) that implied otherwise.