GEN CLARK VS HOLBROOKE & SEN. MIKULSKI’S GRANDMA- WHAT SIZE NATO?

“So it all came to a head on Labor Day weekend of 1994” Wes says.” Vice President Al Gore was going to make a speech in Berlin.” Richard Holbrooke was Ambassador to Germany at that time. And Holbrooke, per Wes, continued to shape and reshape Vice Pres Gore’s speech… Wes was the J5 Strategic Plans and Policy at the time.

I first intercepted General Clark as I was walking back to the coffee table for a refill - he’d just entered the UCLA Faculty Center California Room on time for his talk on “NATO Engagement after 1989”…. Luckily I spotted him right before the rock-star throng gathered rendering him inaccessible.

“Look who’s here!” he exclaimed with that broad smile, warmly extending his hand. “It’s ms in la!!”

Well, make my day. :-)

THE PRICE OF HONESTY and 5.5%

Please thank Mary for finding this excellent interview of General Clark, by The Economist, at The Clinton Global Initiative. It's just over 8 minutes. Wish they all took at least this much time when interviewing him - he packs a tremendous amount of information into a small amount of time that never fails to make one think further!

This is a particularly important topic, and a very disturbing report from the Times of London. How can we solve this new problem, and how could we have prevented it?

"Al-Qaeda's sinister creep into North Africa:
As the jihadists face defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are moving stealthily into a new power base..."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4425820.ece

Gen. Clark: McCain Is "Untested And Untried" On National Security

On Tuesday, Sen. Kent Conrad revealed that Sen. Barack Obama is including "former top military leaders" among the approximately two dozen names currently rattling around in a not-so-short vice presidential short list.

Such figures don't come much more "top" in either political party than retired four-star General Wes Clark, the former Supreme Allied Commander Europe for NATO during the Kosovo War. After a late entry into the Democratic 2004 presidential race, in which he won the Oklahoma primary and finished second in three other contests, Clark turned himself into a popular surrogate on the stump for Democratic congressional candidates during the midterm elections.

Relatively new to partisan politics, he seems to have taken to the enterprise with gusto. As an early backer of Sen. Hillary Clinton, Clark traveled in the last year to Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, Indiana and South Dakota. But even now that the spouse of his former Commander in Chief is out of the race, Clark isn't done for the season. In an email pitch to his nationwide network of supporters last week, Clark urged party unity and described the call to elect Obama as a "critical mission."

In a wide-ranging interview with The Huffington Post, Clark offered opinions on the current state of American foreign policy, the Democrats' emergence as a more "full-service" party on security issues, and -- lest anyone doubt his potential use as a running mate for Obama -- the shortcomings of Sen. John McCain.

"I know he's trying to get traction by seeking to play to what he thinks is his strong suit of national security," Clark said of McCain while speaking from his office in Little Rock, Arkansas. "The truth is that, in national security terms, he's largely untested and untried. He's never been responsible for policy formulation. He's never had leadership in a crisis, or in anything larger than his own element on an aircraft carrier or [in managing] his own congressional staff. It's not clear that this is going to be the strong suit that he thinks it is."

Resume aside, though, Clark also took issue with the Arizona Republican's instincts on national security. "McCain's weakness is that he's always been for the use of force, force and more force. In my experience, the only time to use force is as a last resort. ... When he talks about throwing Russia out of the G8 and makes ditties about bombing Iran, he betrays a disrespect for the office of the presidency."

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RECAP from UCLA Rogue States Conference PART I:

Just in case anyone forgot, here is Part 1:
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/15014

And seeing as I was so late getting to Part 2 (insert very guilty faced emoticon) I thought you could use a recap. You can hopefully understand when you scroll down, and down, and down… why this took so long to pull together. Transcribing is a painstaking exercise in patience and rewind…

This intro is snipped from Part 1 to refresh your memory.

Well, Wes addressed members of the Oxonian Society in NYC this evening. It was a wonderfully intimate affair, with seats for only about 100. The room was full, with a number of folks standing when all of the seats were taken. Among the audience were three new Oxonians -- me, Gordon and Perry Barber (a fascinating woman who umpires Major League Baseball games and makes great T-shirts). We’d all joined after we’d seen Wes was scheduled to speak.

General Clark went well beyond the mainstream Democratic Party in preemptively positioning himself, and those who stand with him, to confront a growing threat to peace, and also to our Party. For those who picked up on Clark’s stance early the lag between him sounding an alarm and more people hearing it has been hard to accept, but as hard as it’s been for the netroots to take that danger in, compared to the institutional Democratic Party they have been relatively quick to respond.

by using force

final (?) draft for kos diary
thanks everyone for very helpful suggestions

It's sad that some of our leading Democratic presidential candidates feel compelled to compete with one another to show who's tougher on national security.

Wes Clark, a four star general with 34 years of military service, has the courage to tell us what we sense is the truth - that saber rattling and aggression make us less safe and that living up to our own ideals would give us the legitimacy to secure a safer more peaceful world.

Summer is rolling on and Labor Day is approaching. George Bush and Dick Cheney are now almost certainly the least popular President and Vice President team in American History. John McCain, the G.O.P. pretender to the throne who once was feared as the only man with sufficient stature and integrity to convince the American public to renew the Republican lease on the White House, has departed center stage after a war vote malfunction stripped bare his passion for the Iraq surge, exposing him as unelectable in the Super Bowl of politics.