Wes Clark's overture to insurgents
Arkansas News Bureau
Thursday, Dec 8, 2005
By John Brummett
See all of John Brumett's article at Arkansas News Bureau.
It turns out there's another leading Democratic presidential prospect for 2008 with strong Arkansas ties who resists the party's crassly opportunistic congressional agenda to pull out of Iraq or at least set a timetable.
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Retired Army Gen. Wes Clark, just back in Little Rock from an around-the-world trip during which he visited the Middle East, published one of those prestigious op-ed articles Tuesday in The New York Times. It carried a Qatar dateline.
He wrote that the Bush administration had Iraq all wrong with this stay-the-course business, but that Democrats were wrong as well with this rapid-departure business.
A four-star general widely extolled for directing the NATO air war in Kosovo, Clark surely felt an obligation to outline strategies and tactics that would get between the Bush's administration's failed policy and the Democrats' foolhardy answer.
That's precisely the kind of thing Democrats need. They must fashion opposition to the Bush administration that is not transparently opportunistic and impractical, but credible, responsible, courageous in defiance of the base and, as important as anything else, consistent.
If the Democrats run someone for president again who is on all sides of something as epic as war, then they'll meet the same result. What the more pragmatic Democrats ought to realize is that the more the extremist base gets offended, the more responsible the Democrats begin to appear to the eventually decisive center.
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Over lunch Tuesday in Little Rock, Clark elaborated.
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One answer, Clark wrote, is to seek a peaceful coexistence with local Iraqi insurgents and enlist their alliance in resisting outside jihadists. He suggested deeper discussions about offering amnesty to those Iraqis willing to lay down their arms.
Clark, you may recall, was against this war. He called it elective surgery that was ill-advised because it was undertaken without European alliances and at the expense of a more essential emphasis on espionage and police work to chase Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida to the ends of the earth.
There is no inconsistency in opposing a war in the first place, then resisting cutting and running nearly three years later. In fact, there's a common thread of logic, responsibility and candor.
It's the kind of thing that might convince American voters that Democrats, given the opportunity, could actually govern. It's precisely where those voters are, current polls indicate.
See all of John Brumett's article at Arkansas News Bureau.
