CLARK: GOP ABOUT “WEAPONS,” DEMS ABOUT “PEOPLE”

General Wesley Clark has given a num­ber of expla­na­tions for his turn towards the Democratic party. But this has to be one of his strangest ratio­nal­iza­tions yet.
In an inter­view yes­ter­day on New Hampshire Public Radio’s “The Exchange,” Clark spoke about how guys in uni­form try to stay apo­lit­i­cal. Then he dropped this rhetor­i­cal bomb:

What I learned in the armed forces is this: To be, to be really cold about it, the Republicans are mostly inter­ested in weapons sys­tems. The Democrats are inter­ested in peo­ple. And the more senior I became in the armed forces, the more clear it became to me that it’s the peo­ple that mat­ter the most, not the weapons systems. 
And that’s what made you start lean­ing in the Democratic direc­tion?
Absolutely. 

This dec­la­ra­tion begs a ques­tion or two, of course. For exam­ple, does Wes Clark mean that the impor­tance of indi­vid­ual sol­diers wasn’t clear to him when he was a Purple Heart-​​winning offi­cer in Vietnam? And, if he was already lean­ing Democratic when he reached the military’s upper ech­e­lons in the early 90’s, why did he then say such sweet things about George W. Bush, Condi Rice, and com­pany in 2001?
(Thanks to Defense Tech pal Brian McWilliams for the catch)

November 6th, 2003 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.