A Left Turn FOR CLARK

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.

The most obvious example now concerns Iran and the urgent need to counter the neocon strategic agenda for war and the propaganda campaign that boosts it. Of course General Clark has been talking about the need to head off the potentially catastrophic pending conflict between the U.S. and Iran for almost four years now, and after repeated increasingly urgent interview warnings and statements, he and VoteVets.org launched their public StopIranWar.com petition and letter writing campaign back in February of this year. Most of it went right over the heads of many in the netroots at the time. Anti-war activists remained pre-occupied with getting the U.S. out of Iraq, and many were skeptical that the Bush Administration could even think of initiating new military aggression while physically and mentally bogged down in Iraq.

Over the last four years I have come to appreciate that Wes Clark seems to have a sure sense as to where attacks on the chances for a Democratic Party victory are most likely to come from, and how he carefully pre-positions himself to protect whatever flank of our Party is most exposed and vulnerable to an attack that might deny us an important victory. There is no more important victory to secure for the Democratic Party now than the White House in 2008, because that victory is not just needed for a domestic and partisan political party, it is needed both for the health of our Democracy and for sanity in this world.

The visible danger that the Democratic Party faces in 2008 comes from all of the usual suspects, starting of course with the Republican Party but including a host of puppet masters and enablers, from powerful special interests to a rightist propaganda oriented mass media. Most Democrats know those enemies well enough, they are familiar foes; dangerous yes, but easily recognized and fairly straight forward to defend against. Sometimes we do well in that regard, sometimes not, but it is an unseen adversary that can ambush and thereby defeat our efforts to deny Republicans the White House in 2008.

That adversary hides in our own passion, in our own desire to right all that is wrong in our nation now. I am guilty of that passion though I do not view it as a crime. I make no apologies for fighting for what I believe in my heart is best for our nation. But passion denied frequently leads to bitterness, and for many of us in the activist base of the Democratic Party, passions flow in support of Democratic candidates for President far more progressive than Hillary Clinton will ever be in our eyes. Passion isn't the hidden adversary that will have to be overcome for Democrats to defeat the Republican nominee for President in 2008. It is a lack of passion for our most likely presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, that I fear may doom us.

After seeing Wes Clark speak twice in NYC yesterday, once on his own at a book signing, and later with Hillary Clinton at a fund raiser for her, it is becoming clearer to me how Clark's concern over stopping a war with Iran factors into his decision to endorse Hillary Clinton for President.

At the book signing Clark was asked, as a last question with time running out, if he thought the U.S. would bomb Iran, and he said "Yes". Clark focused his answer on what appeared to be most likely and why, he wasn't giving his personal views, though Clark repeated that he thought that bombing Iran was a "bad option." Clark pointed out that not only is it the stated policy of the Bush Administration that Iran must not be allowed to acquire weapons grade uranium, but he indicated that he personally talked to all of the current Democratic candidates about their views on this contengency, and they all essentially agreed with that bottom line (though it was not something that they embraced a chance to proclaim).

Clark then backed up and said actually that was the position of all the Democratic candidates with one or two possible exceptions - which he did not clarify further. I took that to indicate that all of the major candidates, minimally including Obama, Edwdards, and Clinton, were prepared to bomb Iran if need be to stop them from getting nukes. Kucinich most likely is one exception, and my guess is Gravel is the other that Clark is not sure about. Perhaps it is another Democrat, not Gravel, who is not clearly in that bomb Iran at the point of "A bomb making" camp, but I am confident Clark would not have started his comment with the word "all" if one of the likely nominees disagreed with that position.