Cuckoo Clark
Dan Frisa
Saturday, Oct. 11, 2003
Former four-star general and newly minted Democrat presidential candidate Wesley Clark’s comments and behavior raise serious doubts about his mental and emotional stability and his very fitness to hold the highest office in the land.
Campaigning in New Hampshire last month, Clark discussed his fervent belief in time travel: "I happen to believe that mankind can do it. I've argued with physicists about it, I've argued with best friends about it. I just have to believe it. It's my only faith-based initiative."
What was he thinking?
It’s sad, really. The man is certainly well educated: first in his class at West Point and a Rhodes scholar; which makes comments like these all the more unsettling.
He’s also demonstrated a troubling lack of sound judgment – bordering on the reckless – while under pressure.
In Kosovo in June 1999, when the Russian army entered the airfield in Pristina, Clark ordered British General Sir Michael Jackson to send in assault paratroopers. Jackson refused the order, stating, "I’m not going to start World War III for you.”
What was in his head?
Clark doesn’t exactly have the right stuff for one who would be commander in chief, as the impulse to lash out with such a response clearly demonstrates an appalling inability to clearly assess reality and react appropriately.
He has also taken to outright fabrication in what might be deemed a twisted effort to enhance his own importance, especially given his outlandish – and patently false – claim that following the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the White House called him that very day to seek his assistance in connecting the attacks to Saddam Hussein.
Of course, the truth of the matter is that no one from the White House did any such thing, though someone from a Canadian think tank spoke with him days afterward.
What would possess him to say such a thing?
He obviously didn’t even consider that his story could easily be researched and dismissed as a complete falsehood.
Yet he did it again when he claimed that he would have become a Republican if only Karl Rove had simply returned his phone calls.
Turns out Clark not only never phoned Rove at the White House, but Rove can’t remember ever having talked to Clark, either.
What causes such irrational behavior?
It’s hard to know the answers to these puzzling questions, but it’s painfully clear that Gen. Clark should heed the adapted advice of five-star Gen. Douglas MacArhur, that old soldiers just fade away – rather than fly aimlessly over the cuckoo's nest.
Dan Frisa represented New York in the United States Congress and served four terms in the New York State Assembly.
________________________________
Changes to your subscription (unsubs, nomail, digest) can be made by going to http://sandboxmail.net/mailman/listinfo/sndbox_sandboxmail.net
