Wesley Clark
Wesley Clark
Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr.is a retired General of the United States Army. He graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1966 at West Point and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, where he obtained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He later graduated from the Command and General Staff College with a master's degree in military science. He spent 34 years in the Army, receiving many military decorations, several honorary knighthoods, and the Presidential Medal...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWar Hero
Date of Birth23 December 1944
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
I'm pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-environment and pro-labor. I was either going to be the loneliest Republican in America or I was going to be a happy Democrat.
I tremendously admire, and I think we all should, the great work done by our commander-in-chief, our president, George Bush.
I have grown up with guns all my life, but people who like assault weapons they should join the United States Army, we have them.
I like Hemingway and I like a lot Jewish writers (such as) Saul Bellow.
I don't think you can solve what's going on in Iraq unless you can deal effectively with the region and you can't deal effectively with the region if you start with the premise that you can't talk to people who disagree with you.
Anyone who tells you that one political party has a monopoly on the best defense of our nation is committing a fraud on the American people.
Slobodan Milosevic was just as smart as a five-year-old. Five-year-olds have an uncanny way of getting into your psyche, your self-esteem.
Once you take yourself off the pedestal, saying, "It's bad for you to torture, but for us, this is our national security, so we're gonna do it". You can't live that way and the United States doesn't need to do it, it shouldn't do it, and I think a Democratic administration, whoever the democratic president is, will repudiate that kind of conduct. I think it was an overreaction caused by a lot of different strains of thought in the administration. I think it was clearly wrong and I think that repudiation, which will come from the United States, will be a key in restoring America's legitimacy.
One of the principles that we operate on in this country is that leaders are held accountable. The simple truth is that we went into Iraq on the basis of some intuition, some fear, and some exaggerated rhetoric and some very, very scanty evidence.
Nothing is going to hurt this country - not bioweapons, not a nuclear weapon, not a terrorist strike - there is nothing that can hurt us if we stay united and move together and have a vision for moving to the future the right way.
I don't think it was a patriotic war. I think it was a mistake, a strategic mistake, and I think that the president of the United States wasn't patriotic in going after Saddam Hussein. He simply misled America and cost us casualties and killed and injured America's reputation around the world without valid reason for doing so. It's not patriotic; it's wrong.
When you use force, people get hurt, and when you kill people, their relatives don't like it. And usually war has some unanticipated consequences so it's something you shouldn't launch into, on the expectation that this is going to rally the nation. This is not like 'Friday Night Lights'.
I've forgotten more about national security than George W. Bush will ever learn.
I don't think it's patriotic to put on a flight suit and prance around on the deck of an aircraft carrier looking for a photo op. We have a president of the United States who did not do his duty to take care of America. If you're patriotic, you do your duty.