If you think I’m a Wesley Clark fan, take a look at what Yale Humanities professor Harold Bloom had to say about the General in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.
Bloom, known for best-selling books such as Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human and Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, described Clark as uniquely well-suited for the presidency.
“[T]he time and the person have come together in Gen. Clark. There is potential greatness in him: Realism and hope intricately fuse in his character,” Bloom wrote. “As a lifelong Democrat speaking to other Democrats, I urge his nomination. To Republicans and independents, I put the question: Weigh Gen. Clark’s qualifications against President Bush’s performance, and who seems likelier to lead us effectively in the years of trouble ahead of us?”
Bloom also raises an interesting point about Clark’s requisite experience. While Clark’s Dem rivals frequently tout their foreign policy goals of bringing allies together and building international coalitions to fight for a common goal, Bloom reminded readers that Clark has already successfully done what the others only hope to do (a point that the American Prospect’s Matthew Yglesias also raised over the weekend).
“In Wesley Clark, we have a four-star general and former NATO commander who is a diplomatic unifier, an authentic hero, wise and compassionate,” Bloom said. “That Gen. Clark saved tens of thousands of Muslim lives in Bosnia and Kosovo is irrefutable, despite current deprecations by worried supporters of the president. They are accurate only in their anxieties. Gen. Clark is highly electable for 2004; the other Democratic candidates are not.”
The point on Clark’s international leadership appears to be an argument gaining traction among many political observers. Kevin Drum, for example, whose work at Calpundit is essential reading, made a similar argument this week.
“Clark seems to understand — and have genuine experience with — the central foreign policy truth that the Bush administration lacks: a global war requires lots of strong allies,” Drum wrote. “This was true in World War II, it was true in the Cold War, and it’s going to be equally true in the War on Terrorism. The United States could not have won either of those previous wars on its own, and it can’t do it this time either.”
Drum added, “[T]he rest of the Democratic candidates make the right noises on this subject, but it’s obvious that Clark is the only one who truly understands the complexity and importance of this issue. He has experience building multilateral support for war, he understands just how hard and how frustrating it is trying to hold that support together in the face of differing political agendas, but he also realizes that it’s absolutely necessary to do it anyway.”
Bloom’s WSJ op-ed also raised an interesting point I hadn’t considered before. Clark is particularly well suited to help end our divisions with the Islamic world in light of his experiences.
“Our most vital interest is to persuade as much of Islam as possible not to join in what the Muslim fundamentalists consider to be a Counter-Crusade,” Bloom explained. “Who is more qualified than Gen. Clark to render such persuasion plausible? His leadership of international forces in Bosnia and Kosovo was precisely calibrated, and prevented Serb paramilitaries from even more dreadful slaughters of Muslim innocents than those already performed as ‘ethnic cleansings.'”
Good points all.
Now could some explain to me why the Wall Street Journal, whose op-ed page is one of the most conservative pieces of real estate in American journalism, published Bloom’s pro-Clark essay in the first place?