Is Wesley Clark really a good primary votiing option for liberals who loathe Hillary, Obama and Edwards ?
Digby has been on a tear recently, pointing out just how useless those particular Democrats are and how tied to big money and special interests, particularly the increasingly bellicose Israel lobby. The Democratic presidential frontrunners are all on the same page as Bush and AIPAC as regards attacking Iran: “No options are off the table”.
A number of commenters have responded by saying “Ah, yes, but there’s always Wesley Clark”.
Wesley Clark? Wesley Clark? You mean the Wesley Clark that wants to draft civilians in wartime? From Clark’s campaign website:
Calling Americans to Service in Times of Need. The changing threats and issues that face our country require a new and innovative approach to mobilizing the citizenry in times of need. The Civilian Reserve offers a flexible approach. Volunteers will match their skills with the needs of specific crises, such as local communities in times of natural disaster, cities hit by terrorist attack, or famine-stricken countries.
Matching skills with needs. In General Clark's plan, the President will have the authority to issue a "voluntary call to action" to encourage particular segments of the Civilian Reserve to mobilize to meet the pressing needs of the nation. Only those with the relevant skills will be asked to volunteer
Calling up the Civilian Reserve if necessary. During a crisis, if sufficient volunteers were not available, the President would have the authority to call up as many as 5,000 Reservists, through a lottery of those with the required skills.
[My emphasis]
Ah yes, the Vietnam draft lottery showed us how well that worked. Clark goes on:
The circumstances precipitating a mandatory call-up would be exceedingly rare, and the maximum period of active duty would be six months. An appeals process would consider hardship exemptions for family and other circumstances. An Act of Congress would be required to call up additional Civilian Reservists beyond the first 5,000 members. Members of the Civilian Reserve would be limited to one six-month call up in their five-year term of service.
Working domestically and internationally to address pressing needs. At home and abroad, the Civilian Reserve will have a positive impact in several critical areas. Some examples:
- Helping to fight forest fires. Members of the Civilian Reserve could help fight forest fires, including helping with back-line tasks to relieve more highly trained fire-fighters to work at the front line. In the process, they would reduce some of the demands currently placed on the military to mobilize to fight forest fires.
- Nation building. Today America is paying billions of dollars to certain American companies for reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq. But numerous Americans have the language skills in Pashto and Arabic, the technical skills, and the desire to help. The Civilian Reserve can marshal and coordinate their efforts.
- Working side-by-side with governments, non-profits, and non-governmental organizations. The Civilian Reserve will work together with first responders and existing non-profit and non-governmental organizations, like the Red Cross, supplementing but not supplanting existing response systems.
- Providing compensation, health benefits and job protection. In the event that members of the Civilian Reserve are mobilized to actively serve their country, they will be paid a stipend, receive health benefits and be guaranteed re-employment at their regular jobs, just like members of the military reserves. In addition, they will receive invaluable training and experience to use throughout their careers.
Genius! More undertrained, underprepared, underpaid fodder to be shipped off to war zones to be kidnapped, tortured and beheaded on video - only without guns! What a brilliant, orginal idea. Truly presidential.
And, just as they did in Vietnam, I've no doubt the rich, right, and well-connected will receive automatic deferments.
For those civilians not so fortunate as to have been born a Bush or a Cheney and who would be called up, do we really want them to be treated as badly as the military reserves have been? And how long before any such Civilian Reserve corps is stop-lossed?
Stop loss orders can be issued to military personnel whose contracted hitches in the service are about to expire. Service members whose volunteer commitments are about to expire can be forced to remain until their overseas deployment ends and up to another 90 days after returning home. Some military people have been kept on duty for 18 months beyond when they had planned to leave or retire.
This isn’t quite a breach of contract, since the possibility of such orders is understood to be part of the deal when people enlist. But it does violate the spirit of a volunteer military, and it has caused some morale problems. The Christian Science Monitor estimated a year ago that stop-loss orders had been used on more than 50,000 U.S. troops who were planning to leave or retire.
If Wesley Clark is liberal Democrats' idea of a save-the-day candidate, the US really is fucked.
Billy Oxygen
February 5, 2007 at 6:05 pmDear Progressive Gold,
I would like to draw your attention to the first word in the third sentence of the first indented paragraph; Volunteers.
Entrance into the Civilian Reserve is on a volunteer basis. Once a volunteer has willingly become a member of the Civilian Reserve, he or she may be called upon to serve their country.
As to whether Wes has credentials as a Progressive, you might wish to consider George McGovern’s opinion:
Today, I am proud to stand here this morning and announce my support for a true progressive, a true Democrat, and the next president of the United States.
A man whose progressive policies on education, taxation, health care are in the finest tradition of the Democratic Party.
A man whose ideals, decency, and compassion are in the great tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton.
A man whose life’s work and devotion to America will serve as a beacon to our young and give pride to us all.
That man is Wes Clark …
See http://www.clark04.com/press/release/193/
Please consider correcting your misunderstanding of Wes’s brilliant strategy to grant some of the best people our country’s civilian population has to offer an opportunity to serve without having to put on combat fatigues to do so.
Michael Kresse
February 6, 2007 at 2:23 pmWell said Mr. Oxygen, well said.
Palau
February 7, 2007 at 9:17 amSorry to take so long to get back to you. We get so few comments, I didn’t notice for a while.
You’re right in one sense: I didn’t emphasise enough the voluntary nature of Clark’s plan and my post could be read as implying that the scheme was compulsory. But the US army is all-volunteer too, and it hasn’t stopped the government treating them like so much disposable cannon-fodder.
Clark’s plan is in essence the same plan that Bush proposed in his SOTU address:
Are you calling Bush progressive too? is his strategy also ‘brilliant’? Or is it just because you support Clark and so everything he says is just fine and dandy? Blind loyalty to a presidential candiadte is what got us in this mess.
What is this ‘opportunity to serve’ business? Serve what? Serve who? The same old tax-cutting corporate pols who’d rather see underpaid volunteers doing a job that should be professional and paid properly, and funded by the taxpayers.
I’m not against voluntary work in principle: I’ve done enough pro bono work in the past. What I am against is volunteers being used as a cheap substitute for accountable, properly paid and trained government employees. This isn’t about patriotism, it’s an army on the cheap.