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Just over a week ago now, Wes Clark made a two day campaign swing through New Hampshire on behalf of Democratic candidates running there on every level. Janet and I made an almost 5 hour drive to go see Clark there, and for a day and I half we wandered the same New Hampshire back roads as the General, managing to hear him speak 5 times in widely varied settings. One thing I can say with certainty is that Wes Clark does not deliver a canned "stump speech". Sure, Clark had key themes that he continually stressed, and there were certain facts that he made certain everyone heard, but nothing was canned about it.
It was more like Clark had an outline of points that he knew he wanted to make, points that one way or another he made sure got covered. While some anecdotes popped up more than once, and certain passages were restated from one stop to the next, there was a spontaneous unpredictability about exactly what Wes would address, and how he would go about it, that made the experience of listening to him fresh each time. It also meant that I came home with several tapes recorded and pages of notes scribbled too fast for me to decipher most of later, along with a feeling that I needed to transcribe every one of Clark's words before I could do our New Hampshire trip justice with any of my own.
Obviously that didn't work so here is what I am doing instead. I just grabbed, totally at random, one of three tapes I made of Wes Clark speaking, threw it into my tape recorder and started listening, and that is how I am starting, by writing about the part of Clark's message that I just re-listened to, which is what I should have done a week ago.
As it turns out I am starting from the finish of our trip, with the tail end of a talk Wes Clark gave at a Potluck Dinner in Henniker NH, hosted by a Peace and Justice network to benefit victims of Katrina, and the Henniker -- San Ramon Sister City Project. Those attending were primarily Peace activists and/or local Democratic candidates. Wes didn't start speaking until well past 7:00 PM, it had already been a long day for him, and he had to leave from there to do a television event. I transcribed some of those remarks, and they are good ones to start with because they speak directly to what Wes Clark believes is now at stake for America, and the importance of this election:
"...I think that we're in a very dangerous position because not only is the clock ticking in North Korea, but the clock is ticking in Iran. The President has basically lined up his statements so that he can not live with the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon, and he has made a half hearted effort at diplomacy. We're not talking with Iran directly. He's made a half hearted effort at diplomacy, I believe, so that diplomacy will fail. And then, his plan is, sometime in the Spring of 2007, which is not so far away, he's going to come on Television, he's going to say:
'My fellow Americans. For 5 years we've watched the evil empire of Iran struggle to prepare nuclear weapons. Although our intelligence is not perfect, we have enough information to assure us that they're making progress.
As I told, and promised you, we will not allow the worst weapons to fall into the hands of the worst people. Iran is a state that supports Terrorists. For the good of humanity they can not be permitted to have nuclear weapons. We've asked our Allies to help, we've gone to the United Nations, we've asked the Iranians to forbear, nothing has worked. There is no option remaining, but to use America's military superiority to address this growing and gathering threat.
As I speak to you tonight, the first bombers are over Tehran. We will not falter, we will not fail, we will not be denied, and America will prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons.
Thank You my fellow Americans'
This was the second time out of the five events that we attended with Wes Clark, where Wes delivered a mock George W. Bush speech declaring the commencement of military operations against Iran. The first time was at a small meeting of very active local Democrats in Goffstown NH, the previous afternoon. It wasn't word for word the same, but both times the fake speech was chilling to hear. If anything the version Wes Clark gave the prior day was more realistic, and in that smaller setting the gasps it evoked were even more obvious than some visceral groans I heard come from the crowd the Henniker. In Goffstown, Clark quickly broke false character, flashed a wan smile and said, "Pretty good, huh?" in acknowledgment of how realistic the fake Presidential announcement had seemed to everyone. Janet turned to me in Goffstown and commented that, if she didn't already know Wes Clark, hearing him make Bush's case for War so emphatically could have unnerved her. As it was, simply knowing that Wes Clark believed there was a good chance that we would all actually hear an address very much like that come from George W. Bush sometime in the next 8 months was more than frightening enough for everyone gathered. This night, in Henniker, Clark returned to his own voice and continued:
"Now that's the speech, OK, that's what's going to happen. I'd say 50, 60, 70% likelihood after the first of the year, IF we don't get Democrats in Congress. Now when that happens, it will be very hard for Democrats to stand and say; 'Oh stop the bombing, we like it when Iran has nuclear weapons.' No we don't, we'll be back on the defensive again. That's why we've got to start speaking out now. We're being set up again, just like we were with Iraq, and what I've found in my life is, generally that if you want a war, you can have one.
Most people are about equally brave, most people will fight. Most people love their families, they love their homes, they believe that whatever they believe in is the single one way to truth, reconciliation and the after life, and most people will fight for it. Most people are not philosophical about it, and whether you're walking into a bar in New York City after the Red Sox have played the Yankees, or whether you're dealing with the Bosnians and the Serbs, or whether you're talking about Christians and Iranians. People will fight for what they believe in. So if we want a war with a billion Muslims, we can probably have one. I don't think we want one, we certainly don't need one, and we should do everything we can to prevent it. And that means this election is the crucial moment for doing that."
There was so much more Clark talked about to audiences in New Hampshire, and I will try to relay more of it here in stages, but that in a nutshell was Wes Clark's message. It is absolutely essential that voters deliver a stunning set back to the Bush Administration this Election Day on November 7th. We have to set them back hard on their heels, and we need the power of the subpoena to force Rumsfeld and the entire neocon cabal to come before Congress under oath repeatedly to testify about their plans, and if they won't tell the truth to the American people then Democrats in Congress must have the ability to show the American people the lies that they are being told.
At this same event a questioner from the audience asked Wes Clark how he felt about the Patriot Act, and I will relay his reply to that in another post.
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