Soldiers Can Be Liberal (CLARK)

[DoveTurnedHawk]

The candidacy of Gen. Wesley Clark for president has touched off a nasty debate inside the Democratic Party. Not the one over whether he's really a Democrat -- that's so absurd it's hardly worth debating. The debate I'm talking about is over whether a warrior should lead the party at all.

I say yes, and not just because the Democrats need credibility on national security issues in order to beat George W. Bush next year. To me, the U.S. military represents some of the best values of the party: advancement without advantage, patriotism, multilateralism, shared sacrifice and diversity.

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You'd think progressives would embrace those things, yet some on the left seem to have a reflexive suspicion of the military and a sense that because it is an instrument of war, the people in it are necessarily warmongers.

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But is the kid who's learning to be a technician, engineer or pilot in the services a warmonger? Are the underpaid, exhausted men and women in uniform responsible for the wars they prosecute? Of course not. And neither are the generals. War is the burden of soldiers, but the responsibility of civilian society. That's us.

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As for Kosovo, which has become the cause of many who oppose Clark: I can live with a war to stop ongoing genocide. It's the ones to knock off tin-pot dictators for 20-year-old genocide, phony ties to Sept. 11 and phantom weapons of mass destruction that this progressive has a problem with.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/6892555.htm