Ever since Zinni's name was floated for Dean's VP, I have been reading up on him. Since Clark has turned down the VP, here are my assessments on why Zinni would be even better than Clark:
Zinni has a few extra things going for him that would make him an absolute weapon against Bush/Cheney.
1. He was actually IN the intelligence loop right up to the Iraq war and says he NEVER saw any intelligence stating Iraq had WMD.
2. He was remarkably outspoken against the war prior to the IWR and had a list of priorities of what he thought needed to be done in the region before we even thought about toppling Saddam Hussein including solving the I/P problem and getting the situation in Afghanistan under control (he also saw that Pakistan would be at risk from Islamic extremists if it looked like we were overextended and couldn't concentrate on that region - and lo and behold, 2 assassination attempts on Musharraf that came way too close).
3. Zinni speaks Arabic, has spent 15 years in the middle east region, participated in planning for the occupation of Iraq after Clinton bombed in '98 (just in case the regime collapsed), has a whole lot of diplomatic experience in the middle east, and is a straight talker like Dean. He says he doesn't use notes to speak either!
Here are a few other things that I appreciate him for:
1. Zinni is currently being attacked by the rabid right wing for criticizing the Neo-Cons.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/joelmowbray/jm20031231.shtml2. Zinni is not a war-monger but is a peace-maker. He is currently trying to negotiate cease-fires with an Islamic group in the Philippines and the Aceh in Indonesia. Here are some clips that really struck me:
http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/zinni-iraq-conditions-pr.cfm"I have a couple of heroes. One is George C. Marshall, a great general that led us through a great war to victory. Look what that general did after the war. He didn't look to fight more wars; he didn't look to leave the situation in the condition in a place where those wars would re breed themselves. Look at General MacArthur in Japan. He was a man who suffered through Bataan and Corregidor and lost his troops to a horrific enemy. He reached out to the Japanese people and used other means to recreate stability and prosperity. Look at Generals Grant and Lee, where Grant wanted the mildest of surrenders where dignity was maintained and where friendship and connection could happen, where Robert E. Lee did not want to go into the hills and fight guerilla wars. He knew it was a time to heal and to do it at the best level.
Look at General George Washington who avoided a second war with England, despite everybody pressing him to go to war a second time. He had been through the pain of the fighting with the Continental Army. Look at General Eisenhower that didn't see the solution at Indochina in getting involved when the French were engaged with the Viet Minh. He saw that as a loser strategy, despite everybody clamoring about the dominoes that would fall.
Like those generals who were far greater than I am, I don't think that violence and war is the solution. There are times when you reluctantly, as a last resort, have to go to war. But as a general that has seen war Ned said I have a Purple Heart. It didn't take any great act of bravery or courage to get the Purple Heart; it's just being dumb enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time I will tell you that in my time, I never saw anything come out of fighting that was worth the fight. I'm sure my brother who served in Korea, my cousins who served in the Pacific and in Europe in World War II, and my father who fought for this country in World War I with the other 12 percent of Italian immigrants who served in the infantry may all have different views of their wars.
My wars that I saw were handled poorly. I carry around with me a quote from Robert McNamara's book In Retrospect. Unfortunately this was written thirty years after a war that put 58,000 names on that wall, caused 350,000 of us to suffer wounds that crushed many lives. Let me just quote two short passages. He said, "I want to put Vietnam in context. We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in the light of those values, yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. I truly believe that we made an error, not of values and intentions, but of judgment and capabilities."
Finally, I like this quote from him:
http://www.mca-usniforum2003.org/forum03zinni.htm"Let me just finish by saying that we should be—as I know you've heard plenty of times here—extremely proud of what our people did out there, what our men and women in uniform did. It kills me when I hear of the continuing casualties and the sacrifice that's being made. It also kills me when I hear someone say that, well, each one of those is a personal tragedy, but in the overall scheme of things, they're insignificant statistically. Never should we let any political leaders utter those words. This is the greatest treasure the United States has, our enlisted men and women. And when we put them into harm's way, it had better count for something. It can't be because some policy wonk back here has a brain fart of an idea of a strategy that isn't thought out.
They should never be put on a battlefield without a strategic plan, not only for the fighting—our generals will take care of that—but for the aftermath and winning that war. Where are we, the American people, if we accept this, if we accept this level of sacrifice without that level of planning? Almost everyone in this room, of my contemporaries—our feelings and our sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam; where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. We swore never again would we do that. We swore never again would we allow it to happen. And I ask you, is it happening again? And you're going to have to answer that question, just like the American people are. And remember, every one of those young men and women that come back is not a personal tragedy, it's a national tragedy."
I think I really like this guy.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(226 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
