Clark Met With War Criminal...So Did Rumsfeld...And Arnold
Today the Drudge Report and Robert Novak accuse Clark of meeting with an indicted war criminal. There's one problem. Novak says that Clark met General Ratko Mladic on Aug. 26, 1994. Yet the first indictment against Mladic wasn't handled down until July 1995. The second one came on November 14, 1995. Was Mladic a nice guy? Absolutely not and he was indicted for crimes that took place between 1992 and 1995, which means many occurred prior to his meeting with Clark. He was also on a State Department "watch" list, as a suspected war criminal.
At the time Clark met with Mladic, Clark was director of strategy, plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to a 1999 Newsweek article, those who knew the general chalked it up to a last bid for a diplomatic solution when the international plan to divide Bosnia appeared destined to fail. Despite Clark's meeting with Mladic, the plan did fail. Yet the US continued to negotiate with Milosevic and, at Milosevic's insistence, Mladic. Clark was a key player in negotiating the Dayton Peace Accords, and it should be noted that no amnesty was afforded to either Milosevic or Mladic for their role in atrocities against Muslims.
It's possible Clark discusses this in one of his books, in which case this entry will be updated as soon as new information is obtained. For now, suffice it to say meeting with Mladic despite what may have been the best of intentions was a political gaffe, particularly the part about exchanging hats.
Yet politicians and others have made these blunders before. Hussein was not exactly a nice guy when Rumsfeld met with him after the Kurds had been gassed. Then there were those who faked outrage that Bill Clinton had encountered Castro and shook the man's hand and that Hillary Clinton as first lady didn't push Arafat's wife away when she bestowed a kiss on Ms. Clinton during a trip to Israel.
Bush has been photographed smiling and shaking hands with President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Washington's new friend and a brutal dictator who, according to UK intelligence, has had political dissidents boiled alive. The elder Bush, now a civilian representative of the Carlyle Group, dines and vacations with King Fahd of Saudia Arabia, a country that does not have a stellar record on human rights.
Americans are mostly civil. If someone reaches for our hand, we shake it even if we don't like that person. If someone we don't like hands us a present, we smile politely and say thank you and then when we get home throw it in the trash or hawk it on eBay.
Nobody has alleged (though Fox is working on it) that after Clark met with Mladic, they became penpals or went fishing together. Clark clearly didn't make the visit because he had always wanted to be Mladic's buddy. Mladic was an opportunist who hoped he could buy himself into Clark's good graces along with securing some good publicity promoting the false appearance that he was on friendly terms with the US.
What did Clark hope to gain personally out of his meeting with Mladic? Does anyone imagine that Mladic said "Hey, if you meet with me, I'll give you this really nice gun and we can trade hats!" and Clark said "Oh hey, that sounds fun! Count me in!" Given Clark's position in the government, his negative feelings about the Bosnian regime, his loyalty to his country, and his oft-stated concern that war be used only as a last resort when diplomacy has failed, it's not a stretch to imagine that Clark was attempting to save lives and avert a military conflict, which is what his associates concluded. This doesn't mean it wasn't a politically stupid thing to do. It was. In fact, it was about as stupid as Arnold Schwarzenegger exclaiming at his wedding reception that he and Maria loved Nazi criminal Kurt Waldheim, who unfortunately couldn't attend because the State Department had him on a list of war criminals who were to be arrested upon entering the US.
But we'll have to wait for Clark to get the real story, because rest assured, Fox isn't going to hunt for it.
2:16:57 PM 
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