by Chris Bodenner
Wesley Clark Jr. writes the Dish to defend his dad from Ackerman:
Yes, he was first in his class at West Point and a Rhodes Scholar. After being shot four times in Vietnam, he came home and was first in everything in his Army career, consistently building the strongest units at each post, designing many of the training programs at NTC that trained our Army prior to the first Gulf War. He then negotiated the Dayton Peace accords. He then led NATOs first war in Europe and stopped ethnic cleansing on the continent.
During the war, the British General, clearly an alcoholic, refused to seize the Pristina airfield after the Russians tried to enter and seize the province with an initial holding force from Bosnia. The Russians, by the way, supported the Serbs in their ethnic cleansing campaign. Rather than allow the Russians to grab the province, he had apaches land on the runway at the Pristina airport, blocking the 10,000 Russian troops being airlifted to it – the Russians were prevented from grabbing Kosovo and WW3 didn't start. Sniping Generals in the Pentagon like Shelton didn't win the war in Kosovo without losing a single American life and hold together a coalition of European nations that each wanted to feel like an equal partner – my father did.
After the war, he made a conscious decision not to sell guns and bombs like other retired generals, so he worked with an electric motor company. After 9/11, he was the first retired officer to publicly speak out that invading Iraq would be a strategic mistake when that was a very unpopular opinion. He was also extremely supportive of gay rights and agreed to be on the cover of The Advocate when he knew it would damage him politically in the primaries.
He now serves as either a consultant or board member for more than thirty companies, many of them green tech startups in wind, solar, biomass, biofuel, building materials and natural gas. He is on a plane almost five days a week and works from 5am until 11pm.
He met Mark Burnett, who was a para in the Falklands War, and liked the idea of a show that would benefit vets. It would mean a month not traveling every day, he could still work over the phone and computer and he would be close to his grandchildren and get to see them every weekend. I suggested he do the show, because frankly, I thought he needed a month off and it would benefit a good cause.
He had a good time and was able to relax. He enjoyed meeting the vets on the show and he thought the celebrities were nice and now he's back to being on planes every day, to include doing speeches for Obama and Democratic candidates because he's worried about the future of this country and how we deal with climate change and the changing strategic environment.
I just don't get the hate.
The Dish 