Remember Wesley Clark? He’s a retired U.S. Army general who ran for president as a Democrat in 2004. He was a harsh critic of George W. Bush. Many Democrats, and even some Republicans, thought he was a good candidate and would’ve voted for him if he’d made it to the general election.
And in case you missed it, right after the shooting in Chattanooga, Clark said the following when MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts asked what the U.S. should do about “self-radicalized lone wolfs (sic) domestically”:
Well, we’ve got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized, and we’ve got to cut this off at the beginning. There are always a certain number of young people who are alienated. They don’t get a job, they lost a girlfriend, their family doesn’t feel happy here. And we can watch the signs of that, and there are members of the community who will reach out to those people and bring them back in and encourage them to look at their blessings here.
But I do think, on a national policy level, we need to look at what self-radicalization means. Because we are at war with this group of terrorists. They do have an ideology. In World War Two, if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn’t say that was freedom of speech. We put him in a camp. They were prisoners of war.
So, if these people are radicalized, and they don’t support the United States, and they’re disloyal to the United States, as a matter of principle, fine. That’s their right. It’s our right, and our obligation, to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict. And I think we’re going to have to increasingly get tough on this. Not only in the United States, but our allied nations like Britain and Germany and France, are going to have to look at their domestic law procedures.
Did you catch all that? According to General Wesley Clark, we need to “segregate” radical Muslims from the “normal community.” Just like the camps the Democrats set up in the U.S. during WWII.
And Thomas Roberts didn’t bat an eye. Either he saw no problem with Clark’s proposal or, more likely, he simply didn’t comprehend what was being said to him. Either way, he let it pass without comment.
As noted, Wesley Clark is a Democrat. And as we all know, when someone who belongs to a political party says something controversial, everybody else who belongs to that political party must answer for his words. It doesn’t matter how minor or obscure a figure within that party he is. He speaks for them all. (See: Todd Akin.)
I want to know how prominent Democrats react to Wesley Clark’s proposed solution to the problem of radicalized Muslims in the United States. Do Democrats think he’s got a good idea? If so, why? If not, why not?
As for Gen. Clark? Once a politician, always a politician:
#ISIS is the enemy. US Citz who choose #ISIS are spies, enemy combatants or both. Govt should separate them from the rest of us.
— Wes Clark (@GeneralClark) July 20, 2015
But hang on, don’t get the wrong idea:
Never said “muslim”, “internment” or called for new camps. Blogosteria. See: http://t.co/OS7bVzhq7L
— Wes Clark (@GeneralClark) July 20, 2015
What was he saying, then? How many non-Muslims are sympathetic to ISIS? Why did he bring up WWII internment camps, and then propose “getting tough” and “segregating” people from the “normal community”?
We may never know. After all, the press would need to ask him, and he’s not a Republican.