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Attention to detail is not a major feature of his work. While claiming an intimate knowledge of events in the Balkans, only this April he addressed a letter to Bill Richardson as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., telling him that "the U.S. assaults both Slavs and Muslims to stimulate them to attack each other and to control both." Of course, if he had been reading newspapers other than Workers World, he would have noticed that Richardson has been energy secretary for over a year. Indeed, he may have noticed that Richard Holbrooke, not unconnected to the region, has been stalled in his nomination for the post.

His advice to Belgrade to sue NATO for genocide at the International Court of Justice did not, for example, take into account an existing successful injunction from 1993 against Yugoslavia to stop committing genocide against the Bosnians.

What we are reduced to is the idea that human rights are not something inherent in the individual, but contingent on the politics of the state that abuses such rights. What Ramsey Clark wants from the city of Philadelphia for Mumia Abu Jamal (another of his causes) he calls "colonial" justice when claimed by Tutsis in Rwanda against their erstwhile murderers, or a tool of imperialism when claimed by Kosovars against their torturers.

In fact, many of these political anomalies make sense in light of his role as the figurehead for the International Action Center, which in turn is the front for the Workers World Party. Between them they write his letters and briefs. Respected by some on the left for their ability to bring out people for demonstrations, they are reviled by many for bringing the left into disrepute.

The Workers World Party split from the Socialist Workers Party many decades ago in support of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, and it has remained true to its origins. Oddball Trotskyists morphed to Stalinoids, its members have since then supported the Chinese government over Tiananmen Square -- and of course see the current incumbents in Belgrade and Baghdad as staunch anti-imperialists. By appearing on their behalf, the former attorney general allows their views a vicarious respectability that they could never dream of otherwise. Associates take some small comfort from the WWP's hold on Clark -- it means that he no longer carries water for the equally oddball Lyndon LaRouche, with whom he flirted in the '80s.

Clark's is a distinguished Southern pedigree. His father was an attorney general before him and resigned from the Supreme Court to avoid a conflict of interest when his son joined Lyndon Johnson's administration. There were few signs of his current leftism: On Vietnam, the obsessive litmus test of the American left, he failed miserably, supervising the prosecution of Dr. Benjamin Spock for conspiracy to encourage draft-dodging. When he ran for the Senate in 1976, he was to the right of Bella Abzug, and even some of his campaign workers say that by splitting the ticket, he let in Daniel Patrick Moynihan ("Not a big step forward for progressive humanity," one former supporter commented laconically.) Ironically, as a candidate he opposed Israel negotiating with the PLO. Now, he says Islam "is probably the most compelling spiritual and moral force on earth today" and that the U.S. is anti-Islamic. However, this benignly spiritual view does not seem to have extended to the millions of Muslims in Kosovo and Bosnia.

Since the 1970s, he seems to have had little contact with the mainstream of American politics except as an occasional TV pundit invited to speak on the strength of his former attorney generalhood. "My feeling is that he has to be a true believer" in the WWP, says a former campaign worker, although others assume a more opportunistic relationship.

It is not surprising that many of Charles Dickens' eccentric characters are obsessively involved in litigation. It does something to a man -- and especially to a former attorney general. If the world is not the way you want, it must be sued into the right shape. And if conspiracies of the powerful exclude you from existing tribunals, or they return improper verdicts, why then you set up your own marsupial court where you can pull the verdict ready formed from your pouch. Which is why the outcome of his tribunal in New York is already in before the jury has even been empanelled, that the U.S. and NATO are guilty of unspeakable crimes, and Slobodan Milosevic is bathed in the blood of the lamb, not steeped in the gore of Kosovo.
salon.com | June 21, 1999

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