From Newsweek:
Newsweek
The firing of Clark was an act of vicious bureaucratic jujitsu. In the summer of 1999, when Clark was still basking in the glow of victory in Kosovo, General Shelton abruptly informed him that he was being relieved of command—ostensibly to make room for Gen. Joseph Ralston, a favored four-star whose political rise had been stunted by a long-ago scandalous romantic liaison.
Knowing that Clark would instantly try to appeal right up to the Oval Office, the Pentagon brass leaked the story to The Washington Post and made sure that top officials were “unavailable” when Clark began frantically calling in the middle of the night.
It was a shabby way to get rid of Clark, who had skillfully fought a difficult two-front war—against the Serbs and his own superiors in Washington. For the most part, Clark’s tireless diplomacy had worked to bring together the 19 NATO countries over Kosovo.
But Clark’s battles, especially with his own commanders, were often strident and messy and too public, conducted over a videoconferencing system with a wide audience (that leaked to reporters).
Clark’s boldness explains some of the animus against him; the Pentagon top brass has become very risk-averse since the Vietnam War....
Clark also suffers from the anti-intellectualism of the military. At West Point, “star men” like Clark, who won stars for top grades, often declined to wear them on their cadet uniforms. They didn’t want to be singled out as nerds.
Clark was a top debater at West Point. One of his superiors—a captain by the name of Norman Schwarzkopf, later the commander of Desert Storm—objected to Clark’s spending too much time traveling to debates, doing “puffy stuff,” Schwarzkopf complained, rather than more manly pursuits, like “socializing” and “professional development.”
Some of the resentment against Clark is just plain jealousy. More-plodding officers dislike “fast burners” like Clark. It should be noted that Clark commanded the loyalty of many of his subordinates as an officer in the field in the ’70s and ’80s.
By the sheer force of his personality and high expectations, he was able to turn around Army units that had drug problems, poor morale and racial divisions.
