12/7/05 - Radio Interview with Ted Simons, KTAR in Phoenix, AZ
December 7, 2005
Transcription by Melange
We encourage you to listen to the clip.
Ted Simons: His op-ed piece in the New York Time was, I think, fascinating. It’s The Next Iraq Offensive. You were recently in the Middle East and – general impression now – what you found there and how you moved from that to the ideas expressed in this op-ed piece.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’ve been worried about Iran for a long time, I testified back in 2002 that Iran was the real threat in the region because they still have a terrorist capability organized as part of the state. And by going into Iraq, what we did is actually eliminate Iran’s historic adversary and a guy who was sort of holding the plug on Iran at the northwest corner of the Persian Gulf. So, the geostrategic consequence is that Iran stands to benefit and they’ve played their cards very well and everybody understands that. They’ve got their feelers out, their lines of communication, their support; some of their key people are inside Iraq. They’re having us go after the remnants of Saddam’s forces, the Sunni opposition – we’re going after them with a vengeance at the same we’re training the Shi’as in the military. We’re giving a lot of people who never had a chance probably under Saddam’s leadership to rise up into positions of authority. So, we’re remaking the country in a way that’s very conducive to Iran’s interests.
Ted Simons: You write that the President’s strategy in Iraq and the Democratic response – they both miss the point, according to Arab states and you agree.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I do.
Ted Simons: Explain.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, what we want is to recreate a stable Iraq but one that is democratic and not a threat to its neighbors. To do that you’ve got not to accentuate sectarianism, you’ve got to de-accentuate sectarianism. What we did from the very moment we went in there is we empowered the clergy. Like any other human being, if you give these people power, they like it. They want it! They want to keep it; and so the issues have become far less secular and much more sectarian since we’re there and the reaction will all, will be from the Sunnis outside of Iraq is that they’ll be more sectarian. We’re moving toward another round of major Shi’a-Sunni struggle. That’s not good.
Ted Simons: Is it inevitable, though?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I don’t think so. I think there’s still a window to fix this in Iraq but the administration’s got to move quickly.
Ted Simons: Okay, what would you like to see the administration do. There are a number of things you mentioned in the article. I was interested in when you talked about assimilating the enemy as one Kuwaiti academic talked to you. Is that something we could actually do with these people?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, we can’t do it, the Iraqis have to do it. Look, assume that there was something like this happening in the United States and for some reason someone in Virginia decided that he would be opposed to the United States government. I mean, you could hunt this guy down with a vengeance and kill him and then have his brothers come after and try to kill you or you could go after him, make it uncomfortable for him to be in opposition, at the same time be out talking to him and say “c’mon back in here.” I mean, there are ways to do these things. The Iraqis know it, it’s part of the culture. That’s what they’re worried about. I mean, you cannot carry out a war of extermination against these people and be successful. All you do it make more enemies. And, in the process, you do things that are totally un-American, like some of the ways in which we’ve treated some of these Iraqis.
Ted Simons: We’re speaking with General Wesley Clark on the war in Iraq. General Clark, um, calibrated military pressure as a way to pitch woo against these bad guys – what does that mean?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I’m not saying calibrated military pressure, I’m saying effective military operations but they have to go hand in glove with effective dialogue through indirect sources with the insurgent leaders and you’ve got to try to undercut them politically. When I was running the Kosovo campaign, Madeleine Albright and I talked and at one point we were talking about, you know, how we were going to stop the conflict and we agreed that, you know, I had to keep the bombing up and she had to get the diplomacy started. You don’t win wars, normally, by killing people. You win ‘em by persuading them that they’re defeated and they have to come in and try to get their objectives in a different manner than fighting for them.
Ted Simons: And so, I would imagine that you’re not at all impressed or not at all convinced by Congressman John Murtha’s ideas of having over-the-horizon presence and a strike force ready.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I love John Murtha, he’s a great guy and I’m always impressed by John Murtha. He’s one of our great patriots and I certainly sympathize with all of the things he’s saying, but it’s a matter of policy right now. It’s not a matter of pulling out because if you pull out right now or on a timed pace over the next six or eight months before the work is done that I’ve said in the op-ed. If you do it before that work is done, what you leave behind is a conflict in which the Shi’a have their armed militias and the Sunnis have the insurgents; and the Shi’as can draw on the Iranian support and the Sunni insurgents can draw on support from the Sunni Arab world and the Kurds will then say “well, let’s go our own way” and they’ll cut a deal with Iran and try to use Iranian protection to keep the Turks out and we’ll have a war – a big one.
Ted Simons: Uh huh.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: So that’s no solution, provided that, and I mean, I’m assuming that you haven’t finished the work I’m saying. Now, if you finish the work then you might be able to pull out all our forces pretty quickly but we haven’t finished the work and you’re not….the reason the insurgency’s continuing to intensify is because we’re continuing to kill people and they’re continuing to resist. We’re giving, we’re creating a major historic transformation in the balance of power within Iraq and the people who are being hurt by that are resisting it and the people who are being helped by it are egging us on - and they’re being really nice about it. That’s the Iranians.
Ted Simons: Yeah…..yeah, no kidding. It seems as though – one of the reasons we wanted to get you on – it seems as though Iran is the presence that no one seems to want to talk about as far as the Iraq war is concerned but they’re a major presence here – the borders… Talk quickly about the borders here, General, because I know that’s a great concern to you as far as Syria’s concerned and elsewhere.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, it is a big concern. It’s ah, you know, it’s… The border with Iran is about ah, 1,000 miles long or something like this, maybe 800 miles long; it’s very difficult to secure. There’s been a lot of passage across that border back and forth in the south. There’s pilgrimage routes that are historically in place. Um, there’s people and families who live on both sides of the borders. There’s a whole lot of traffic that goes back and forth across that border so ah, that’s the means for Iran to get its influence felt inside Iraq and it’s done so.
Ted Simons: And the border with Syria as well has been a problem.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: The border with Syria, sure, but that’s where the Sunni insurgents are getting their support. That’s where we’re putting our effort. What we need to be doing is also putting our effort on the Iranian border because, you know what, those Iranian mullahs, they understand it when you move forces up against a border. They know what that means.
Ted Simons: You worry about these militias in the southern part of the country as well – these Shi’ite militias?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Big time worried!
Ted Simons: Because
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, you know, in this country we didn’t like it when the Ku Klux Klan did things at night. What’s going on in Iraq is happening in broad daylight. They take care of people they don’t like. They’re an extra-legal force and some of them are infiltrating the police. It’s ungovernable by democratic standards. It may have a form of democracy but that’s not where the real power is and our allies who’ve been down there – god, I love ‘em – but you know, they can’t penetrate this network. They’re sitting on top of it. They don’t see any incidence; occasionally a body shows up or a store is burned or something like that, but they don’t, they can’t get inside it and fix it. We have to do that ourselves.
Ted Simons: General Wesley Clark is joining us on the war in Iraq. And, General Clark you say that the constitution needs to be changed as soon as possible after these next parliamentary elections. What kind of changes would you like to see?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Put the oil revenues back under the federal government and stop the idea that the Shi’as can have their own minority area – or majority area down in the south. Um, you’ve got to restrain that and the sooner you do it, the greater your ability to reach out to the insurgents and say “look, you’re going to like this government, c’mon back in.”
Ted Simons: And you’re saying we can reach out to these insurgents that have been
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: We have been talking to the insurgents, but right now they don’t see any reason to come in. You have to use a combination of military pressure against them and give them an option to get out and there’ll be negotiations and there’ll be real tough issues like they’ll want amnesty and we won’t want to give them amnesty; and, you know, they’ll want to come back in and participate in the government, run for office. We won’t want to let them do that. Those are the kids of issues that we need to be talking about, our political leaders, President Bush – those are his kind of decisions because if he hard-lines it, he feeds the insurgency. If he works it around, draw them in, and work them later.
Ted Simons: How do you deal, from the outside now, how do you deal with Syria and Iran when you’re also dealing inside with the insurgents? I mean, is it another diplomatic kind of an effort, is it a tough approach, soft, how do you deal with those two kind of countries?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, with Syria, now you’ve got an historic opportunity because Bashar al-Assad is very weak. His government’s being eaten apart from the inside by the interrogations by the UN prosecutor Mr. Mehlis and so his days in office are limited unless he does something extraordinary. What he should do is throw in the chips with us but of course we won’t talk to him. If we would talk to him, we might be able to find a way to use what leadership he has, what influence he has, not only set the country on a democratic course but to cut off the insurgents who are still drawing support from base areas distributed inside Syria.
Ted Simons: General, when the President says “we need to stay the course,” how much of that course to we need to stay, as far as you’re concerned?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, it’s a meaningless statement. It’s just a slogan and you know, today he admitted the course is always changing so
Ted Simons: And last question, General Clark, and we do appreciate your time. You mentioned the President with the slogan “staying the course” now we have Howard Dean out there saying that this is a war we can’t win.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I didn’t hear him exactly say that but if he said that, look, people have a lot of views on this thing. I’m giving you my best military judgment and my best diplomatic judgment. I spent 34 years in uniform, I led a theater of operations for the United States and for NATO and I’ve had a lot of time in my life working Middle East issues as well, so this is my best judgment. I would hope that every person will understand that this cannot become simply a matter of domestic politics. If it is, the losers aren’t Democrats or Republicans, they’re Americans and our country. We have to do the right thing for America. There are serious issues at stake here, not issues about elections, but serious issues. I fault the Bush administration for so politicizing this issue and I hope we Democrats will have greater wisdom and greater stature and be able to resist politicizing it in return.
Ted Simons: General Clark, thank you for your time. We appreciate it.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.
Ted Simons: General Wesley Clark, again former Democratic presidential candidate, Commander of NATO, the NATO forces from 1997 to 2000 and again with his views regarding The Next Iraq Offensive and basically what he’s saying and it’s something we haven’t heard a heck of a lot about – watch out for Iran.