It wasn’t until right before Wes was scheduled to speak that I learned I would be able to attend. The event had been booked full already for days, and I had meetings to move around even if I could go. After a series of frantic last minute calls to UCLA media relations dept and then to the public affairs offices-- I finally got my clearance at the very last minute. I dropped everything to dash off to UCLA-- in record time.

Great Day for a Hike

Of course the designated parking lot was full by the time I arrived, so I had to park about… oh I’d say 100 miles away. And hike—and I mean hike—across the entire campus.

The endless stairs

First, across the sprawling cement piazza, then up four flights – yes FOUR- of bricked stairs leading to the glorious courtyard area, flanked by Florentine styled red brick architecture of the legendary Royce Hall and adjacent Powell Library. The lawns were punctuated by lazing students sitting in the sun, some with flipping through books, others just gazing at the cloudless blue sky listening to iPods. Today it was mid- 70’s here. But when you’re hiking up 4 flights of stairs and already 10 minutes late to see General Wes Clark … that’s hot. When you’re hiking up 4 flights of stairs in high heeled suede boots and a jacket… that’s even more hot.

It’s 12:15 and I look around the vast grounds and suddenly realize…. I’m lost.

Lost in a beautiful setting-- surrounded by the older part of the campus –splashing fountains, bricked courtyards. and mature shade trees. But still… lost. It’s like asking for directions in New York… nobody knows where anything is. I must’ve asked 10 different people where the Public Affairs Bldg was. “I dunno” - 10 times. So I hike southward – at a frisky gallop now-- to a distant info kiosk where the amused student inside just laughs at me when I ask for Public Affairs Bldg. “Oh it’s all the way on the other side of the campus… totally. Hahaha.”… By now it’s 12:20, Wes is only scheduled from 12 to 1, and I am sticky and frantic—and, did I mention it was hot? So I run back North again. At this point, I have done nearly the entire UCLA campus speed-walking in these….argh… boots and I have blisters, but it’s Wes, so I break into a full out sprint.

I hear you: Get to General Clark, ms! (Vital Data: cloud white shirt – sky blue tie)

OK-- find the room, burst into the middle of the Q & A session, panting….and there is exactly ONE empty seat in the entire room- near the wall. Only ONE seat!! It was of course- a sign. I smiled and sat down quietly clicking on the recorder while Wes was mid sentence, booming out something about Waziristan and NATO allies. Chuckling to self… ‘Ah, there’s that Wes, just makin’ small talk again…’

General Clark Speaks!

This is crazy! What they want from us, the United States, is a winning strategy for Afghanistan, and De Hoop Scheffer, the NATO Secretary General, hasn’t yet said what the winning strategy is, but he’s promised that, yes- he’ll create a strategy. As though, “Gee what a great thought-- Why don’t we have a strategy?” (everyone laughs) The United States sold this mission to NATO…..They fobbed it off. They gave it to NATO and demanded they take it.

“OK you old Europeans, you want to prove you’re not anti-American… You won’t help us in Iraq…(Wes is bellowing now) so YOU take this Afghanistan mission.!”

“Well uh, OK… if this’ll make you happy we’ll take it”. Y’know, I’m saying to my European friends, “Don’t do this. Don’t this. There’s no strategy….It’s a losing mission…”

They took it anyways.

We have to create a winning strategy. It’s not too late, but it’s getting too late. Every time we kill 10 Taliban with bombs, we’ve made a hundred more enemies in the region. You cannot win the war in Afghanistan by being enemy-oriented and killing the enemy. You must be population-oriented and build friends in the region. That’s the only strategy that works in that part of the world….

So—the next administration is going to be a National Security administration, whether it wants to be…. Or not

How Goes The Surge?

A male student clears his throat and asks General Clark if the Surge has worked….

In the big picture, it hasn’t worked because … the idea was, hey we’ll put these troops in, you’ll see the results in 6 months and then the Iraqi’s will come to a political agreement, and then we’ll leave. Not exactly. True, the violence went down- but it went down for 3 reasons.

1) The Iranians told the Shia that they’d be real stupid to fight the Americans. Let the Americans concentrate on the Baathists.

2) The Saudis told the Baathists they’d be real stupid the fight the Americans. Let the Americans fight Al Qaeda. You guys get ready to fight the Shia.

3) The American forces have enough additional manpower after 3 or 4 years of setting the stage, they’re getting better local intelligence, better operational techniques, and better tactics that work…

So – in that respect the surge has been successful in that it was there and violence went down. But it hasn’t been successful in accomplishing the purpose-- Which was the assumption that if violence went down you’d get political agreement.(Wes shouts out)’ These people are only killing each other because they’re afraid!’ Not quite…We’ve got a long way to get to a resolution politically…

Israel, Iraq, the Wimp Factor and China

Next Q: Could you comment on the Walt-Mearsheimer piece on the Israel lobby, that it was on behalf of Israel that we invaded Iraq?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=897116&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1

Um…. Well…. I … guess my view is… No. It’s not that simple. There’s no question that people who love Israel have a strong voice in this country.
(Wes launches into an anecdote)

I was walkin’ into a church in Little Rock about 3 yrs ago on a Sunday morning and one of the elderly gentlemen there—and I don’t consider myself elderly, even though I have gray hair—one of the elderly gentlemen came over and said, (Wes does this thick Arky accent!)

“General, I wonder what you think of this?”

And he handed me this little religious pamphlet. Like most religious pamphlets – they come out of East Texas. And it says “The Lord God Almighty gave all the land between the sea and the two rivers to his chosen people, the Israelites, and it is the duty of every Christian to support God’s will”…. He said, “Do you agree with this?” And I said, “Well I consider this a recipe for unending war.” He said… “Uh Huh…” (laughs) “But do you agree with it?” I said, “No.” (bigger laughs!) So, there’s a lot of different strains out there that support a sort of Biblical view of the Middle East and they’re not all in the Israeli lobby.

But more than that, there was an idea of robustness in the Republican party- a sort of Anti-Wimp Factor. Remember the article – had a picture of George H W Bush entitled “The Wimp Factor”?! I mean, here was a guy who was a WWII naval aviator, he actually was shot down in combat, rescued at sea…. And he’s called a “Wimp” by the Republican party. Because he didn’t push the US Forces to invade Iraq. I think that was behind a lot of it.

And I think there was this naïve view that somehow you could transform this region that was critical to the United States for oil and sort of sweep it clean and get ready to… GET READY TO FIGHT CHINA!! With the middle east strongly in our back pocket!! […] China is swarming over Africa now developing oil in places like Angola and Sudan and elsewhere, because they don’t get it from the Saudis. So it may be this is part of the strategic design. America will control the Middle East! We’ve got our hand on the tap for oil and if you’re not one of ours, and you’re not with us, you’re against us. I think part of that was the thinking that went behind this as well.

There were people that told me at the time that the road to Jerusalem lies through Baghdad. But I didn’t believe it. When people tell me the road to Jerusalem lies through Teheran, it’s not that simple either. There is no simple formula for dealing with these issues. They have to be dealt with through long term resolution, a continuing presence and a fresh array of new ideas diligently pursued.

Putin, Wealth, and Gert goes shopping ;-)

A woman poses a question about Russia and Putin which somehow leads to… a story about Gert and a shopping center!  Here’s a snip from the tail end.

They don’t believe- in many places in Russia- that wealth can be created. They think that there is a certain finite body of wealth - you take it from me, then I’m gonna take it back from you. It’s like when I got out of the military and we moved back to Little Rock, my wife looked and she said, “They’re gonna tear down that perfectly wonderful hillside and build a shopping center!! WHY would they do that? Why would they need a shopping center there- this town’s loaded with shopping centers!?!”

So… today there’s a shopping center there. It’s the most thriving shopping center in town. My wife goes down there to shop and eat — and she enjoys it.(laughter)

Wealth is built on belief in the future. The success of western oriented society is… it’s all built on faith. Somehow it’s like the movie ‘Build it and they will come’. And the greatest danger we have-- is a collapse of faith.

Why General Clark is ‘appalled’

Q: Would you assess the performance of the mainstream media in their current coverage of the election?

Ms note: Wes’s tone here tells me he’s seriously disturbed by this... And not without a tinge of sadness. Although there’s occasional laughter in the room, Wes is clearly not taking this subject lightly – at all.

Oh, I give ‘em “F”. (trickles of laughter) Um… Fox News has been the best… and that pains me greatly. […] And, MSNBC, for whatever reason, they just went after Hillary really hard.. My Army officer friends who have daughters, they’re very much feminists, and some of my officer friends – they really stand up for their daughters and have taken this in a way personally. Much more than I did. I had a son, I wasn’t ‘culturally aligned’ the same. But when you look at the way that Hillary Clinton’s been attacked and vilified by Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and the others… to me it’s… astonishing.

I first realized it when I was coming in one afternoon, my wife was watching TV and called me in and Chris Matthews is asking; (Wes does a loud roaring Tweety imitation)

“Is Hillary Clinton a Crook?”

Honestly! Do you think she’s a crook?!? I mean, is he only doing this for dramatic effect? I’ve got in my blackberry like 50 different sexual, gender slurs that would be prosecutable were they given against a private person. That if someone said that in the military, an officer- about a female soldier, we’d throw them out. We’d court martial. We’d fire them!

And he’s saying it everyday on the media....

How ‘bout that taunt of, “IRON MY SHIRT!” Yeah, great. And a few people chuckled when it was replayed on television…and nobody said; “That is an outrageous, disgusting, anti-feminine comment!” (he pauses…)

They didn’t say that. And I’m, I’m … I’m appalled….

ms note: Again Wes's tone was plaintive - you could sense how much this is bothering him
…..

It will turn the world upside down… when the most powerful position in the world is held by a woman.

…..

The Clintons have a long and combative relationship with the media which Barack Obama doesn’t have. He was able to get in and captivate the media, despite the fact that he refused to hold press conferences or won’t talk to them at all. He hasn’t been taken to task for this. For Barack, it’s a better story line. They like the underdog.

People in the press they start with a hypothesis and then they confirm or deny the hypothesis. The hypothesis is their story line. Y’know,(and Wes plays both roles here) “Barack Obama is a great orator!. True or False?”
“Ah, he gave a great speech-- True!!”
“Hillary Clinton is cold. And ruthless!”
“Well… She didn’t shake my hand. True!”

And they start it with a story line, and then they perpetuate it. “Gerald Ford is clumsy!!”
Gerald Ford is probably one of the best athletes we ever had in the office of the presidency of the United States but the media insisted he was clumsy.

You know, when I was running for President, I was walking across this icy airfield. And I had no galoshes or rubber boots – I had leather soled shoes- and I knew there was a guy that was gonna take a picture of me…and he was gonna wait to take that picture till I slipped on the ice. And it was going to say “Clark clumsy” or “Clark campaign stumbles and falls!” I carefully walked right across, and sure enough, at one point- despite all efforts I just went Whoop! And there he was! It was perfect… that’s the way the press is…. No, I’m not too happy with it.

Sorry Clarksters, but it’s after 1 AM now and there is still lots more to scribe for you (including my own question for Wes!) but … alas, I have an appointment with my pillow.

PART II To be continued… Tomorrow – sometime.

The sun sets at UCLA

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