General Wesley Clark on Heartland with John Kasich

July 15, 2006
Transcript by Melange

John Kasich: We're joined from the Israeli-Lebanon border by Jennifer Griffin; in a minute the former Supreme Allied Commander, General Wesley Clark; Edina Lekovic from the Muslim Public Affairs Council; and Joe Cirincione, Senior Vice President of the national security for the Center for American Progress. First, over in the Middle East. Jennifer, any new activity in the past hour?

Jennifer Griffin: I think that what's most striking, John is just how quiet it is here tonight. We're up on the Israeli border with Lebanon. It's about 6 miles north where all that firing was earlier today. We heard…we heard at least 1 katusha rocket land here earlier today but it's very quiet now. One of the reasons there aren't a lot of katushas fired at night we understand is that when the katusha is fired, and these are mobile launchers being fired from south Lebanon, there is a…almost an explosion, a little bit of light that goes off. At night, that would allow the Israelis to target back at the Hezbollah fighters who are firing those katushas. So they prefer to fire during the day. Right now quiet but there has been outgoing artillery all evening. John.

John Kasich: Jennifer, what about the report that the Israelis have charged that there are actually Iranians inside of Lebanon helping to attack that Israeli ship that was set on fire, where sailors were lost? Has Iran had any reaction? To me it was a pretty startling claim by the Israelis.

Jennifer Griffin: Well, I think it's not surprising to Israelis. Israelis have been saying for a long time that Iranian Revolutionary Guard units have been up in Lebanon, they've been training Hezbollah over the years. They've never provided a lot of evidence but the evidence that they provided today was a C-802 missile - this is an advanced missile, it requires…it's radar guided, that is the missile that they say struck their naval vessel off of the coast of Lebanon yesterday. They found evidence of that missile and they say that those missiles can be traced to Iran. They say that Iran was sold 200 of them by China in the '90s and that those missiles were basically transferred from Iran to Hezbollah and that they're saying - the Israelis are saying - that they…that these missiles are so sophisticated that they doubt Hezbollah could have fired them on their own without some Iranian help. Iran on the other hand, saying that they do not have any soldiers in Lebanon right now and Iran's president again mocking Israel, saying Israel just wants to find an excuse and a reason why the Hezbollah has proven to be such a strong - as they call it - a resistance force against the mighty Israeli army. John.

John Kasich: Alright. Jennifer, thanks for that report. Please be safe and we're going to come back to you later in the show. We turn to former Supreme Allied Commander, General Wesley Clark and also Edina Lekovic and Joe Cirincione. Alright General, you're the military expert. What is the military situation at this point?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, it's very important for the Israelis to focus on Hezbollah and the difficulty of doing that with an air campaign is that you have to have targets. So, apparently these buildings in south Beirut have been associated with Hezbollah but how many more targets are there and what's the Israeli process for generating these targets. The best way air campaigns work is to put special forces on the ground with target designators. If they can do that, this is a big opportunity for Israel to deal a very significant blow to Hezbollah.

John Kasich: General, what do you think about the sophistication of the weapons that Hezbollah is using. As you know, they have a much longer range. Tell us about how you think they've upgraded these weapons.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: These weapons have been brought in over a period of years. We've seen the intelligence build up over the years as Hezbollah has received these weapons. They're generally coming in from Syria or Iran. There has been Iranian and Syrian influence and support in Hezbollah. But these are not super sophisticated weapons. These are weapons that with a little bit of training and a couple of practice efforts, average well-educated or well-trained soldiers can handle. So, this is no challenge to Israel except that these are terror weapons and they do affect the Israeli civilian population and Israel had to take action.

John Kasich: Edina, I've been surprised by the…I know that the Arab League has said that there ought to be a cease fire, but I've been surprised by the lack of strong condemnation of the Israeli action, which sends a message to me about Egypt and Jordan…you know, maybe not being as upset as you would think they would be about an Israeli action. What do you say about that?

Edina Lekovic: <inaudible> …international bodies that are very upset by Israel's actions and in fact their international leaders including the EU, Russia, Great Britain who have termed this “a disproportionate act of war.” And I think it's important that we realize that many international leaders both in the Arab world and other portions of the world are looking for intervention…are looking for some sort of mechanism by which this violence can be halted because it is claiming an inordinate amount of civilian lives which matter to us primarily as Americans when we are thinking about the 'winning hearts and minds' campaign. If we do not step in, then we create more supporters for Hezbollah and Hamas and more enemies of the United States and others.

John Kasich: Yeah. Alright Joe, I don't agree with Edina on this at all. I've been surprised by the fact that these governments have not severely criticized Israel. It makes me wonder if perhaps the Iranians and the Syrians have made a very serious mistake by encouraging Hezbollah to engage this way. Your reaction?

Joe Cirincione: Well I do believe that Iran is involved in this. It has to be more than coincidence that the Hezbollah kidnapping occurred on the same day that the UN Security Council agreed to take back the Iranian dossier and was priming for further activity criticizing Iran for its nuclear program and that may be one of the reasons why Saudi Arabia and some of the other states have muted their view of this. They don't want to see Iran…<crosstalk>

John Kasich: Joe, we're going to have to hold you there. We'll be back to all of you. I think it's related to the fact that they're not comfortable with a radical group like Hezbollah running wild in the Middle East either. But we'll continue with coverage of the Middle East crisis after this short break and later here in America you'll be shocked to learn who's behind the secret terror videos we've uncovered. It's unbelievable who did this. We're coming right back, folks.

<segment break>

John Kasich: We continue with General Wesley Clark, Edina Lekovic and Joe Cirincione. Alright, General Clark, how does this thing settle down. You don't believe this is going to spiral out of control but we've got this situation. Where does this move? What do the Israelis want? What do the Iranians want to get this situation over with?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well the Israelis want their two captured soldiers back, obviously. That's the first demand, but they'd like to take a real bite out of Hezbollah, if possible deal it a significant blow, drive it away from the border with Israel and even destroy it so that the Lebanese government can fulfill its responsibility of occupying the border area. But they'll settle, I think, as this unwinds, for the release of the two soldiers. That's the end of Hezbollah's moral victory that it claims for having captured these two soldiers. Iran wants to…is going to want to de-escalate if they can do it in a way that doesn't destroy Hezbollah because they got what they want. They got the distraction from the focus on the Iranian nuclear issue, they threw the G-8 meeting into turmoil and they've stalled. This is part of their power play to move toward their nuclear capabilities.

John Kasich: Joe, are there consequences to Iran and their activity here in supporting these armies?

Joe Cirincione: It depends how the rest of it plays out. Remember there was a crisis like this four years ago and Iran actually played a very helpful role in April 2002, restraining Hezbollah, they were a moderating influence there. The problem here is that the US never followed up on that, we do not have good relations with either Syria or Iran. The president has, because of his disengagement, lost control of the situation. It's critical that the president re-engage in this, not just stand at the podium and plead for Syria to take care of the problem. He has got to send Condoleeza Rice to the area to get control of the situation to prevent this and jeopardize the US position in Iraq and in the greater Middle East.

John Kasich: Edina, when will the Arab world finally decide? And I think you've got Egypt and Jordan being very cooperative in trying to, driving towards some sort of an agreement, a roadmap. But how can you get a road map when you've got the president of Iran who calls…who wants to wipe out the Israelis, says they have no right to exist? President Assad, who you know, clearly is involved in the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister. Hezbollah and Hamas, it says Israel has no right to exist. How are these radical elements going to be contained so we can get on the road towards a roadmap?

Edina Lekovic: Well John, I'm not here to speak on behalf of the Arab world. I'm an American citizen and that's where my responsibilities and my perspective lies. With that said, the way that we pull ourselves back from the brink of what could be a full-scale regional war the likes of which we haven't seen to this point, is by fully engaging. Your other guest just made a very salient and very largely ignored point that the US has to get more involved. We have to get off of the sidelines to put ourselves in the middle of the situation <crosstalk> and become a broker. We have the power to begin to slow down this situation, to fuse some sanity into an insane situation.

John Kasich: We've engaged Iran, okay? We worked with the Europeans to engage Iran and you know where it's gotten us right now? Nowhere. And the Syrians are doing everything they can to block <crosstalk>

Edina Lekovic: Diplomacy is a long, hard path. That doesn't mean that it is useless or that it will not achieve the ends that we seek.

John Kasich: I don't disagree with that Edina, but the bottom line is this. Until these leaders of these countries with these militias recognize the right for Israel to exist…you can talk all you want but you're not going to get anywhere. And I'll tell you how it's all going to get resolved. Israel will take a chunk out of Hezbollah and the rest of the Arab world is going to look at the president of Iran and say people like this guy have got to go. That's where I think this is going to go.

Edina Lekovic: Right, but you also have to realize that there are voices on the other side who are important actors on the international stage that we need to pay attention to who are simultaneously saying we cannot ignore the ongoing illegal occupation that is taking place that is the heart of this issue <crosstalk>

John Kasich: I don't think this is about any illegal occupation, I think this is about destroying Israel. General, we've got to go. I'm sorry we're out of time. I wish we had more time. We'll be covering this story throughout the night.