General Wesley Clark on Fox News Dayside
August 11, 2006
Transcript by Reg NYC
Shepard Smith: Joining us now is General Wesley Clark, Fox News contributor and live with us in New York. General Clark, the great amount of thinking here has been all along, when you go into an operation like this, you have to go in with overwhelming force. To this point, the Israelis have not. General Clark?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Shep, you're exactly right. The Israelis have not. They probably should've. At least from my military experience, if you're going to do something like this, you've got to do it all the way. So, they've got to have enough troops to punch through where Hezbullah is, up to the Litani River and then work, I would say, backward, Southward from the Litani River and come back on the Hezbullah positions. From the Hezbullah standpoint of view, the jig's up. They know that can't stand up to the overwhelming force of the Israeli power. They have, they have done, from their perspective, I think probably they would feel like they've done an amazing job so far. They may well try to melt away and get out away from the Israeli offensive believing that they can win the struggle.
When the cease-fire takes hold, they'll infiltrate back in. That's the strategic problem.
Shepard Smith: That's interesting you, you say that, because our information been over the last couple of days that should something like this begin, this larger ground war, that rather than doing what Israel has done so far - which is beginning right at Maroon Al-Ras, right on the border, taking it, and then fighting, and then going past that to Bent Jbail, which was the scene of a horribly, bloody conflict at the beginning of the last, of the last Israeli incursion into Lebanon - rather than that, that they would now move forward with some great amount of speed all the way to the Litani River, without taking those towns and villages, and work their way back. Does that sound like the sort of strategy that you're discussing here?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Exactly. That is exactly what the logical military operation would be, with lots of firepower, maybe 30,000, maybe 40,000 troops depending on how much logistics you have to bring across the border and how much fire support you have to bring across the border. But you must have overwhelming power, and the idea will be of course at this point, they want to prevent Hezbullah from slipping away from the grasp and slipping back North to the Litani River.
Shepard Smith: Something they have not been able to do thus far.
(At this point they go to various correspondents with various angles of the story, then back to General Clark.)
Shepard Smith: General Clark, when you talk about the perception of a, of a victory on the ground, it effects not just Israel, but the Middle East as a whole, as Jennifer mentioned, from a deterrent standpoint. What sort of victories are necessary from an Israeli standpoint.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think what Israel is going to have to do to achieve his objective here is move very quickly to the Litani River, seal off the reinforcements that can come in to Hezbullah, and then sweep back to the South to clear Hezbullah out in a decisive fashion. No more pecking around the edges of the problem. No more sending a couple of squads into a town to sit in a house and look out with binoculars. But they're going to have to use much greater force. They're going to have to use much greater artillery support. And they're going to have to actually roll through these villages and then go in and clear these bunkers, and they're going to have to do it quickly. This is what it's going to take to re-establish the image of Israeli military superiority that's so important to Israel's survival and so important to keeping the radical Shia and the Hezbullah movement in place.
Shepard Smith: And, and General-
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: In its place.
Shepard Smith: -across the border- I'm sorry. General there, there is also a perception, at least here, that they may need to cut the head off the snake - to use an Israeli parlance. It was just a few days into this campaign, that the Israeli military - and I was standing in this very spot when it happened - took, took 40 F-16s and flew them over a bunker, which was said to have been created by Iran, was said to have been command and control for Hassan Nesrallah. They dropped bomb after bomb after bunker-busting bomb in an effort - it was quite clear at the time - to kill Hassan Nesrallah. Is an effort to take him out now necessary for a strategic victory on the Israeli's part?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, it would certainly be nice if they could get Hassan Nesrallah, but it's a very, very high standard to, for Israel to hold itself to. What they really have to do is show their superiority on the ground. If they get Hassan Nesrallah, that's fine. But the other thing, Shep, here is that as Israel demonstrates it's superiority that, that UN resolution's going to move in Israel's direction, because those resolutions reflect the battlefield facts on the ground. So, the best way to get diplomatic progress, as well as the best way for Israel's military process is the rapid movement to the Litani and effective military operations on the ground.
