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General Wes Clark on The Mike Malloy Show with Jon Elliot
September 8, 2006
transcript by Melange
Jon Elliot: Welcome back. It’s Friday night. Air America Radio, Jon Elliot guest hosting. I wanted to get an opportunity to bring you the best possible guests I possibly can and I do. Wait ‘til you hear who I’ve got on 9/11 but until then, how’s this? General Wesley Clark is going to talk to you right now. This is a…I caught up with General Clark earlier today and this is what he had to say.
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Jon Elliot: Joining me now is the only person that I know that I believe is qualified to be President of the United States, Vice President of the United States and Secretary of Defense, the General Wesley Clark. General, how are you?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I’m just fine, Jon thank you.
Jon Elliot: Thanks so much for joining us today. We’re coming up on the cusp of 9/11. We’re still going…waging war in Iraq. When I started talking to you back in 2003 um, you told me not only what is happening now but you told me what would happen. And then we talked again in 2004 and then we talked again in 2005 and every time I’ve spoken to you tell me what’s going to happen and you’re absolutely dead on. Is it a sense of frustration when you see what’s happening on the battlefield and you have the ability to be so prescient?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I spent my life studying the armed forces and national security and diplomacy and I’ve seen it from the lowest levels to the highest level. I’ve negotiated peace agreements and I’ve led military campaign in war that succeeded and after you’ve seen it, you know it – just like a businessman understands the financial documentation on a company or a doctor can look at a colleague and tell you whether the guy’s doing the operation right or not. This is a matter of…it’s not politics. It’s professional expertise and I’ve been worried from the beginning. It’s why I became a Democrat in the first place, to run for office because this president is taking America down the wrong path.
Jon Elliot: He certainly is and he certainly doesn’t have a good supporting cast. Mostly it’s cronyism as we’ve seen in everybody from the Chertoff’s to the Michael Brown’s to the Joe Alba’s but when we talk about Iraq…and I want to cover a few topics with you today and one of them is Iraq…um, we talked a year or so ago and my question was why don’t they just secure the borders and you said you can’t secure the borders and you gave me all the reasons why and of course we found out that they can’t secure the borders. We are going into sectarian violence, now you have a great deal of experience – again, boots on the ground in sectarian violence when you were NATO military Supreme Commander in Bosnia. You saw the sectarian violence there. What is your take on what’s going on in Iraq right now and do you view it as a civil war or a civil war about to become a civil war?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, it doesn’t really matter. I mean, of course it’s a struggle, it’s a political struggle being carried on by military means - by murder, essentially and you have to treat it as a political struggle. That means you’ve got to sort of use…I call it a ‘hammer/anvil.’ You’ve got to take your military forces – they’ve got to be able to go after and suppress attack and take apart these militias. You’ve got to identify who runs them, you’ve got to go after their headquarters, you’ve got to take them down and then you’ve got to have dialogue with the people who are sponsoring them - including Iran, and you’ve got to tell them in no uncertain terms that they’ve got to play a different game. And as the dialogue takes hold and military action is effective, you’ll see the militias disappear. That’s our only real hope for success there. I’m not confident the administration has the vision or the courage to do it. I say they don’t have the courage because I think they’re holding back the military and keeping the military from doing more in preparation for the election because they’re afraid of casualties. I think they’re probably restraining our armed forces but also I think that they lack the courage and the vision to talk to people they disagree with, like the Iranians.
Jon Elliot: Yeah, it’s an egotistical thing. It looks like a lot of Texas testosterone going on when George Bush started his ‘Osama bin Laden wanted dead or alive,’ ‘you can run but you can’t hide,’ ‘we’ll get you’ and all that stuff. And I think that’s the same thing. He refused to have a dialogue with the North Koreans, he refused to have a dialogue with Iran and look what’s happened. I…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I’ll tell you who the real losers are – the American people.
Jon Elliot: Absolutely.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: We’re losing as a result of George W. Bush and his mistaken policies.
Jon Elliot: We are, and speaking of that, there was a report that was released that you had a significant amount to do with. It was released last week and it was on Bush’s national security failures. Um, you discussed the fact that we’re bogged down in Iraq, the military is stretched thin – if there was a crisis in the world right now that needed a swift military response, I believe we’re basically fighting with one hand tied behind our back – my phrase, not yours. Go on and expand a little on the failures of the Bush administration, if you wouldn’t mind, when it comes to the foreign policy.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think the first failure is that the American power in the world has always been not just because of our economy and not because of our military but because people basically could agree with us. We were selfless…we didn’t…we weren’t like the colonial powers, we weren’t looking to occupy countries overseas and exploit them. We were anti-colonial and we tried to be selfless and we brought people into our shores and we were proud of our values but we were interested and listened to people who had different views. This administration’s turned all that upside down. They’re not interested in other countries. They’re interested…they’ve given the impression that they’re only interested in themselves and they’re…aggressive, they’re talking about invading countries that haven’t declared war or started a war. It’s kind of unprecedented in American history…
Jon Elliot: well, if you can…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: …to have taken these kinds of actions. President Bush started a war with Iraq that we didn’t have to have. Iraq was not a major threat to the United States.
Jon Elliot: No. I think they started off…when you look at the Bush presidency as isolationists and the Kyoto Accord is a flippant example, they just circled the wagons, didn’t care what was going on in the world and then they’ve turned that isolationism after 9/11 into an imperialistic power. Now they’re looking to conquer and this 1% solution that Ron Suskind wrote about was basically Dick Cheney saying if there’s a 1% chance that a foreign country has a weapon of mass destruction, we have the right to preemptively strike it.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: That’s absolutely nutty.
Jon Elliot: Isn’t it?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It is nutty and you know, the thing about it is in 1951, ‘52, ’53, there was a lot of discussion in the United States about striking Russia preemptively. People thought we’ve got the H-bomb, they’ve only got an A-bomb, we could wipe them off, this is our time. Eisenhower was president – he knew better. He knew as a military leader…
Jon Elliot: A military man…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: He knew you don’t start a war if you don’t have to. You don’t do it.
Jon Elliot: You said something to me a couple of years ago, in fact it was 2003 when the war was just starting and I mentioned that there was a human outcry about not wanting to go to war from the military folks and that the politicians, the neocons, the ones that had actually not enlisted were all in favor of it. And you said do you notice the only one was opposed to it in the beginning was Colin Powell and the reason, Jon, is because he’s the only one with military experience. We know what war is like, those of us that have been in battle and have seen war. War is the last resort – that’s what makes us a strong military.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Exactly. And you know, the generals and the admirals they’re the last ones to want to go to war – they know what it does. This war, for example, is wrecking the United States Armed Forces – the Army and the Marine Corps. We’re losing equipment, we’re wearing things out at 5 or 6 times the normal rate, there’s no money budgeted to repair the equipment and worse than that, we’re using up our people. I say ‘using them up’ because it’s terrible we’ve lost 2,600 service members over there but even the ones who aren’t the casualties, who haven’t taken the wounds have come home to damaged, broken relationships, shattered families, anger, frustration. It’s…we’re tearing down what we’ve built up.
Jon Elliot: And no relief in sight from the administration. They seem to be disposable. And this as a military man must make you nuts. I have not had a military background, but as a guy from 30,000 feet, I’m looking down and saying hey, they’re sending home those are dead, they won’t allow them to be honored, they won’t allow flag-draped coffins to give them the right honor. They won’t allow the families to go to Andrews [Air Force Base] to see them when they arrive and pick them up. They have been known to ship them in the cargo hold as oversized baggage you can pick them up next to the golf clubs. I mean it’s just disgusting and the way they treat the veterans once they return for any ailments. Um, they only seem to want to use these people in the military as tools to further their own particular cock-eyed gains.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I’ll tell you what’s even worse. They think the major reason why we might not win is because of the American people.
Jon Elliot:
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: They think if we knew what was really happening we wouldn’t support them. They don’t understand that if they had a winning strategy, we would support them. The American people are willing, as John Kennedy said ‘to pay any price and bear any burden,’ if it makes sense. What they’re…what our people are beginning to realize and what the administration is trying to hide is that its policies in Iraq don’t make sense. Iraq’s not part of the war on terror. The war on terror has been exacerbated by the invasion of Iraq. There are more members of al Qaeda today than there were 5 years ago. The intensity of the attacks, the numbers of attacks around the world have progressively gone up. And so I’m proud of the men and women in the FBI and the CIA and law enforcement in the United States. I think they’re working together more effectively than they’ve ever been but this administration has failed in its duties to keep America safe.
Jon Elliot: In your opinion…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: 9/11 happened on George Bush’s watch.
Jon Elliot: Yes, it did. Regardless of what ABC wants to tell us…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Never forget that. 9/11 could have been prevented in any number of ways but that president never even had a meeting of his chief cabinet officers and the National Security Council to discuss the threat of Osama bin Laden despite the warnings. To me, that’s dereliction of duty.
Jon Elliot: Yeah, and I mentioned on this program last night that the Hart-Rudman report which was a bipartisan report from Senator Gary Hart and Senator Warren Rudman that came out and said in February of 2001 and in the executive summary it said Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, planes, bombs, all of these hints and we have to be on the look-out and start to take some preventative measures right now and yet you have Condoleeza Rice after the event saying ‘who could have ever thought they could use planes as bombs’ which means either she was lying, she didn’t read what she should have read as National Security Advisor, or Hadley didn’t read it as her assistant and it’s just an appalling abandonment of the society that we love as Americans and the need to protect America and keep us safe. Don’t you think?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I do. This administration has let down the American people. And all the flag waving, all the sloganeering and all the sneering at Democrats by the Republican party, it’s not going to keep the American people from recognizing the truth.
Jon Elliot: No, and…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: One thing I believe in is the common sense of the American people.
Jon Elliot: I do too…and the goodness of the American people. And the decision of the American people that they have the ability to make the right decision, the good decision and the honest decision.
Last question before I let you go. We’re on the cusp of 9/11…it happens on Monday, it’s the 5th anniversary. In your opinion, are we safer today than we were before 9/11 on September the 10th, 2001 or are we in far more jeopardy today?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think we’re losing the war on terror under George Bush so I can’t say that we’re safer today. I think we’re in more jeopardy as a result of the invasion of Iraq and the distraction and the counterproductive effect that’s had on the war on terror.
Jon Elliot: General Wesley Clark, I always enjoy talking to you sir. I really appreciate your time. Thanks so much for visiting with Jon Elliot on Air America Radio.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.
