General Wesley Clark on Fox News

September 10, 2006
Transcript by Melange

David Asman: I spoke with former Supreme Allied Commander and Fox News contributor, General Wesley Clark and War Stories host Colonel Oliver North a little earlier today.
<cut to taped segment>

David Asman: General, Colonel - good to see you both. General, you know some are still questioning whether or not the United States is at war right now. Some people suggest that it may have been better handled as a police action. Are we at war?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I think 9/11 was an act of war against the United States and I think we did the right thing to go into Afghanistan and take out the Taliban and I wish we'd gotten Osama bin Laden in the process.

David Asman: Colonel?

Colonel Oliver North: Well I think the General's absolutely right. We are at war. This is a war we did not want, a war we did not provoke. They declared war on us on 9/11, five years ago tomorrow.

David Asman: Like Pearl Harbor.

Colonel Oliver North: Absolutely and certainly it was essential to go to Afghanistan. There is also no doubt it's essential we stay in Iraq.

David Asman: Now, before we get into Iraq and Afghanistan, the question of could the war have been prevented. I'll probably give it to you first, Colonel. Of course there's this ABC movie, a lot of other suggestions that people dropped the ball. But it wasn't only the Clinton administration. Some people say it goes as far back as the first Bush.


Colonel Oliver North: Well, I'll be the first to acknowledge that I was the US government's counterterrorism coordinator back in the '80s. We totally missed the explosive growth of radical Islam. We saw the groups like the Bader-Meinhof gang, the Red Army Faction, M-19, atta(?) all over the world but we weren't focused on this explosive expansion.

David Asman: because you were focused on the Cold War.

Colonel Oliver North: Exactly, and so radical Islam begins to explode in the late 1970s. By the 1980s, embassies are blown up, airplanes are being hijacked, Americans are being taken hostage and we finally begin to reorient ourselves toward that threat of terrorism. Did we do so adequately? I don't believe so. I think the General would agree.

David Asman: General, do you agree?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, we…you know we actually had a key role in building radical Islam. We used it against the Soviets in Afghanistan. We took Pakistani intelligence agencies and built them up, we brought Saudi money in, we brought recruits in. We made the strategic decision sometime back in the late 70s, early 80s as Ayatollah Khomeini came into Iran that radical Shias was a great threat to us and we built up radical Sunni Islam to combat the Soviets. After Afghanistan, we forgot about it. We just turned away from it and it ran wild. They ran the Soviets out of Afghanistan which was in our geostrategic interest. They pursued the Soviets back into the southern Soviet Union and they disbursed all over the world. So there was a major threat in the early 1990s that I don't think we recognized.
They declared war against us in 1998 and even then we were using what we thought were the appropriate means but they weren't adequate.

Colonel Oliver North: Further to that point, I'm not willing to accept the blame for America that we started this whole radical explosion of Islam whether it's Shia or Sunni. Clearly by the 1990s when the World Trade Center was attacked the first time and we had already seen thousands of Americans threatened and killed and wounded by Hezbollah… <crosstalk>

David Asman: Now General, of course you see this being played out right now in Iraq, to a lesser degree perhaps in Afghanistan but in Iraq as it's moving dangerously close to a civil war…some people saying it's already there. Is Iraq…you once said that Iraq is a sideshow in the war on terror, do you still believe that?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think that it was an unnecessary operation to go into Iraq. It certainly didn't advance our aims in the war on terror. What it did do is it opened up a new theater of combat in which the terrorists could get at American soldiers. The latest Pentagon statistics show that al Qaeda is a small part of what's going on in Iraq right now but it has been a training ground for terrorists that's very dangerous.

David Asman: Colonel?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: By the way, could I just add <crosstalk>

David Asman: Sure, go ahead

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I'm not saying that the United States created radical Sunni Islam.

David Asman: It's not our fault.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It's not our fault but we used it against the Soviets. We turned our back on the problem in 1988, 1989, sometime in that period and suddenly there was an explosion of it and now we've got to cope with the consequences.

David Asman: What about the sideshow idea that Iraq is a sideshow in the war on terror?

Colonel Oliver North: I respectfully disagree that it's a sideshow. I think it's…and most of the troops understand this. You and I know this, General. I've been over there seven times to Iraq, twice to Afghanistan. The troops would tell you I would rather be fighting them here in Iraq or Afghanistan than back on the streets of America and you and I both know that to the extent that this is an armed engagement, call it a war if you will, it's better to fight that war over there than it is back here.

David Asman: We've heard that, General, do you agree with that comment that we would be fighting her if it wasn't for actions over there?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think it's very important to do everything we can abroad to keep the threat there. On the other hand, when you say…look, I'm all in favor of the troops - they're doing a great job, but when you say they'd rather fight “them” there, most of the people that we're fighting in Iraq are not terrorists who were associated or are going to be associated with Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda.

Colonel Oliver North: I would also say that what we're now seeing is less of an insurgency and more of an effort to split what's going on in Iraq from becoming a successful democracy. And Prime Minister al-Maliki said just this week, we are not at a civil war, we are not going to have a civil war but we need Americans to stay long enough to make sure that our security forces are adequate to ensure that this democracy works and I think he's right.

David Asman: We've got to go, gentlemen but I've got to ask you both. You were both extraordinary patriots. You were highly decorated military men, you've had very distinguished careers in the military, putting your life on the line constantly, almost daily for this. New York City, the site of the most number of people killed in the 9/11 attacks, didn't used to be a flag-waving town. It was too sophisticated for flag-waving but after 9/11, everybody seemed to have a flag and that spirit of patriotism seems to have stuck here in New York and throughout the country. Is that heartening to both of you? First you, General.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.

Colonel Oliver North: You know, I also see David that this, and General you've seen it as well. You know, it's not just that everybody was a New Yorker, it's that everyone in this country now felt like Americans. This is a country that breeds heroes and we pulled together in ways that quite frankly I had not seen in my adult lifetime and I think it's here to stay.

David Asman: Well it's an honor to be sitting in the presence of two heroes, General Wesley Clark, Colonel Oliver North, thank you gentlemen.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.