General Wesley Clark in Douglas County, Nevada

January 27, 2007
Transcription by Melange

Introduction (joined in progress): General Wesley Clark who was born in Chicago and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. He distinguished himself early as an athlete and as a scholar, graduating first in his class from West Point. After that he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University where he earned a Master’s Degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. During 34 years of service in the United States Army, Wesley Clark rose to the rank of 4-star general as NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. It’s really impressive, isn’t it? In his final military command, General Clark commanded Operation Allied Force, NATO’s first major combat action, which saved 1.5 million Albanians from ethnic cleansing in Kosovo without the loss of a single American life and he’s responsible for peace-keeping in Bosnia.

After his retirement in 2000, he became an investment banker, author, commentator and businessman. In September 2003, he answered the call to stand as a Democratic candidate for the President of the United States where his campaign won the state of Oklahoma and launched him to national prominence before he returned to the private sector in February of 2004. He’s the author of the best-selling book Waging Modern War and more recently, Winning Modern War: Iraq, Terrorism and the American Empire. In the fall of 2006, General Clark was brought on as a Senior Fellow at UCLA’s Burkle Center for International Affairs. He currently serves in leadership roles within a number of non-profit public service organizations – way too many to enumerate, including the Center for Strategic and International Studies, um the Center for American Progress and the National Endowment for Democracy.

General Clark’s awards and honors are far too many to list, but they include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Distinguished Service awards from the US Army, the State Department and the Defense Department, the Silver star, the Bronze star, the Purple Heart and honorary knighthoods from the British and Dutch governments. We’re proud to have General Wesley Clark with us here tonight, a potential presidential candidate and you’re about to hear from him. Please join me in a warm welcome for General Clark.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. It is great to see you here. I am so happy to be in Nevada. I’ve had the best times coming back here. I always wanted to be assigned to Nevada, but you know I was an Army guy and all you had were Navy and Air Force so the best I could do was take my helicopter and fly from Fort Irwin, California across those mountains and land and Las Vegas. And I have to tell you, we did spend a lot of money at the Flamenco But it’s great to be here with you all. You’ve got to be very proud to be in Nevada now. The American West is the future of the country and it’s the future of the Democratic party. And in 2008, the American West will put a Democrat in the White House.

Jill Derby, it’s great to be here with you. You did run a great campaign. I was so impressed the first time I met you. I heard you speak. You were so eloquent, you had such a command of the issues. You were so poised. You had such a great leadership record. We’ve got to keep you in the public light and get you into public office. And I want to, of course, recognize all the state officers who are here and state leaders, but especially the county chair, the co-chairs, Bud Orange and Michael and Cindy Trigg. Cindy came down to Little Rock last summer and brought her dad and was there for the City Year banquet recognizing my wife and Cindy, thank you very much for all that you’ve done for the Clark family and your support has meant a great deal to me. Thank you.

You’re doing a great job

Now I want to recognize my friend Bill Richardson, the great governor of the state of New Mexico.

I’ve known Bill when he was Secretary of Energy, Ambassador to the United Nations and Governor. Bill, thank you for all that you’ve done for the country and thanks also personally for being my friend.

I remember our lunch when you talked to me in Belgium 10 years ago. We had a really nice chat. Your hospitality when I came through your state when I was running, your encouragement the day I sat with you when I had no voice at all.

You’re a great American, you’re a great friend and you’re going to be a great candidate and I’m very glad you’re in this race because American needs your voice out there, Bill.

My name’s Wes Clark. I’m an American soldier and I’m fighting for America.

I grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, I went to West Point at the age of 17 because I wanted to serve my country. I fought in Vietnam. I came home on a stretcher. When others gave up, I stayed with our country and I stayed with our military. Along the way, I helped train the Army for battle. I helped write America’s National Security Strategy in the 1990s. I helped prevent a war in Korea. I helped end a war in Bosnia and I was the NATO commander and we won a war in Europe to stop ethnic cleansing and we won it without the loss of a single American service member in combat.

I’ve spent my life in leadership – whether it’s been troops in battle, communities working elementary school curricula and hospital admissions policies, businesses struggling in an uncertain economic environment or nations at war. I’ve been married for 40 years to the same woman. We’ve got a son and a daughter-in-law and two wonderful grandsons and I love them dearly. I’m a veteran. I’m a veteran and I’m proud of it and I want to ask every veteran here tonight to stand up and be recognized and thanked by the people of this great county and the Democratic party. Stand up veterans.

Look at that! Thank you. Thank you.

And I want to recognize a special veteran back there – Charlie Brown. Would you stand up please?

Charlie Brown. You may not know Charlie Brown like I do, but he’s a veteran, he’s 26 years in the United States Air Force – Air Force Academy graduate. He ran for Congress in a very Republican district in California, against a very…bad Congressman and he nearly won. He completely changed the tables. He’s California’s Jill Derby and he’s here tonight with his wife Jan. Thank you for your service Charlie and Jan.

I ran for president in 2003 and I’m proud to have done it. I had 70,000 people on the internet who demanded that I present myself and I turned to my wife and I said, ‘honey, I think I’m being drafted’ and she said ‘no, you aren’t.’ She said ‘it’s not a draft until party leaders call you.’ So the next day, Charlie Rangel called and then President Carter called and then my friend Sandy Berger, former National Security Advisor called and it went on like that…Congressmen and Senators and finally I did come in. I came in because our country was bogged down in a war we didn’t need to fight.

I came in because the people’s vote in the election of 2000 had been compromised and denied.

I came in because both our liberties and our economic security were being endangered by the most destructive and short-sighted administration in American history.

Later I campaigned across America for John Kerry in 2004, landing many times…I was in Elko, Nevada where I was told it was dangerous to go grocery shopping if you were a Democrat I explained that I had 20 guns at home and they asked me ‘but do you have any here?’ I worked really hard in 2006 in the 2006 campaign for Harry Reid and for Nancy Pelosi because we knew we had to get that congress back. I think we were in 26 states, 80 some odd candidates across the country. We raised a lot of money and it was a great privilege and I told Jill Derby there’s just nothing more wonderful than going out and seeing people like Jill and Charlie Brown put their heart and soul into this country because they believed in it, because they loved it, because they knew it was headed in the wrong direction and because they wanted to help Americans make the right decision. And I do believe in Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy.

We have to be strong everywhere and we will be.

The trouble is, the job’s not done. I’m here tonight because our nation is at war and we are in danger. I’m here tonight because our nation needs a new vision and new leadership. My friends, there has never been a time in American history when our nation has been so dependent on events and forces and actions taking place beyond America’s borders. It’s our troops in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s an undeclared war that’s heating up with Iran. It’s the war on terror and Osama bin Laden who’s not loose and proliferating his dangerous ideas around the world. It’s nuclear proliferation with North Korea and Iran. But we face other dangers across this nation’s future too, and across our borders. Our Fair to recognize that our dependence on foreign oil is a matter of national security, not just national wealth.

We face an inflow of people whose identities we often don’t know and an outflow of jobs that people near and dear to us need and value. And we face catastrophic climate change that knows no border but does know solutions – solutions this president and his party have chosen to ignore for six long years.

You see, we’re actually engaged in two wars. One war is the physical force, the war of soldiers, the war…the intelligence agencies. The war of secret operations around the world, the war that is designed to physically protect America. But while we’re engaged in that, we’re in another struggle – a struggle with even greater potential consequences for us. It’s the struggle for global competitiveness in a world that’s ever-shrinking in size and ever-growing with competitors - technologically savvy, ambitious and aggressive, to take up where America has left off. And so at this time when we’re engaged in these two struggles, I want to assure you and I want to ask you please…no political party can make a claim for leadership unless it addresses the full range of issues confronting this nation. We Democrats have to be as strong on national security as we are on education and healthcare and social justice and jobs.

We’re going to face a big decision in 2008. And I want to say this. At this time in our nation’s history, I don’t believe that any candidate should aspire to national office without personal experience in working the issues beyond America’s borders.

It’s not a matter of who can talk the talk, it’s a matter of who’s walked the walk.

Look, I don’t have to take a lot of your time telling you what’s wrong with the country’s leadership today. You see it everywhere you turn. You see it in the rep…the latest reports of casualties in Iraq. You see it in the reports of the decline of American industry. You heard it in the State of the Union with the President’s outrageous healthcare proposal which would punish us into hospitals and increase funding for the health insurance industry. You see it in the weekly reports of public opinion polls overseas that show that many consider our President a greater threat to world peace than Osama bin Laden.

So I’m not going to titillate you any longer with a long list of examples of how inadequate, how incompetent, how unjust, how corrupt, how heartless, how cruel and hypocritical this administration has been. You know it. And you know what – the American people agree with us. That’s why the Democratic Party is in control in both houses of Congress today.

And that’s why John McCain and Rudy Guiliani and Newt Gingrich and Sam Brownback and all of the rest of them are not going to be in office after 2008.

My friends, I don’t…let’s not wait until 2008, okay? Let’s start with this, let’s say no to George Bush’s and John McCain’s proposals to send another 22,000 troops to Iraq.

No more troops – not one. You cannot quench the fires of political strife and civil war in Iraq with the blood of American soldiers. We won’t permit it. We don’t need more American sacrifice in Iraq. What we need is more American strategy. If we want to honor the men and women in uniform, then we don’t need to send reinforcements. We need to send them a strategy that’s worthy of their dedication and service and will indeed enable them to succeed. A strategy, not a sacrifice is what we need in America.

In short, what we need to do is restore America’s legitimacy in Iraq, in the Middle East and in the world. And to do it, we need a 3-part effort. First of all, we need to articulate some pretty clear principles so people understand what we as Americans stand for. Principles like ‘we seek no permanent bases in Iraq and we will be leaving.’ Principles like ‘we respect the legitimate security needs of each and every nation in the region and we expect that each and every nation in the region will respect the borders and security needs of their neighbors.’ ‘We support international law – we’ll hold our own forces to it and we expect the states in the region to hold their forces to it.’ ‘We believe that common problems can best be addressed through dialogue and with mutual respect.’ How ‘bout that for an American statement of principles?

And then I think we need to come down off our high horse and actually talk to the governments in the region – every one of them, even the ones we don’t agree with.

My friends, how can it be that during the Cold War where there were 6,000 missiles with warheads pointed at the United States, when we led with the threat of nuclear…when, in 1959 Soviet Premier Kruschev came to America, went to a farm in Iowa and threatened us with destruction. He said ‘we will bury you.’ We still had an embassy in Moscow. We were still talking to the Russians – even the Republicans’ favorite president, who called the Soviet Union ‘an evil empire,’ met with Soviet premier Gorbachev in Iceland. Why is it that this administration won’t meet and talk with our adversaries in the region? It’s wrong. We need to change that policy.

And then we need to put all of our power – all of our power, our economic influence, the power of international law, our diplomatic strength into tackling the inter-related problems in the region: Israel and the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria and the border with Israel, Iran’s quest for regional hegemony and nuclear proliferation threat, the problems in Afghanistan and the support for the opium poppy there and the terrorist sanctuary over the border in Pakistan. These are not isolatable and they’re not isolated. They need to be tackled in an integrated fashion, based on a sound statement of principles. We can do this. It won’t be easy but we need a new strategy to win the fighting war that America is engaged in.

I hear a lot of Republican talk about ‘the long war’ and I know they’re supposed to…they’re trying to scare Americans into supporting it. You know, it’s a war, got to have strong Republicans in there and so forth, but you know, our greatest challenge is not the long war.

Our greatest challenge is the long peace. It’s not the threat that others might attack us, it’s that others are emulating us. They’re competing with us for jobs and technology and the global competition and we must tackle the emergence of China. China, four times the size of America in population. The economy is growing 10% a year, world’s largest steel producer, fastest growing consumer market. Thirty five percent more cars on the road in China this year than last year. New universities. New technologies. New confidence. China, for 3000 years the center of human civilization – paper, gunpowder, the compass, navigation – all invented in China, the middle kingdom now striving to regain what it views as its rightful place as the center of the world. China, it’s a nation yet to embrace the values of freedom and democracy, but it is poised to become an economic Goliath. Now I’m not advocating conflict with China – just the opposite. We must disengage from unnecessary war in the Middle East and face the real challenge of global economic competition.

It’s a question of how do we keep our American values alive and the promise of the American dream for our children and grandchildren. I suggest that we know how to do this. We know how to begin – you know what we stand for and you know what must be done because it starts right here in America. It starts with education – yes, preschool education for every child in America and an end to the unfunded mandate of No Child Left Behind.

We want a system of education that’s centered around respect for our teachers, love for our children and the active engagement of our parents. We ran that system in the military schools that I supervised. We put it in; we worked it; we changed school boards; we changed parental-teacher counseling; we built that system – I know it works and it’ll change America when we put it in there and really mean it. No child should be denied college because they can’t afford to pay and we shouldn’t be And we shouldn’t be bankrupting middle class parents who want to give their kids the best education they can by giving tax breaks for caviar but not for college.

We need real help for struggling families using all the tools and resources of America - not just government but business and houses of faith. We’ve got to help lead these families up from poverty and into modern America. We need guaranteed access to modern healthcare and increased access to the kinds of diagnostics and preventative care we need for long and productive lives. We need to move towards evidence-based medicine. We need to be moving toward a single-payer system for healthcare. We need to energize the business environment with greater help for small businesses – tax incentives for companies that treat their workers fairly, a multi-billion dollar investment in alternative energy sources which are the best protection we can get from the ever-shifting sands of the Middle East. And we need increased emphasis on R&D in the life sciences, new materials and transportation technologies. We’ve got to put America back in front again in business and technology. And we need an enhanced role for unions in American life.

Our union movement suffered and unnecessarily so, but in the 21st century, unions have to be about more than collective bargaining. They’ve got to have an active role in promoting the continuing development, progressive training and education and growth of the workforce. It’s about adult education. It’s about moving people up through the ranks. It’s about helping every adult American recognize and grow to his full, or her full potential. That’s what

We need to do outreach to our neighbors, to welcome and work with all those who share our values and to strengthen the bonds of commerce and shared values which will preserve the peace in our own hemisphere. In America, we need revitalized infrastructure – roads, railways, ports, airways, broadband, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, ever-expanding communications and access to each other and to the world. We need a renewed commitment to our unique American values – respect for each other, fair and equal treatment before the law and equal opportunities for every man, woman and child in America.

You know I’m going to talk about a strong national security but I don’t mean just a strong military. I mean a recognition that the truly strong exercise their military strength only as a last resort because they can lead other nations with the greatness of their spirit, with their values and with the respect that comes from showing respect for others.

We can’t be a great nation by talking about sacrifice and acting with recklessness. We have to harness the talents of every American to serve his or her country in some way. We’ve got to protect our institutions and values as well as our ports and borders. We’ve got to reach out to help others and we’ve got to restore to America the respect, the admiration and the influence which has made us for so long the most favored of God’s nations.

If we but take these measures, we Americans need not live in fear. We need not send our sons and daughters abroad to die. We need not tremble at the growing strength of other economies or look for glory in the past. If we but take these measures, America will rise and respond. We’ll thrive and prosper. We’ll regain our unique place of prominence in global leadership. If we but take these measures, your children and your grandchildren will be forever thankful. They’ll look at you with awe and admiration. You changed the course. You ended an unnecessary war. You preserved our freedoms. You gave us our future. It’s up to us. The time is now – in this election. And now in this, our country, it’s our future. It takes – and all it takes, is every one of us. So let’s take our families, our children, our parents – let’s take them on a march together, into the broad sunlit uplands of America so that from sea to shining sea, we can truly let freedom ring.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you.