May 16, 2007 We encourage you to listen to the speech.

General Wesley Clark - Legitimacy: First Task for American Security

Hosted by: Center for Politics and Foreign Relations, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), The Johns Hopkins University

May 16, 2007
transcript by Reg NYC and Melange

(Introduction by Robert Guttman, Director of the Center for Politics and Foreign Relations (JHU- SAIS)

Thank you. Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to be here. Bob, thanks for the kind introduction. As I look around, I see a lot of friends and a lot of people who were with me at various times in my military activities, people I- whose paths I've crossed in business life and people that- who- that I've worked with in politics. I'm very proud of the fact that the 70,000 people on the internet convinced me and my family that I should run for President in 2003, and I'm very glad that I did that. It was a great experience, and, and I meant every word of the speeches I gave on the campaign. And as Bob said, I still have a political action committee. I have a website, and you can come and see those positions if you go to my website. It's called securingamerica.com .

But today I'm not here for that purpose. Today I'm here on a very serious and sober topic. I want to talk about restoring legitimacy as the first order of business for a new American strategy.

I was in Europe when, a few days ago, Vice President Cheney visited the Gulf. He traveled around. He reminded Iran and others in the Gulf that we have two aircraft carrier battle groups out there. Two! It was a stark reminder of military power. There's no other nation that has two aircraft carrier battle groups. It's about sea control - more than a hundred strike aircraft, dozens and dozens of cruise missiles, hundreds of precision GPS-guided bombs, 500,000 2000 pounds, coupled with overhead imagery and stealth land-based aircraft and conventionally armed ballistic missiles perhaps launched from the United States itself. I hope the leaders in Iran understood that their air defenses, their military, their military supporting infrastructure, their civilian infrastructure that supports the military, their scientific military related activities - all of that is at risk.

This is serious military power potential. I know about it because I've used it. As NATO Commander, we used every one of those assets, except for the US-based missiles, against Serbia in 1999, and I'm well aware of what they can do. But I'm also aware of their limitations, as is the rest of the world today.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban is resurgent. In the tragic American saga of Iraq, American battle losses are painful and there's no end in sight. The strength, the malignancy of Al Qaeda and its affiliates, supporters, sympathizers around the world has only grown. All this despite the awesome power of the two aircraft carrier battle groups and the rest of America's Armed forces. Because this is the truth that military power is only one element in the complex array of factors that influences the behavior of other nations and states and other people. Military power may not always be the most significant factor, and when military power is threatened or employed, it might even be at times counterproductive.

Of course, human history is replete with examples of military conquest. You just call out the troops and roll over the opposition, and certainly that's true in the Middle East itself where armies and empires have marched and counter-marched for thousands of years. They've crossed continents, changed dynasties, implanted civilizations, besieged cities, in some cases stacked skulls, wiped out sizable populations.

We have nuclear weapons. Today, the widespread destruction of, of, of human populations is certainly a possibility, even without armies marching back and forth. But for the United States of America, if we aim to succeed in the world today, it won't be by wiping out populations. It'll be by changing people's minds and changing governments' policies. We've got to do a lot less threatening and a lot more listening and reasoning and rethinking.

I know there's a few thousand or maybe a few tens of thousands of people out there who are impervious to logic, reason and any moral communication, but there are hundreds of millions, billions out there who watch the United States. They observe our actions in the world. They hear our rhetoric. They're not committed enemies, but they're not necessarily our friends yet. And if we want to succeed in the world, we've got to win over these people, at least to the legitimacy of our aims and purposes.

Right now, we've lost a crucial underpinning of America's safety, security and ultimate well being. It's what, for a century, has enabled America's power to be perceived as benign. It's enabled America's purposes to be perceived as noble. It's enabled America's allies to rally to just causes. It's enabled America's adversaries to be shoved into the corner and condemned as erroneous and morally wrong. It's what enabled Americans to travel abroad and conduct business with personal safety and be received with respect. It's enabled America's Armed Forces to be welcomed in foreign lands. In America's conduct abroad, others saw a reflection of what we enshrined in our own Constitution and in our system of government as our values - fairness, tolerance, decency, justice, mutual respect, personal opportunity. It's brought hundreds of thousands of youngsters to our shores to study and millions to seek to live. And it's been the secret of America's power and influence.

It is our legitimacy as a nation.

Even in the case of the campaign that I led against Slobodan Milosevic in 1999, and we flew 36,000 air sorties, dropped 23,000 bombs and missiles, began planning for a ground invasion of Kosova that would have seized this area of Serbia with the help of the majority Kosovar Albanian population. We'd have used 200,000 troops to do it. That wasn't what actually brought Milosevic's surrender. Rather, it was the legitimacy of our purposes and aims, the fact that other nations rallied to us, the fact that the cause was in fact just, the fact the Milosevic was in fact wrong, and ultimately he was condemned, indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia. And it was the legitimacy of the effort that brought it to a successful conclusion.

How do we get this legitimacy? Where does it come from?

I think it comes from the heart of American institutions themselves. I think it's because we formed our institutions with the consent of the governed. We are guided by an adherence to our Bill of Rights, and at least in the last century, we've viewed our conception of mankind and our rights as universal truths. We've had them embedded in documents starting with the UN Charter and Declaration of Human Rights around the world. We've advocated the enlargement of these rights to all of mankind. And in many ways, not without exception, but largely we've acted consistently with these principles, and in so doing, we earned the goodwill, the good opinion - legitimacy - in the eyes of mankind.

Today, the evidence shows we've lost much of this. I don't have to site the poll after poll after poll over the last five years. You see them - the Pew polls, the BBC polls, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs polls. They show that, here's one in- published in March, "The United States is viewed more as negative than in positive in world Affairs" - 51 percent of the people. In 27- 28,000 people in 27 countries view the United States as a more negative than positive force in world affairs. We're ranked lower than North Korea. Ten out of fifteen countries in a Chicago Council of Global Affairs poll show that the most common view is the United States cannot be trusted to act responsibly in world affairs.

Which countries didn't feel that way about us? Well, we didn't feel that way about ourselves. We trusted ourselves along with Australia. They trusted us. Israel trusted us. The Philippines trusted us. But most of the others didn't trust us. Six successive Pew polls show declining approval of actions of the United States, and of course, I mean, anybody who's looked at polling knows that it's always flawed. So, we're looking at trends, not specifics, but the trends are indeed disturbing. And when even close friends and supporters of the United States like King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia brands our mission in Iraq as an illegitimate occupation, Americans should listen and take heed.

Now, some among us have been outraged by this response. They cite the terrible attacks on America of 9/11, our response, what we've given, what we've paid, the losses, the hundreds of billions of dollars, the diversion of efforts, our lofty aims, and they ask, 'Where is the gratitude for what America has done that others could not do?' I've asked those questions too, and I've asked them to people in the region.

But the truth is that anger at other's opinions is not an adequate response. We must somehow regain legitimacy of purpose and method which provide the bedrock for our successful foreign policy and successful strategy and for winning the war on terror. And to do that, we must understand what's gone wrong. It's not enough to say, 'We're into Iraq now. Let's figure out what to do and how to get out of it or how to move ahead.' We've got to understand what happened.

I believe that there are times when force has to be used, and when we attacked the Taliban regime in the fall of 2001, the world, such as it is, was with us. The Taliban, through their inhumane punishment, savage cruelty, their mean discrimination, they'd already lost support. They'd lost legitimacy in the eyes of world opinion. And then, their support for the wanton terror of 9/11 brought universal condemnation. American action was swift, economic in terms of human and material destruction, and effective. But the invasion of Iraq was another matter altogether.

How did we lose legitimacy?

First of all, we distorted, overplayed, exaggerated the threat. This was not a defensive war. It was an elective war. America chose to go to war when any reasonable look at the intelligence, even at the time, would've said, 'This is not a necessary war.' Then in our haste to go to war, we didn't even go to war as a last resort. We pushed it. We didn't allow time for the completion of the inspections. We didn't ask for and demand a second UN Security Council resolution. We pushed it. We had a timeline in mind.

When we went to war, we used a terrible terminology for this. "Shock and Awe," coupled by a statement by an American General that "we don't count Iraqi casualties" - what, they're not people? They don't count? The thin veneer of the UN resolution that we had may have provided an element of legality, but it did not provide legitimacy.

After we reached Baghdad, we failed to take due care to protect noncombatants and property. As the insurgency began, we didn't protect the civilian population. We pressured the civilian population. When we took detainees in and had them under our control. We apparently did some things that we should never have done, and when it came out at Abu Ghraib, instead of cutting to the quick of it and ending it, we dissimulated and dallied when urgent action to the very source of that unacceptable conduct was required.

We were unable to even follow through on the original purposes of the operation except insofar as removing Saddam Hussein from power. We lost all sense of proportion between ends and means, and even today we're engaged in a military surge that the administration would like to see an open ended commitment, which as actually a participation in an ongoing Iraqi civil conflict.

We violated virtually every principle of Just War doctrine. It's in Christian thought. It's in Islamic thought. And it's in the common sense of ordinary people all around the world, and we violated that.

We have a detainment facility in Guantanamo. We're apparently continuing the mistreatment and inhumane handling of detainees using some of the very techniques that we've condemned when others have used them as torture. Maybe that's the reason why the administration has insisted that other nations have to exempt our own Armed Forces from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

If you listen to that, isn't it obvious why our actions have been perceived as others- by others as unjust, lacking legitimacy?

I love the men and women in uniform. I admire the quality of the American Armed Forces. I respect the families who've given so much by putting their children in harm's way or their spouses in harm's way for our country. But you cannot see the invasion of Iraq as simply a botched execution. It's not enough to label it as a monumental strategic blunder. It's both of those, but neither is strong enough.

It has been a deep and near-fatal wound to America's legitimacy of aims and purposes in the world. It's undercut us in the Middle East and elsewhere. It's undercut trust in our intelligence system and what we say to persuade others to go along with us in the world. It's undercut the administration's complete national security doctrine, which was build around a concept of preventive war. It's undercut the ability of academicians, diplomats, businessmen elsewhere to cite America as an exceptional power, which acts not from self-interest, but from higher principles.

Now in Iraq, the impact's very clear. Resistance, armed resistance to the American presence has, has been legitimated. Attacks on Americans are being justified in the minds of people there. And increasingly that's the case in Afghanistan, but the impact is not limited to where U.S. forces are employed. The impact is much broader than this.

It impacts our ability to describe and condemn human rights violations in China. It impacts our ability to criticize the Soviet Union for shutting down non-governmental organizations in- sorry, to criticize Russia for shutting down non-governmental organizations inside Russia and pressuring other states of the former Soviet Union to do the same. It impacts our ability to marshall allies to our side in creating diplomatic incentives necessary to impact Iran's nuclear aims. And it certainly impacts us in our ability to win the war on terror.

When the United States prevailed in the Cold War, we prevailed not just because of Ronald Reagan and Star Wars and a military buildup that broke the back of the Soviet economy. We prevailed not just because Gorbechev lost heart and gave up on the Communist Party. We prevailed because over five decades, the appeals of human dignity, justice, individual freedoms exemplified and proven effective in the West proved to be eventually stronger than any degree of governmental repression. And now by our own actions, we seem to be turning away in world affairs from the very principles that won us success in the Cold War.

I know there's a realist critique of this position. I can hear them now. Many of them were my friends. They're defending our actions, 'Well, you know, international law, international opinion, I mean, what's really there?' And, 'We can't allow these sort of opinion polls to stand in the way of doing what we really need to do for America's security.' Or I hear it occasionally from questions from the audiences when I speak. They say, 'How are we going to get them to talk to us if we don't rough them up?' Or that famous statement that 'The Geneva Convention is an anachronism.'

But I've traveled around the world. I've talked to governments in Latin America and Eastern Europe and the Middle East. I've talked to the people who lived through repressive regimes. None of these realist critiques are unique. They're not original. They're old, tired, hackneyed excuses that other governments have trotted out time and again to serve their own purposes.

To be fair, the Bush administration wasn't the first to trim around the edges of U.S. compliance with the principles of international law and the requirements for legitimacy. you can look back over the Cold War and find our exceptions, but you can't take much pride in it. The coups that we fomented, the politicians we attempted to pay off, the efforts that we made in covert action, our occasional support of expediency over principles - most of them came to a bad end.

They don't justify the realist critique. They help condemn it. And in the light of history, they stand not out- they stand out not just as aberrations, but as mistakes. They're just of a lesser magnitude than the kind of mistake we made with the invasion of Iraq.

You can go back and trace these uneasy compromises we've made where we had to sacrifice our adherence to international law and international standards when it's suited our realist aims. You can trace it back. But by and large, in the court of public opinion, we got away with them in the Cold War. Our adversaries were much worse, and we were on the right side of the equation of history and human judgment in the most part.

By and large, we escaped with our reputation mostly intact, but this time, this time, we've gone too far.

The administration's approach is robbing every American of the legitimacy of aim and method which once made our nation the unquestionable leader of choice for mankind and which helped make every American safer and more secure.

So, how do we regain our legitimacy? How do we move beyond this critique of the past and move into something that's positive and constructive. And I want to underscore that it hurts me a lot personally, and I know a lot of people don't like to hear our country criticized. But I think if we don't listen to the criticisms that others have of us, we can't learn and get our own policies straight. And so, what I've given you is what many have said about us.

How do we regain our legitimacy?

Well, there are three elements here. First, we have to change some of what we're doing abroad. Second, we have to change some of our laws and policies at home. And third, we've got to make some inquiries and serve justice about past conduct.

Turn to the war in Iraq first. We've got to find a way out of a civil conflict that preserves and protects those in the region that have relied on and supported us, that minimized the prospects of a widened conflict in the aftermath and undercuts the possibility of a terrorist having- haven arising in parts of Iraq. That's going to require a broadened and sustained dialog with regions- with the region, with the nations in the region including those that we disagree with like Iran and Syria. It will also require a more effective dialog and interchange with the Iraqi political factions and the government itself. We're going to need a new policy that's committed to redeploying forces away from civil war and an eventual withdrawal from Iraq.

And because this administration has been so determined to pursue and open-ended commitment, I think it's inevitable that some kind of benchmarks and timelines have emerged as a political necessity, if for no other reason, to empower U.S. political dialog within Iraq and to sustain American public support for the hard work that remains ahead in the region.

But I want to underscore that I'm not calling for simply time and condition phased American pullout. I'm calling for a fundamental revision of the aims, methods and circumstances of the American effort in Iraq and within the region. And where we need to begin is with a dialog based on principles, principles that may, they may sound very familiar, but they're not reflective of current American leadership in the region. I'm talking about unconditional dialog, mutual respect for borders and national internal affairs of other states, peaceful resolution of disputes, noninterference in internal affairs, strict adherence to international law, the rights of people to chose their own leaders and their own form of government.

These are (chuckles) pretty basic principles. They started with a lot of people in the early part of the 20th century and an American president who cited these among many of his fourteen points. It's difficult to annunciate these principles as a basis for dialog and work within the Middle East, because every one of them is being violated. And trying to use them is going to be not a matter of annunciation, but a matter of arduous work that will take weeks and months and years. Yet a principles based approach is about the only approach on which we're going to resolve the issues in Iraq and the other vexing problems such as Iran's nuclear aims and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And at the same time, it's the only approach that's going to restore the legitimacy of our aims and purposes.

I don't mean to disparage the normal horse trading of diplomacy or the good work that's done by diplomats, but the troubles in this region, centered on Iraq, but involving the other interrelated crises, go far beyond the kind of arrangements that can be resolved by going into an- a leader or an ambassador and asking, 'What's it going to take for you boys to see things our way?' You can't buy people's opinions in this region by horse trading. You've got to set a new basis for relationships and problem solving.

Elsewhere, if you look at Guantanamo, what we need in Guantanamo is to take America's direct leadership back a step. I believe we should ask NATO, an international organization, respected, capable of providing security to take over the, the detention facility. We need to end any programs of secret detention that remain around the world, and I continue to hear very disturbing rumors about rough interrogations and extra-judicial actions. We've got to bring the campaign against international terrorists firmly within the bounds of international law.

There are a few thousand people out there that we can't reason with. We know that. but the way we win is to cut them off from the hundreds of thousands or millions of potential recruits who judge America by the legitimacy of our actions and who take their humiliation and anger and frustration and powerlessness and weigh it against America and find a cause that suits their personal psychological needs. We need to remove our actions as a justification for their allegiance to Al Qaeda.

Everywhere that U.S. force is applied, we've got to alter the calculus of the acceptable balance between military and civilian risks. We've worked really hard on force protection in the United States Armed Forces, and by and large, it's a good thing. Because everyone understands that when you commit forces abroad, if you start to lose your forces, then the clock starts to tick on your commitment. But if you're imposing civilian casualties, if you're abusing civilians that are detained, if you're using other rough methods in an effort to provide an additional measure of protection for your own forces, then you're not only undercutting the prospect that the mission can succeed, but you're undercutting the very legitimacy of the United States of America. We simply can't do that. We've got to rebalance the military versus civilian risks.

At home, the 2005-2006 legislation associated with detainees and military commissions, we've simply got to modify that legislation. We've never accepted kangaroo court justice in the United States. The very idea that we'll bring people up in front of a commission and tell them they're charged, but they can't see the evidence. They don't know why they're charged. They can't prepare a defense without knowing the specifications against them. That's not in keeping with our American principles.

This is not about whether or not to coddle terrorists. This is about how to restore legitimacy to America's aims and purposes in the world and how to succeed in the war against international terrorists. We have to understand that the object of the trial is not simply to come out with a verdict. It's to be transparent, to win support for the principles of Western and American jurisprudence. And our audience is not just our domestic public, it's millions and hundreds of millions of young people around the world who harbor that sense of humiliation and frustration and powerlessness and anger enough to consider joining Al Qaeda. They need to see the workings of real justice that really respects the dignity of human beings.

And finally, we're not going to restore the legitimacy we seek without a full inquiry into how we as Americans could've gone so wrong. How could it have happened? Why did it happen? And who must he held accountable for abusing the good name and authority of the United States of America. This includes not only addressing the administrations misuse of intelligence in the run up to the war in Iraq, but also into who and how we misled our Armed Forces and our intelligence agencies into believing that our international obligations under the Geneva Convention and the 1996 Treatment on the Prevention of Torture- Treaty of the Prevention of Torture weren't somehow legally binding or applicable.

Holding a few soldiers accountable in military trials is not enough. Their actions reflected a broadened tolerance for hither afore reprehensible acts of mistreatment all in violation of international law and the responsibility for which must be sought at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House itself.

I say this without partisanship and with a great deal of sadness. I love this country. generations of Americans have served and sacrificed in battle to preserve our freedoms, including our inviolable Bill of Rights. Torture, however you define it - and let's not quibble with the definitions - was never acceptable as a matter of policy. It was always something deeply abhorrent to our ideas of human dignity, and we sought and supported legal retribution against those who employed it elsewhere.

How can we as Americans hold others to high standards of conduct unless we hold our own leaders to the same high standards?

I don't happen to believe our efforts in Iraq are hopeless or that America's work in the region must inevitable end in failure, though absent a fundamental change in direction, that's where we're headed.

And I recognize we face real enemies with whom there's no possibility of compromise or rational discourse, enemies who'd reject our own values and our own standards and scruples. But the solution is not to behave as our enemies, but to put first things first, and that means acting to restore the legitimacy of America's purposes and aims as our first order of business. We must move to reestablish the goodwill and the opinion of mankind which Americans have taken almost as our birthright. Only then, only with such moves will the awesome power of our aircraft carriers, our Armed Forces and the American economy give us the safety and security that we Americans seek for ourselves and the rest of the world.

Thank you.

Questions and Answers

Robert Guttman: Thank you. The General has agreed to take questions hopefully for the next 20 minutes or so. We’ll start with the first question. I’ll ask one and then we’ll open it up to the audience.

Um, it was a very impressive speech and I just wondered what’s the best way to go forward with your plans? Do you…would you like to announce that you’re thinking about running for president? Is it in your mind for 2008? Have you rejected it or is it a possibility?

Guy Dinmore: Thank you very much General. It’s very nice to see you. I don’t know if you remember but I was actually the FT correspondent in Belgrade in those days in ’99…

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.

Guy Dinmore: …and occasionally we used to chat over the phone with the General in preparing for the bombardment and me in Belgrade also preparing.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Sorry to have interrupted your tea time a couple of times there.

Guy Dinmore: Um, this question of legitimacy is a very complicated subject and I’m going to ramble slightly, then I’m going to ask a very hard question at the end so wait for the punchline. But first of all on Milosevic, I remember there was actually no UN resolution when NATO started bombing Serbia. In that sense there was a lack of, you might call, international community legitimacy. I mean, it did follow later, but it was not there. Um, I think Milosevic is an interesting example. I mean Milosevic, like Saddam, eventually went on trial for war crimes and they were the losers. Um, you have enumerated a list of what a lot of people would count as crimes in this administration’s conduct of the Iraq war. You’ve accused them of deliberately, um, distorting intelligence, leading this country to war under false, um, premises, breaking international laws. You have called for justice. And there is one single act that this country could do which would actually restore its legitimacy, whatever that is exactly in the eyes of the international community. Quite simply, and I will get on to that in a moment…a few weeks ago, Dennis Kucinich was here and he spoke very eloquently. Um, he’s a man who is trying to impeach Dick Cheney but we all know that this is not really the American way, is it? The American way is that a president comes in, like Gerald Ford, and he pardons his predecessor. The American way, on the whole, as we will probably see with Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, is ask the man to quietly go and then give him a large sum of money. So, General, if you were the president, and you come to office, would you pardon Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush for their actions or would you put them on trial for war crimes? Thank you.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I could hardly stand the suspense as you went through the thing. And you have sort of approached it from different…let me just answer a question you didn’t ask first and then I’ll come to the question you did.

Guy Dinmore: No, no, no, no, no…

Barry Wood: Barry Wood, Voice of America. Unlike Guy, this will be an easy question.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Good.

Barry Wood: As a military person, after we’ve talked to Iran and Syria - you say we’re headed for disaster unless policy changes in Iraq, so we talk to those powers. You also said that you want to protect those who have stood with us. No one wants to be the parent or the soldier of the last to die in Iraq, in the American military.

How do we get out and accomplish those goals that you specify?

Esther Brimmer: Thank you General. Esther Brimmer from the Center for Transatlantic Relations here at SAIS. If I may ask you two questions.

The first one: in my course here at SAIS, we explore the political value of the International Criminal Court – do potential human rights abusers change their calculations with the existence of the ICC? So my first question is do you think a future administration should take the United States into the ICC?

And then the second is to draw on your experience as SACEUR and talk about what would be the first three things you would do to reestablish and deepen our relationship with our NATO allies? Thank you.

Ibrahim Nasser: Um, Ibrahim Nasser from West South America Afghan Service. I’m just taking you for one moment to Afghanistan. I’ve got two questions.

Uh, first question is: an increase in civilian casualties in Afghanistan and the protests we have seen against civilian casualties – do you think civilian casualties are just the unfortunate side of the war or it’s just there is something wrong with the strategy?

And my second question would be: what impact will the death of Mullah Dadullah have on the military situation in Afghanistan?

Thanks.

Robert Guttman Quick question before we go back.

The White House yesterday announced uh, a War Czar for Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you think we need a War Czar and what do you think of the person they ann…chose?

Edward Joseph: Thank you, Bob. Good morning General, nice to see you.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Morning.

Edward Joseph: Edward Joseph from here at SAIS. I served about a decade in the Balkans and know first-hand how much your leadership meant to that region.

And, um General, I appreciate very much with respect to your remarks about Iraq, I appreciate very much the fact that you say we need a retrospective look and I think that that is uh…refreshing, quite refreshing to hear that. Of course we still do have to look forward and you’ve alluded to and presented some of your own vision of how we move forward in that region and you mentioned the Dayton Agreement and that’s where I’d like to turn the discussion with respect to Iraq and mention that I’m co-author with Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings of the forthcoming proposal, a soft partition, a detailed proposal along the lines of Senator Biden, uh…what he has proposed.

And given your experience in the Balkans, extensive as it was, both Dayton and Kosovo, but especially in Bosnia, and you know very well General that when we went to Dayton it wasn’t open-ended as you said, there were principles, we had a clear vision of our own political settlement that…that we had in mind, and obviously there was extensive negotiations.

What do you think about the idea of a Bosnia-style, acknowledging as we do the many differences between Bosnia and Iraq and there are many, but that kind of approach which is fundamentally different from the course that we’re on now? And if I could just…you mentioned Russia and of course your long-standing experience in the Balkans, if you might say a word about Kosovo and current Russian tactics to obstruct that.

Questioner: Colonel Foreign Policy Association and President of Indian Veteran Officers’ Association here.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Very nice to see you.

Questioner: General, excellent articulation and I cannot help make remarking being the vets we speak the same legitimate and uniform language of uniform. The question is that after, as you said, we came out of the Cold War successfully, the Cold War entailed fighting between the two enemies and that was the…there was no religion and politics on both sides, but now you are faced with a hot war, coming out of the midst of the Cold War, you’re faced with a hot war with a violent, fundamentalist terrorist who have got religion in every aspect of their life, very essential ingredient.

How do you articulate the necessity of change in doctrine – political doctrine – diplomatic doctrine, as well as the military doctrines?

Liz Garner: I’m Liz Garner, I’m with the Hopkins Government Program and I have probably the most basic question you’re going to get other than whether or not you’re running in ’08.

Um, would you see yourself potentially running as a vice presidential candidate on a ticket in ’08?

Robert Guttman: A couple, maybe one or two more questions then we’re going to…if you wouldn’t mind…

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yeah.

Robert Guttman: We’d ask if some of the graduating seniors could have their picture taken with you.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: That’d be great. Sure.

Lawrence Kaplan: Lawrence Kaplan. First of all, I could be mistaken, but I think we stole “war czar” from the Russians, so I guess there was something worth stealing from the Russians after all.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:: The war czar was Stalin, by the way.

Lawrence Kaplan: The war czar was Stalin, well see, there you go. So we’re stealing from Stalin?

Anyway my question is sort of a tangential follow-up to that is how about you and General Powell, centrist, bi-partisan, common sense, third-party run and explain to me after listening to you today what the hell happened in ’04, is the country more ready for a common sense centrist Democratic candidate than I guess we were four years ago?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, you know, I…it’s interesting.

I mean, what I get from your question is first, I mean I appreciate that you had a positive response to me this morning and I mean, that makes me feel good because I’m conveying these ideas. But I’d like to see each person here go to a political debate and challenge the candidate when they’re giving their stump speech to come to grips with what the real issues are.

Stop talking about tactics. Stop talking about troop levels. That’s not the appropriate subject to be discussed. It’s wrong. It’s a political shorthand.

It’s like…it’s like what I witnessed in the Republican debate – what’s your stand on abortion. It’s a litmus test – ‘ah, you’re in favor of a troop pullout? Okay, that puts you over here. You’re in favor of an immediate troop pullout, that puts you further over here. You’re in favor of quibbling. Uh, you’re not sure when the troops are going to pullout, okay you’re here.’ It’s a political shorthand.

Who’s it good for? Who’s it good for? It’s not good for America. It doesn’t advance public understanding of the issues. It doesn’t make it easier for our government’s leaders to craft the right policy or our elected representatives to support it. It doesn’t help the people who are the occasional tuners-in to news shows and political commentary to understand what the issues are that we’re facing in Iraq.

So, if you believed in what I said and you liked what I said and you thought there should be a third party candidacy, how about going out and asking the people in the other two parties who’ve already announced to have a real dialogue on what’s really of significance here, not troops and tactics but strategies and policies and America’s role in the world.

Robert Guttman: Thank you. And finally the graduating students, if you want to come up and have your picture taken with the General, you’re more than welcome. And if the General decides between now and June 5th if he’d like to take part in our Iraq debate with the Democratic presidential candidates, he’s more than welcome.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you very much Bob. Thank you. Bob, may I just say again that I’m very pleased to be here at the School of Advanced International Studies. I’m a great admirer of Secretary Nitze and I know members of his family and this school has done so much to advance the study and understanding of national security affairs in the world. I thank you for the opportunity to be here with you today and I encourage each and every one of you to take your ideas and get into this great debate and help us to shape it the right way to help this country and the world. Thank you.