General Wesley Clark on The Ed Schultz Show

September 17, 2007
transcript by Reg NYC

Ed Schultz: The name of the book, A Time to Lead: For Duty Honor And Country, Wesley K. Clark, the General, the author and right here on The Ed Schultz Show. General, always a pleasure and great to have you back with us.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you. It's nice to be with you, Ed.

Ed Schultz: General, I want to you about, first of all, about this book, it, it, it basically goes through, you know, how you view, how America's really desperate for leadership right now, that, that we're void at the top. Is that, is that where we're at?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, that's true. I've wanted to write a book about America, and I think the next election, maybe one after that, it's going to be about who we are as a people: Are we bitterly partisan divided? Are we a nation of bullies that throws our muscle around in the world? Do we work with others? How do, how- who are we as Americans? And so, I wanted to, to write about it the only way I knew how really was to talk about the America I've seen growing up in the segregated South, being in the Armed Forces, going from Army base to Army base, working with ordinary Americans and seeing how America's viewed abroad.

Ed Schultz: Has all this partisanship that has taken place and unfolded probably over the last eight, ten years effected the military in this country in your opinion?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Probably has. I think it's sharpened the partisan divisions that exist in any group of people, and it's hard to believe the military's immune from that.

Ed Schultz: You talk in the book about how you're, you're, you've got a lot of dismay with the Bush administration. Their determination to invade Iraq without good reason primed you to, to seek the Presidency. Is that right? I mean, just the-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: That is true.

Ed Schultz: A-and explain that a little bit.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Because I could see a strategic disaster in the making. I could see people not understanding the consequences. And I spoke out, and then people rallied around me. I had 70 or 80,000 people on the internet screaming for me to get in, and I had Democratic Party establishment people calling me after Howard Dean had begun to pick up steam, and it was clear that, at least in, in July of 19- or July of 2003, that John Kerry wasn't going to be the frontrunner any longer. They called me and asked me to get in, and after deliberating and delaying and worrying about it for a while, I did.

Ed Schultz: Would you ever consider political life again?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Sure, I'd consider it, but I, I couldn't run for the Presidency. I couldn't get my preconditions met this time. I thought about it a lot. I certainly was motivated, but I just couldn't meet my own preconditions.

Ed Schultz: And over the weekend, you endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton. Why did you do that?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I thinks she's going- she'll be a terrific President. I think she's the greatest talent in the race. She is brilliant. She is hard working. She's incredibly motivated. She's got good judgement, and boy does she have experience. She's been there. She's been the, well you know Ed, she's been the, the victim of hundreds of millions of dollars of Republican savagery in terms of the political process, and she's come through it as a winner. I think she's terrific. And I think the next President's going to need that kind of abilities to survive, because from the very outset there are going to be crises that the next President has to deal with.

Ed Schultz: That word 'crises' strikes my next question. What kind of demeanor do you think Hillary Clinton would have in a crisis?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think she'll be calm and resolute. She'll study the alternatives, weigh them carefully, make a decision and stick with it.

Ed Schultz: She's come out with a healthcare plan. Do you know much about it?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Haven't had a chance to read it. Saw it today. It's- the headlines make sense to me.

Ed Schultz: Would you, would you consider a, a spot on her cabinet if she were to win.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You know-

Ed Schultz: Let me, l-let me-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -in principle-

Ed Schultz: Let me, let me-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I'd like to serve in public life again-

Ed Schultz: Yup.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -either elective or appointive, but I haven't really worked through those things. I'm a businessman now. I'm going to keep my political action committee alive. I want to try to help the right candidates get elected. That's why I endorsed Senator Clinton, and if I can help others, I'm going to help them too - in the Senate, in the Congress and the governorships. And it's part of paying back what I think I owe the country.

Ed Schultz: I tell you, I wanted to tell you that our audience believes you, believes you to be probably one of the most resourceful Americans out there that, and, and your resources need to be tapped into at a much higher level. W-w-we get that general sense from our audience all the time, and I know there's disappointed people that, out there that, that you're not running for President again. I think this endorsement is going help Hillary Clinton an awful lot with your experience, because this military presence is going to continue - ugh - in Iraq. Basically, that's what we found out last week, and I want to get your take on General Petraeus' testimony last week to Foreign Relations and also to the House and, and Senate Armed Services Committee. Was he telling the American people exactly the way it is and the way he sees it, or was he taking orders from the Bush administration in your opinion?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No, I don't think he was taking the orders from the Bush administration. I think he's telling, calling it like it is. But you also have to understand that what you see depends on where you sit, and what he sees as one fact, someone else may see as a different fact. And that's why you have these debates in Congress, and that's why Generals are examined. Look, he's like the quarterback of the football team, and you call him out after the first series of downs in the fourth period. The coach has put him in there and said, 'Kid, I want you to win this, win this game.' The previous quarterbacks haven't succeeded. He's thrown in there, and you call him out after the first series of downs and say, 'Well, are you up to it? You think you can win this thing?' Now, he's not going to say, 'Well, analytically speaking, I think that maybe the other team's too strong. The ball's in the wrong field position, and it's too slippery tonight. And so, coach, I recommend that we forfeit this game, save the remaining seven minutes, and we'll be stronger for it next week.' No quarterback's going to say that, and no General who's been put in a position to command and lead a war is likely to be able to, to see it in such a way that he says, 'I think we ought to pull back.'

Ed Schultz: General, is it possible to see it, the facts on the ground, in such a different light, because w-we have heard so many different conflicting things. I think a lot of Americans, Americans don't know what to believe.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, first of all, set aside your questions about Dave Petraeus' character, who he's working for and all that stuff and recognize that reasonable people disagree on facts. There's no universally accepted truth about the condition of America, much less the condition of Iraq, and, and people will disagree on these things. And I think the situation in Iraq is changing. I think, as I look at it, what's happened is ethnic cleansing's had its, had its effect on Baghdad. As one analyst observed, there's simply fewer people to kill of the wrong ethnic group in those, some of those neighborhoods. And so, maybe there has been some decline in sectarian killing, because there's already a lot of it that's happened. Over the next year or two, I would expect those sectarian dividing lines to harden, and I would expect to see the Sunni forces pushed to the fringes of Iraq, out in the desert areas of Anbar Province and the Shias to consolidate their control over the central part of Iraq and its oil resources. And that's going to be the big challenge, because it's not at that point going to be measured by violence. It's going to be measured by, 'Uh-oh, what is the impact if a Iraq that's largely beholden to Iran is now in charge of the oil resources and the headwaters of the Persian Gulf.

Ed Schultz: And I sense you saying that we can't allow that to happen.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, it would be better if it doesn't happen by force. It'd be better if we had a say about it, but the administration wants to call this just a war, when in reality it's a complicated political/military equation, and you need to enter the equation from the diplomatic side as well as the military side.

Ed Schultz: General Wesley Clark, here on The Ed Schultz Show, has written a book A Time To Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. Now there's a report out there in The London Daily Telegraph that is quoting unnamed sources, but senior officials in the Pentagon and in the intelligence community, that the Bush inner circle has decided that he doesn't want to leave office without first ensuring that Iran is not capable of developing a nuclear weapon, and there's some nervous people around think that Cheney and Condie Rice and Bush are thinking about doing an air strike on Iran. Do, do you think it could come to that, General?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.

Ed Schultz: And what do you think our obligation is a-as Americans to, to, to stop something like that. W-would that be the proper military call? In your, in your opinion.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, look, here's the, here's the problem: For Iran to get a nuclear weapon, it will completely overturn the non-proliferation regime that's been one of the foundations of global security for over 50 years. Many of your listeners may not understand this, but when we entered the non-proliferation regime in the late '60s, we committed to eventual general nuclear disarmament over a period of time, and in return we asked that these non-proliferating, these non-nuclear states would not acquire nuclear weapons. We persuaded a number of states to give up their nuclear acquisition programs, including South Africa, Brazil, South Korea and, and, and maybe a half a dozen others that didn't even start on it, because they recognized they didn't need it. They believed in us. Once Iran gets a nuclear weapon, there'll be a dozen other nuclear powers in short order. So, this is very dangerous. Once those nuclear weapons are out there and more powers have them, it's only a matter of time until some terrorist group gets ahold of them. So, for a matter of global survival we, we want to work against this. Now, the question is: Is it appropriate to threaten the use of force? Well, I think it is. I mean, this is a matter of the most vital national interest. BUT here's the key point: Should force used, be used before all other means are exhausted? Absolutely not. And this administration's refusing to talk with the Iranians directly on these matters. They've outsourced our diplomacy to the Europeans, and that's simply wrong. So, when they come to us and say, 'Diplomacy's failed,' we have to say to them, 'It hasn't been tried yet, ' not American diplomacy.

Ed Schultz: One other question I want to ask you: How could a B-52 fly over America with nukes and nobody know about it?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don't know. It's a shocking, it's a shocking mistake. We've always had strong controls on these weapons. We've had many, many officers continuing inspections, work on procedures. Either our Strategic Air Command's follow-on forces command and control has slipped, or maybe it wasn't such a big mistake.

Ed Schultz: Maybe it was planned?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, some people- I, I don, I don't know that. I- it has to be a mistake. We wouldn't do something as dumb as flying over with these nuclear weapons when they weren't supposed to be there, surely not.

Ed Schultz: General, always a pleasure. A Time To Lead: For Duty, Honor And Country, the author General Wesley Clark here on The Ed Schultz Show. Thanks so much, General.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you, Ed. Bye-bye now.