General Clark with Bob Miller on KPAM-AM 860

October 1, 2007
Transcription by Melange

Bob Miller: 6:07 in the morning at KPAM. This is Bob Miller and welcome to Monday October 1. Welcome to October as well and a wet week coming up as a matter of fact. On the phone with me is General Wesley Clark. New book: A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Courage [sic]. He’s going to be uh, at Powells in Beaverton out on Cedar Hills Boulevard, seven o’clock. General, good morning, how are you?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Good morning. Just fine, thank you.

Bob Miller: Good, and welcome to Oregon, by the way.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Great to be here.

Bob Miller: : I think you’ll like your stay – the weather you’re seeing outside is pretty much our winter.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I kind of like rain. I’m from Arkansas and

Bob Miller: I understand. Uh, your book,A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Courage [sic], what’s it about?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I wanted to talk about America, but the only way I knew how to talk about it was through the America that I’ve seen and loved, so I talk about America – growing up in the segregated south, what it was like to be a Company Commander in Vietnam with an army of draftees, how to rebuild the army after we did…like we did after Vietnam War, and then what America’s like from living abroad - what Americans don’t understand about what others think about them. And how we actually use diplomacy and force to advance our interests and protect freedom in the world. I led Operation Allied Force; I talk about that. You know, we won a war in the late 1990s. Of course, they were Democrats and we didn’t want to call it a war and neither did our allies, but it was a war, we won it and we won it without a single American casualty in combat.

Bob Miller: Let me ask you this – the President’s approval rating is way down, uh, the Congress approval rating is way down. I’ve never seen anything like this. Do you think that’s a statement about America’s patriotism or do you just think that you know, I mean…what does that say about America right now?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think it says that America…Americans have a real common sense about them and this is what I tried to convey in the book. There’s a common sense about Americans – they don’t have to know the final details on everything but they get a bottom line pretty quick. The war in Iraq is not going well. Most Americans supported it because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It hasn’t turned out that way – they’re pretty unhappy with the President. He got us into it. They’re pretty unhappy with Congress – they can’t seem to get us out of it.

Bob Miller: What’s your take on General Petraeus? He used to be under your command, I know. And uh, he is the…

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: He worked for me. Yeah, he worked for me for a summer about uh, over twenty years ago. He was a Captain and I was a Colonel. I like him. He’s a smart man, he’s dedicated. You don’t get to be a 4-star general in the army without being really special and he’s a really special guy – he’s calling it like he sees it. Not everybody agrees with him – he doesn’t have all the cards in his hand. He’s not in charge of regional diplomacy, he’s not in charge of relations with Iran, he can’t find the ultimate political solution, he’s an army officer, but he’s doing the best he can with a very difficult job.

Bob Miller: Do you think it’s…pardon me, do you think it’s tough to fight battles, to fight a war under the politically correct world that we live in these days?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think that any time you fight as an officer in the armed forces, you have to understand that it’s the civilians who are really in charge and so it doesn’t matter which party it is in power, it doesn’t matter whether you say political correct or not, it’s just the fact that civilians are in charge. They’re the ones responsible, they set the boundaries for what you can do, what you can have, how much you use…it’s the President of the United States who says we’re not talking to Iran, can’t talk to Syria and therefore he encourages these countries to continue to intervene and interfere inside Iraq to get their own way and that’s what Petraeus is working against.

Bob Miller: Well, I understand and I heard a story the other day about the insurgents surrounded themselves with children. Um, I mean, how do you fight a battle like that?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, the best way to fight it is to not to have to fight it at all. So, you have to understand that when we went into Iraq, we actually went in there under, pretty much a misunderstanding. And the insurgents that we’re fighting are the – they’re the enemy of Iran. We’re actually doing a lot of Iran’s work for them because we’re getting rid of the old Baathists who fought and the Baathists were who brought war against Iran. So the Iranians want us to go after the Baathists. The Baathists will do anything to win and then the Iranians will come back behind, clean up the battlefield, the Shia with them…so we’re in pretty much a no-win situation. We could lose, but we can’t quite win it. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s the dilemma that we’re in. I think that’s why the approval rating’s of the President and Congress so low; Americans sense this. They sense that you could lose a lot worse than we’re losing but they don’t see anybody winning it.

Bob Miller: : General Wesley Clark with us this morning. His new book: A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Courage [sic].

Cohost: What is your sense of what the Bush administration is going to do about Iran? Bill Richardson yesterday was on CBS Face the Nation and said it would be unwise for the administration to take military action against Iran before it gets out of Iraq and he says it sounds like the administration is ramping up. Do you think it is?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I think it’s the Iranians actually who are doing this. The Iranians have determined that this is their sort of go-for-broke moment in history. They’re pushing to gain control over the region. They’ve got a big win on their side in Iraq. Working underneath the veneer of American forces, they’re building their power base in southern Iraq and squeezing Israel through Hamas and trying to go for a nuclear weapon and it’s really up to Iran how far and how fast they push it but every American administration has said the Iranians can’t have a nuclear weapon. So uh, Democrats have said it, Republicans have said it and my concern is, if you really want to stop the Iranians, you have to stop them the way I stopped Slobodan Milosevic – you have to get to know them, you have to figure out what buttons to push and to do that, you’ve got to talk to them. You can’t do it by remote control and you can’t do it by outsourcing diplomacy to allies. You have to talk directly to Iran. You may not like them, but you talk to them.

Bob Miller: You know, you mentioned a moment ago General, that Americans have common sense and I think you’re right. You’re one of the first people that have actually run for political office that I’ve heard say that. Um, and I think Americans do have common sense – I’m not sure the people that lead this country do, many times. Do you…do you think there is a chance that Congress or the people that run this country will ever get back in touch with the people that live here? Because it seems to a lot of us that Washington DC doesn’t see the world the way we do.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well it’s hard when you’re…sometimes when you’re so deep in the forest, you can’t see it, all you see is the tree right in front of you.

Bob Miller: There you go.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think a lot of people in Washington, they just see the trees and they don’t see the forest. Look, we’ve got it pretty good in America right now. I mean, there are people who would like to make more money, there are people who don’t have healthcare, but it’s pretty good and the American people know it’s pretty good – they also know that something’s really wrong abroad and they can’t quite figure out what it is and our political leaders from both parties have to figure out how to deal with this. That it’s…for America, it’s a turning point in American history that we’re at right now. We were the…we were the beacon of freedom. We have a strategy that everybody supported during the Cold War, now I talk about this in the book, and after the Cold War, we wandered around here and suddenly we’ve gotten ourselves involved in these terrible conflict in the Middle East, with another conflict looming in Iran and China’s getting larger and more powerful and taking jobs from America. People are concerned and they’re looking for some leadership to help us see the big picture. That’s what Americans are looking for – what’s the big picture. Step back from the trees, look at the forest.

Bob Miller: You know, this is the kind of book that people write when they’re running for president. Um, we’re thirteen months out from the election – are you thinking again?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I’m not running. I’ve endorsed Hillary Clinton. I think she’s the logical front-runner in terms of experience, capability uh, her character, everything about Hillary Clinton, she’s the best-qualified person in the race. And uh, I wrote this book because I want to help America make the right choices in this critical period of time. I didn’t meet my preconditions for running. I was really thrilled to run in 2003, I talk about it in the book and I’m grateful I had so many Oregonians who supported me in that race and uh, I hope that now that we’ll get together and put the right people in office in America.

Bob Miller: Alright.

Cohost: If she asks you to be Vice President, would you say yes?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You know, that’s such a premature question, I haven’t even thought about it.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I’m really an investment banker and a speaker right now. That’s another, a whole different thing and…but I do think that it’s not too early for Americans to be thinking about who the next president should be, regardless of whether your deeply enmeshed in party politics or not.

Bob Miller: Well…one of the things we were discussing on the program the other day is, a lot of people are saying that there’s this fatigue in this country right now. They’re tired of Bushes and they’re tired of Clintons – it’s time to get somebody else in there. Let’s let another family run the place for a while.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I know, I hear that thinking, but when you get right down to it and you sort of brush past that, and I hope people will, you have to pick someone for president who’s got the experience and the smarts and the diligence to do the job. One of the key requirements to be president is a whole lot of information comes at you and you have to be able to do the work and you really have to think it through because if you just say ‘well this is my principles A, B, C – if it doesn’t fall in block A or block B it goes in the circular file’ or whatever. That’s not real decision-making because the problems that come to the President of the United States are problems that are incredibly complex and multi-faceted. They have to be worked through and they’re usually very close judgment calls. And so where you get in trouble is when people don’t do their homework. And this is one of the things I admired very much about Bill Clinton – he did his homework and one of the things…one of the reasons I felt very good about endorsing Hillary Clinton is because she’s very smart and she works very hard. She doesn’t have to be President of the United States – she’s doing it because she loves this country – she’s got plenty of other things she could do with her life, it’s a terribly grueling job, it’s a tough thing to run, but it’s even tougher when you get in there. And so you have to be careful – the person you elect really wants the job. I’ll tell you…Bill Clinton told me when I was over at the White House with the other generals, he had about a year to go in office and he said, ‘you know, I’ve only got a year’ he said ‘I don’t even want to sleep at night, I’ve got so many things to do, so many different things I could effect’ and that’s the kind of attitude a president has to have. Not ‘gee, I can hardly wait to go to bed’ or ‘I can’t wait to get out of this job so I can make some real money.’ But, it’s the public trust. You’ve got to put someone in office who can uphold the public trust to give it 100% of their effort, 100% of the time and it’s not about family, it’s about capabilities.

Bob Miller: Alright, we understand. Thank you so much for being on the program this morning.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thanks very much, it’s good to be with you.

Bob Miller: Alright, General Wesley Clark. The book is A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Courage [sic]. He’s going to be at Powells tonight in Beaverton, Southwest Cedar Hills Boulevard, seven o’clock.