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General Wesley Clark on KPOJ-AM
October 1, 2007
Transcription by Melange
Carl Wolfson: We’re rolling along now – we’re number two on AM 620 KPOJ Portland’s progressive talk station. I’m Carl Wolfson along with Heidi Tauber. Joining us now General Wesley Clark. General Clark served in the United States Army for 34 years and rose to the rank of 4-star general as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. His new book is called A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. General Clark will be at Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing tonight at 7 o’clock. General Clark, welcome to the show.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you very much. It’s great to be with you.
Carl Wolfson: Great. You know uh, I have to tell you my dad is 90 years old, a World War II veteran uh, went ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day. He retired from active duty in 1963 as a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army. He is a huge fan of yours. I talked to him on the phone yesterday and he asked me to give you a salute on the air and says he’s looking forward to reading your book.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I’m thrilled. I’ve been to Omaha Beach. I have tremendous admiration for everyone who came ashore there. Please give him my best regards and thank him for his service to our country.
Carl Wolfson: I sure will. Uh General, a lot of people certainly know you from your race for the Democratic nomination in 2004 and uh, this book really I’m sure will give people a much broader profile of you. Some of the uh, some of the times in your life that surely shaped you. Um, talk about a little bit, maybe growing up in Arkansas and your experience in Vietnam.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I wanted to talk about America, really. That was the whole point of it and so I uh, I talked about growing up in segregated Arkansas and what it was like when we first implemented the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education and it was the beginning of white rage. It was the beginning of people in the south feeling picked on. It was the opening that later led to Richard Nixon’s southern strategy and has turned the south largely Republican except, oddly enough, for the state of Arkansas where people have remained true to the party that they grew up with.
Carl Wolfson: They have two Democratic senators there – Blanche Lincoln and David [sic] Pryor, I believe.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: And three Democratic Congressman and a Democratic Governor who’s a great guy, Mike Beebe.
Carl Wolfson: Right. And, in Vietnam, you were actually wounded in Vietnam, weren’t you?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I was an Infantry Company Commander and of course I had an army of people that, my company…they didn’t want to be there. I had some guys with Master’s degrees, some high school graduates, some people who hadn’t graduated the tenth grade; they were from all over the country. They had peace symbols on their helmets and uh, and they were pretty much anti-war. And yet they saved my life. When I was the first man shot in the company in this little action, they came running into the firefight, into the beaten zone and laid down a base of fire, beat the enemy back, stood up, when I said stand up, they stood up and they assaulted through that base camp and ran the enemy out and uh, and then I was medi-vac’ed and sent home. But I never forgot that experience because they saved my life and these were just ordinary Americans. It’s the kind of country we are.
Heidi Tauber: General, that’s very interesting that you bring that up in that particular war, very much compared to the occupation currently in Iraq and the comment that soldiers like those in your unit with peace signs on their helmets would be considered “phony soldiers” by one certain talk show host.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Oh, it’s outrageous. It’s outrageous. And uh, everybody knows it and I think that the United States Senate should pass a resolution condemning him for that statement.
Carl Wolfson:: Well hear, hear to that General and…we’ve been in
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Since we have the senate condemning people for what they say about politics.
Carl Wolfson: That’s right and we’ve been pushing. I think Mark Udall in the House is about to bring up a resolution today as well. Uh, speaking of Iraq um, compare it, I guess, to your job as commander of the International Peacekeeping troops in Kosovo. This was something that you guys pulled off absolutely beautifully from the Clinton administration and your command on down. We didn’t lose a single American.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: That’s right. It was the right way to blend diplomacy and force. The thing was that when the Bush administration came in, they didn’t want to listen. They absolutely refused to listen to anything or anybody who had had anything to do with doing it right in the Kosovo campaign. We used the threat of force. We used airpower. We had a complete plan before we started the bombing. We knew what we were going to do. We knew what the political conditions were and we gave him an out once the bombing started. We could have done all of that with Saddam Hussein and we could have had a plan and fixed it up. It still would have been an unnecessary war with Saddam Hussein. In the case of Milosevic, we had ongoing ethnic cleansing. We had a regional destabilization underway. We had two million Albanians that were about to be thrown out of their country so the difference was profound between the two situations. Of course
Carl Wolfson: Right. Right, absolutely. We’re speaking with General Wesley Clark. He’s the author of the bestsellers Waging Modern War and Winning Modern Wars. His newest book is A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. General Clark will be at Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing tonight at 7 o’clock. And General Powell [sic], I remember in 2000 very well…uh General Clark
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well we’ve certainly learned a lot about how to fight. When you’re in there fighting everyday, you get pretty good at it. Um, we’ve worn out a whole lot of equipment, we’ve killed a lot of soldiers, we’ve driven a lot of good soldiers out of the military in the process. So, on balance, the armed forces are exhausted today – the ground forces are. And, I think that uh, President Bush’s charge in 2000 was phony. I think his concern for the troops is phony. I don’t think he really cares about this troops…about his troops, or he would not have encouraged his people to block the Webb bill which would have given our troops adequate time to recover and kept our families together while we were still engaged in Iraq. So uh, you know, I think this is part of the reason his numbers in the polling are down so low. I think people can see through him now.
Carl Wolfson: Absolutely.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: He was a man who said we had…he believed in a humble foreign policy.
Carl Wolfson:: No nation-building.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:: He’s had the most arrogant foreign policy in history. He didn’t believe in nation-building and look what he’s gotten us into. And he…and he’s done it poorly.
Carl Wolfson: Right. And he didn’t want to commit troops without an exit strategy either. You’re absolutely right.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK:: Exactly.
Carl Wolfson: Um, speaking of Iran, the Lieberman-Kyl Sense of the Senate resolution – how do you feel about that?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’m uneasy with that. You know, there’s…Iran is trouble. There’s no doubt about it, but the biggest trouble with Iran has to do with the fact that we won’t talk to it. So, I don’t believe in putting more threats out there until we have more dialogue and we don’t have that dialogue.
Carl Wolfson: Are there any circumstances General, under which President Bush could legally launch an attack on Iran without congressional approval?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: He could launch an attack on Iran if our forces are threatened. Um, he could launch an attack under any circumstances without legal approval. He’d then have to go under the War Powers Resolution and explain it, but this is not going to be a problem for him politically. You have to understand, and…and, and people who…we can’t wait for him to launch the attack to get upset. It’s not the attack that’s worrisome – it’s the fact that he won’t talk to them that’s worrisome. Look, it may be ultimately, that we have to go to war with Iran. It might come to that. The Iranians don’t believe it. They think that we’re bluffing. They think they can get away with producing a nuclear weapon, but when they do, they’ll use it to threaten Israel, they’ll use it to intimidate other countries in the region. It will be the end of nuclear non-proliferation. It will be a much more dangerous world forever, for all of us. And, the chance that they could use it to support terrorists and others around the world is a very, very risky thing. So that’s why both parties have said that they cannot be permitted to have a nuclear weapon. So, the only difference is: which way are we going to prevent them? Democrats believe you should talk to Iran. The Republicans prefer to threaten Iran and then ramp up the case for the use of force. The trouble with it is that not only does it start another war, but no one has any idea how it might end.
Carl Wolfson: Right, and you know, trusting this administration to make the right choices is dicey at best, I would say. Uh, General, thank you for being with us today. I wonder if you’ll…if you’re offered the Vice Presidential slot at the 2008 convention, would you accept it?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well that’s…we’re way out in front on that. But I will tell you this, that I certainly have supported Hillary Clinton and I hope she’ll be our nominee and our president.
Carl Wolfson: Great uh, General Wesley Clark, thank you so much for joining us today.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.
Carl Wolfson: That’s General Wesley Clark and his new book is A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. He’ll be at Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing tonight at 7 o’clock and boy, he speaks his mind, doesn’t he?
Heidi Tauber: Thank you for getting that little slip in toward the end there. That’s what I wanted to ask him too – what his plans were for the next presidential election.
Carl Wolfson: Indeed.
