General Wesley Clark on "McIntyre in the Morning" on KABC-AM

October 26, 2007
transcript by Reg NYC

Doug McIntyre: A well known American who's dedicated his life to public service. He was in the United States Army for 34 years, rose to the rank of Four-Star General as NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and also served in Vietnam, ran for President of the United States and is a published author. His new book A Time To Lead: For Duty, Honor, and Country is in the stores. It's a pleasure to welcome back to the show General Wesley Clark. Good morning General Clark. How are you?

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

Doug McIntyre: Thanks for being with us. Appreciate it. This is an interesting memoir, because while it tells your life story, it really is as much about the future as it is about the past.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: And I wanted to talk about the future from the perspective of who we are as Americans. So, I wanted to talk about as series of incidents in my life that I think help illustrate who we are as Americans, and to me that's the real challenge: Who are we as a nation? How can we proceed to make our way most successfully in the world.

Doug McIntyre: Well, General Clark, from your perspective, I know it's a big question - it's a whole book - but who are we as Americans?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think we're right now poised between two extremes. On the one hand, there are those who say that we have much to protect. We need to be afraid, that the outside world is out to get us. And on the other hand there's the idea that we're a confident nation. We're capable of dealing with anything that the world could throw at us. Our values are sound. We absorb other nations and their ideas. We learn and grow based on our diversity. I think that's who we are, and that's what my book represents. I'm the grandson of, of immigrants from Russia. I grew up in the segregated South. We took aboard the ideas of racial equality and harmony. I went through the military. I watched people in the military who didn't want to be there adapt and cope. They saved my life, a bunch of draftees in Vietnam who didn't want to be there. And that's why America is so powerful, not because of our military, but because of our people and our ideas and our commitment to human beings and, and, and human nature and helping each and every person be all he or she can be. That's who we are as a nation. So, I wanted to contribute to that dialog.

Doug McIntyre: We're talking with General Wesley Clark, whose book A Time To Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country is in the stores. Let me ask you, obviously the big controversy of our time really is the Iraq war and what's going to happen. We have now had virtually all of the major Democratic candidates say that they c- they won't support an immediate pullout of troops from Iraq because of the consequences of doing that. From your perspective as both a military man and someone who had his eye on the prize of the Presidency, what do you think America's policy should be vis-a-vis Iraq?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think we're going to have to, to succeed in Iraq, we're going to have to talk to Iraq's neighbors, and we seem under the Bush administration to scrupulously avoid doing that. We've withdrawn our ambassador to Syria. We won't talk without preconditions to Iran, and as a result, Iran and Syria are still meddling in Iraq. That having been said, a lot of killing's already gone on in Iraq. The level of violence is down, and if we can get the level of violence down and reduce the expenses of keeping our soldiers over there and not lose troops over there, then we might be there for as long as, as necessary without the kind of outcry and problem that have marked the five years since we invaded in the first place. I said from the outset this was an unnecessary war. It was a war we didn't have to fight, but you know where we are now is: We're there. We're engaged. We've taken horrific losses. It's a terrible strategy on the part of George Bush and his administration, but Democrats are going to have to make the best of where we start from. We can't pick our starting point, and I think whoever becomes the President in 2009's going to be faced with a series of crises in the region that requires some- a, a steady hand and some, some pragmatic picking of the way ahead. I don't think it can be guided by simply desire to get back at George Bush or, or, or try to erase the mistake of 2003. That mistake's been made.

Doug McIntyre: Well, again, yeah, if I could go back in time, I, I certainly wish we hadn't gone, but since we have gone, I think don't we have a moral obligation to leave something better in its place?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think we have to think more in terms of what are our interests and how can we best achieve those interests, and certainly following through on our duty is one aspect of our interest. But you know there are hundreds of, there are millions of people in the world who are depending, in that part of the world, depending on the United States. They're depending on our sense of stability, our ability to maintain order, our ability check aggression by other parties. And so, we've got interests there. We, we, we are taking oil and natural gas from that part of the world, and that is-

Doug McIntyre: Uh-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -an important interest. It's part of world economic stability and directly tied to American jobs and welfare. So, we've got to be very careful how we proceed.

Doug McIntyre: General Clark is our guest, General Wesley Clark. His book A Time To Lead i-is just out, and it's a very interesting read. Le- General, I, I know we don't have a lot of time. I always wanted to ask you this question, because the more Iraq drags on and our commitment there becomes a longer commitment. We still have troops in Bosnia, and the peace is kept there by a coalition of troops who, who, you know, a lot of people believe that if we withdrew those troops, the fighting would resume again. And the question is: How do we get Syria and Iran to play ball with us in Iraq when we couldn't get our European allies to police the Bosnian situation where we had almost no national interest involved in that?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, first, we did have a lot of national interest involved in it, because the security and stability of Europe is deeply part of America's vital interests. We're connected to Europe with trade, with legislation, through our NATO commitments and-

Doug McIntyre: Yeah, well-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: -in a dozen different ways. So, the idea that we didn't have any business in the Balkans is simply, i-i-it's a Republican Party truism. It's what Jim Baker said in 1991, and he was proven wrong. Secondly, our European allies did belly up to the bar. The majority of the troops that went in were European. The majority of the troops that have always been there are European, and right now there are no U.S. troops in Bosnia. That is purely a European mission. In Kosova, we're facing a crisis with Russia coming up. We've still got a couple thousand American troops there on the ground, but from the outset of that, 90%, 75% to 90% of the troops have been European, not American. And America has led without having to have the majority of the commitment, but again that was something we engineered during the Clinton administration. It worked well, but it takes political and diplomatic follow-through to resolve this. So, I think that if you apply some of the techniques that I have seen firsthand, that I describe in the book, that there is hope that we can work our way out of the problem in the Middle East and work our way out successfully.

Doug McIntyre: The book is called A Time To Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. I wish you the best of luck with it, General. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us this morning. Appreciate it.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thanks very much, Mike. Great to be with you.

Doug McIntyre: Okay, that's Wesley Clark.