General Wesley Clark on Air Talk (KPCC) with Larry Mantle

November 21, 2007
Transcription by Melange

Larry Mantle: This is Air Talk. I'm Larry Mantle. Great to be with you. We are joined by General Wesley Clark, Democratic presidential candidate from four years ago. He was a four-star general who led the NATO forces in Europe during the time of Bill Clinton's administration. He is also frequently in southern California, a Senior Fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA and he also is here frequently on behalf of Senator Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign. And General Clark has also just written his autobiography with Tom Carhart – A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. The book is just out. General Clark, pleasure to have you with us on Air Talk.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you. Great to be with you.

Larry Mantle: First, I'm wondering how you're feeling about this presidential campaign season. Do you have mixed feelings about not being in the race yourself?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Oh sure. I would love to have been in the race. I couldn't connect the dots. You know, last time I had a huge groundswell of support, the Democrats really had no nominee, Howard Dean came along and the mainstream Democrats said "gee, we can't give the party to Howard Dean' and that really opened up the opportunity for me to run. Um, I got in very late, I had no staff, I had no money, everything had to be done all at once and the experts said "don't do Iowa – you can't do it'. Um, I would have been ... my best state to campaign in. I love Iowa and um, so we passed it up and you know the rest is history. Iowa's a very important place to campaign. I think, when you look at political campaigns, Iowa's there and um, particularly when the schedule's all jammed up. The headline, the free media, the buzz of having done well in Iowa is very difficult to overcome if you haven't competed there or done well.

Larry Mantle: Here you are working diligently on behalf of Senator Clinton's candidacy and I'm wondering about you know, all the speculation going on. There are people who believe that if she is elected president that you'll likely be a part of her administration in some capacity. Is this something you've given thought to?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: None.

Larry Mantle: None at all?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No. I'm in the private sector. I'm the Chairman of an investment bank; I'm doing a lot of other work in the private sector. But, I've loved this country and um, I wrote the book because I wanted to talk about America and the only way I knew to talk about it was through my own experiences growing up in the segregated south and fighting in the Vietnam War and running for president. And uh, if I can provide some small measure of continued public service by helping America choose the person who should be its next leader, then so be it. That's what I'm trying to do.

Larry Mantle: If ... if a President Clinton came to you and she asked you to be a part of her administration, would you consider that?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I haven't thought about that question really because that's so ... it's so premature. Um, this is a really tough Democratic race. Um, she's ahead in the polls nationally uh, she's taken a lot of heat from her opponents recently, the campaign's turned ugly and uh, I'm just focused on trying to help her.

Larry Mantle: Well let's talk about your background. You ... referencing your boyhood in Arkansas, tell us about those formative years growing up with a single mother raising you. How important are those childhood experiences in a town that is mixed racially but also groups keeping largely to themselves – how'd that affect you?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well it's ... like everyone growing up, you have a mix of experiences. I mean one thing I learned growing up from my mother is that you've got to stand on your own two feet. And we didn't have anybody there to pull us out and she did it and I've taken that lesson in my own life and worked very hard on my own. She came down from Chicago with $400 left from when my father died and an 8 year old ... 9 year old automobile and she got a job as a secretary. She lied about her age because she was afraid if she was over forty, they wouldn't give her a job in those days in a bank and she supported us. We lived with my grandmother and grandfather – my granddad was a retired sawyer um, he helped operate the saws and run lumbermills and had his eye put out at the age of 70. Um, it was a pretty tough life for my mother and I admired her tremendously and she was my best friend when I was a little kid. I was an only child when I'd come down there. But, I also learned that ... she remarried and I loved my stepfather very much but he was a deeply prejudiced man and uh, you have a feeling in your heart about what's right and wrong. I didn't support segregation. When they said there were white-only drinking fountains, and white-only areas on the buses and things like that, as a six or seven year old, you accept it – you don't know any better, but when it's brought to your attention, you realize in your heart. I mean little kids, they know right from wrong. It's wrong not to respect other people and treat them equally and fairly.

Larry Mantle: You uh, ended up academically doing well. You became a Rhodes Scholar. You had a variety of different choices available for you to pursue – what led you into your career in the military?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I ... let's be clear – I mean, I sought that career. And when I was a junior in high school, I thought I was going to be an aeronautical engineer and maybe go to the Air Force Academy because I was interested in aviation and space and like a lot of kids, you have dreams about being an astronaut. Then, turned out I was near-sighted and in those days, there was no Lasik surgery and you didn't go to the Air Force Academy or the Naval Academy if you had bad eyes so I wasn't going to fly. And then I heard this West Point Cadet speak when I was at the American Legion Boys' State and uh, it was June of 1961, I was ... just finished my junior year in high school and I'd already been notified I was going to win a National Merit Scholarship and I was going to get a National Honor Society scholarship and I had really good grades and all that and I was doing well in school and I was on the swimming team ... I just wanted leadership. And when that young man spoke about West Point and what it stood for and what you could do for the country if you were a leader in the United States Army, it just ... snap, it just all clicked.

Larry Mantle: You knew right away?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I walked right out of there; I told my friends who were going to go on to Harvard and MIT and all that stuff and we were all big math, scientists and everything – I said "this is it, I'm going to West Point.'

Larry Mantle: How then did going into West Point, going into the military, how did the Vietnam years influence you?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I was a true believer. I mean um you know, I ... I went to ... I grew up in Arkansas during the 1950s, most of my friends' fathers had served in the military during World War II and Arkansas' a very patriotic place and we'd seen out country under threat and so um, I accepted the analysis that the Vietnam conflict was necessary as a way of containing Communism. Looking back on it forty years later, I think I was right. I think it was about containing Communism and um, while there were a lot of other overtones about Vietnam, I'm proud of the men and women who served there. I'm not proud of the leadership. I think there were a lot of mistakes made at the top and obviously at the end it was a fiasco, a disaster and those poor people hanging on the skids of the US helicopters in 1975 as we pulled out had a lot to say about American leadership. It's unfortunate, but for the men and women who fought there, who believed, who were called up by their country ... I was a Company Commander there. I was wounded in action. I think I was the only guy in the Company who actually wanted to be there; <laughter> everybody else ... I think almost everybody else was drafted and those that didn't, they didn't exactly volunteer to go there. I wanted to be there. I wanted to serve my country. I wanted to do this job and um, I believed in the United States Army – that's why I stayed with it. I think a nation like the United States needs a strong defense but the military's not the be all and end all, as I talk about in the book and as I talk about in my career, of course I mean, we're under political authority. The issue is: can the United States raise its head from the conflict in Iraq and see what other challenges are out there and how much people believe in us, our institutions, our values? I was in China over the weekend and the Chinese – they want American leadership. They said "can't you help us on global warming?' Can't we do something? I said "why don't the presidents meet together.' Of course there were chuckles from some of the Republican people there because they said, "President Bush – global warming? I mean c'mon.' And, it's the fact that America's not living up to its leadership responsibilities in the world. That's why I wrote this book and that's why I'm supporting Hillary. It's why I ran for office – it's about leadership.

Larry Mantle: A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country is the title of General Wesley Clark's new book, his autobiography. If you'd like to talk with General Clark, we're at 866-893-KPCC, 866-893-5732. As you were this young commander serving in Vietnam and as you looked at your superiors all the way up to the generals, was it clear to you what you would have done differently or what you would do in your future career differently?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Not at the time.

Larry Mantle: Or were you just sort of overwhelmed by all the gray areas and the difficulty of the decisions that they were making?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You can't, at the time, think five levels up and you ... nobody's ... I don't think anybody's that smart. There may be people who think they are, but they don't know. You look up at the people who've been there before and these were men who'd fought in the Korean War, some of them had fought in World War II – I admired them tremendously. I saw good men, honest men who cared about the troops, who were conscientious in doing the duty, who looked after the Vietnamese and tried to look after our Vietnamese allies there. They were doing everything right, but as I got out of the war and went back to teach at West Point and studied at the Army Command and Staff College, I took a year and I said, I'm going to really think this thing through. It takes a year. I read all the books. I went back, I read all the newspaper articles – I really put it into perspective and it's clear that the national leadership really let us down. Stumbled into a war, didn't have a plan to win. The military wasn't strong enough ... the top leadership wasn't strong enough to say, "look, now you either have to win or don't do this.' Public opinion finally got there in 1968 after Tet. Remember, most of the American public supported the war until 1968. After that, people said "well if they're not going to try and win, let's just pull out.' And I think that's the kind of common sense that comes out of democracies. It's the same feeling that we have in Iraq today – we know it's not going well. We don't want to pull out and lose, we say "fix the problem – get it done.' And I think that's where most of the American people are. They have a lot of common sense and if you can't fix it, then you leave.

Larry Mantle: Wesley Clark, I want to talk with you about hard versus soft power. You were getting up to that point, you were just talking about it, that there is a time for tough action and for tough speech and other times to infer it without taking direct action. It might be good briefly to talk about the conversation that you had one-on-one with Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader, as you were heading up NATO's forces – this over the action in Kosovo.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I did actually have to call him aside and talk to him one-on-one. I said, "Mr. President, if you don't comply with the UN instructions, NATO's going to tell me to bomb you and I'm going to bomb you.' And I did tell him that. I looked him right in the eye and of course he tried to slough it off and I basically ... I used the threat to be able to generate some minimal level of cooperation from his generals. But, threats don't work unless other accompanying factors provide the alternative. In other words, you can use a threat, but you've got to have a way to then take it and spin it. And the diplomacy, after we had used the threat, the diplomacy just couldn't keep up. There were too many challenges that happened too fast, the US was too distracted – we were at the same time, planning what to do with Saddam Hussein – this was 1998 now, and I was warning Madeleine Albright. I said, "Madeleine, we're going to have a war in the Balkans before we have a war with Saddam Hussein' and she told me, "I wish you'd tell your friends in the Pentagon that.' We didn't have a unified government position on dealing – maybe we could have headed off that war with Slobodan Milosevic but as it was, he spend three months, disregarded the threat, we fought a 78-day air campaign – a war, threatened to invade on the ground and broke his will and saved a million and a half Albanians without losing a single American life in combat.

Larry Mantle: General Wesley Clark, author of A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. He joins us on Air Talk. We'll take your calls at 866-893-KPCC. We're with General Wesley Clark, author of A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. Let's talk with Stewart in West Los Angeles, welcome to Air Talk.

Stewart: Thank you very much. General Clark, thank you for your service to the country.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thanks, sir.

Stewart: Um, I'd like to ask you, what do you think of President Bush saying we should support General Petraeus when General Petraeus is not the one who makes policy towards Iraq?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I know, it's absurd. It's Bush hiding behind the president ... sorry, behind Petraeus and uh, it's a game. But, you know there's a lot of effort out there in the NeoCon movement to promote General Petraeus as a hero. It's all about preserving the NeoCon vision of and justifying their action to invade Iraq. Bush is playing politics – he's hiding behind the generals and the NeoCons are playing politics – they're hiding behind the generals. And the truth is the NeoCon policy has been a disaster.

Larry Mantle: What do you think, though, of Petraeus and the Guide to Counterinsurgency that he co-authored and this strategy for sort of winning hearts and minds first and foremost, protecting civilians as the first thing to counter an insurgency – what do you think of

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well first of all, there's nothing in that manual that we didn't already know. I mean that's the whole ... we went through all that in the 1960s and 50s, learning about what was going on in insurgency. There's a lot in it that's not directly applicable to the insurgency in Iraq and so there's been a whole cult of personality built up here that I think a lot of people are a little bit uncomfortable with. I happen to like General Petraeus. I think he's a fine officer. I think he's worked very hard. He's in a difficult position and I fully support our troops. I want them to succeed over there, but the reason they haven't succeeded has not been necessarily because of the generals, it's been because of the President. He hasn't done his duty in terms of talking and leading both the US government and doing the diplomacy with the other governments in the region. We're just now filling up our embassy and providing the kind of civilian support the military needs out there after four and a half years and we're just now having our first dialogue with Iran. It's way too late and too little.

Larry Mantle: In your book, A Time to Lead, you take on this issue of sort of the hard versus soft power and so, what in your view is the ideal? Let's take the example of Iraq – how does the US exercise both in an ideal sense?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well you don't have to exercise both. I mean, the ideal is don't use force. When you use force, you kill people and a lot of the people you kill are not bad guys, they're ... they're victims. It's an accident ... it's collateral damage as they call it and these are human beings and lives that you're wrecking. Don't use force if there's any other alternative. Period. That simple. It's not neat, it's not clean, it's not an ideal solution. It's not like "gee, how can we clear away all this palabra and get into the hard stuff that's really neat dropping those bombs and stuff.' That's ridiculous. People who've done this understand, war is the last, last, last resort. And if George Bush didn't understand it before he started the war in Iraq, I'll bet he does now.

Larry Mantle: Does the United States have the kind of military that's properly equipped and staffed to be able to fight the kinds of wars that we're likely to fight in the future?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Yes. But the military always has to be tuned for the particular circumstance. There are as many different wars as there are circumstances and so you've got to have balanced forces. You've got to have forces that can communicate and use space. You've got to have long-range air power. You've got to have naval forces and you've got to have forces on the ground. It just so happens that we don't have enough ground forces to have done this war the right way, but then on the other hand, this was a war we didn't need to fight and if the military commanders at the time had spoken up forcefully, maybe they would have made that clear to the civilian leadership.

Larry Mantle: Why didn't they, in your view?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I don't know. I don't know.

Larry Mantle: They agreed with your assessment that you're speaking of now?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: The plan was ... Tony Zinni's plan was for 500,000 troops – that was left over from Swartzkopf. It had been looked at a couple of times uh, when Franks started down that course, he had several hundred thousand troops, but for some reason, General Franks just couldn't seem to maintain the requirement for the troops in the face of continued interrogation by the Secretary of Defense and eventually I guess they all bought off on it.

Larry Mantle: Jameson in Huntington Beach wants to ask, with a number of Democratic candidates for president who are in favor of pulling out of Iraq sooner rather than later, why you support Senator Clinton with her more go-slow policy on Iraq.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well you now, people will say ... people say a lot of different things in election contests. Anybody who gets into office and gets the briefings and understands what's going on over there is going to think twice before just jerking the troops out because you don't want to pull the plug on what's going on over there until you know what's going to happen afterwards. That's going to take a diplomatic mission into the region, it's going to take a lot of hard consultation. I'm in favor of starting the withdrawal now, I'm just not in favor of a hard and fast timeline to say that we've got all of our troops out. I'm in favor of saying we're not going to have any bases there permanently but there's an art to this and you've got to juggle the diplomacy with the troop deployments with the jiggering back and forth with the leaders in the region before you settle on what your withdrawal timelines are. You've got to kind of take it step by step and assess it. That's my experience and I've had 34 years in uniform and I know people running for office might see it differently but um, they haven't been there.

Larry Mantle: Do you think that the United States is headed toward a military action against Iran, bombing sites in Iran?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Probably so. Uh, I don't see the administration undertaking any real diplomatic effort that could head this off and um, the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report basically says Iran's got the 3000 centrifuges, they're a year or so away from having enough material to produce a bomb and someday in the spring some intelligence officer is going to walk into the President and say "Mr. President, you've got 6 weeks to decide – are you going to accept an Iranian nuclear device or are you going to strike?' And uh, he'll have to make that decision. And my objection to this is that this administration has waited for this decision. They have let it come to them instead of working to forestall it. We could have talked to Iran. They've tried two, maybe three times since 2001 to open up a real dialogue with the United States and this administration's turned it down on each occasion.

Larry Mantle: You think Iran ... I mean, what would Iran have to gain by not pursuing a nuclear weapons program? What would the US have to offer in those talks?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Everything. I mean, Iran wants to be accepted as a member of the community of nations, it doesn't need a nuclear weapon for that. What it needs is the respect of the other nations, starting with the respect of the most powerful nation in the world, the United States of America. It won't get that if it pursues a nuclear weapon, but you know, we have to explain that in face-to-face dialogue. It's not the kind of thing you can sort of point your finger at a nation and say it on television and say 'don't do this or you're going to get bombed!' or 'we'll be talking about other options with you.' This is a kind of dialogue that has to take place at various levels between governments, between leaders and it'll take place over a period of months. I just hope it's not too late.

Larry Mantle: General Wesley Clark, thank you very much for being with us on Air Talk this morning. We appreciate it. A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country is the title of his new autobiography, co-written with Tom Carhart. General Clark is also Senior Fellow at UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations.