Really interesting review, FL! Thanks....Hopefully, Franks won't have ALL those problems to deal with this time. Wonder how Clark put up with the entire situation???
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The orthodox view among professional officers is that U.S. military leaders failed in Vietnam by their supine complicity: the Joint Chiefs of Staff went along with irresponsible strategic decisions made by the civilian leadership, thereby supporting a limited intervention that was bound to fail. Some top officers in Washington sought to avoid repeating this mistake in Kosovo by dragging their feet to prevent large-scale involvement. Yet by doing so, ironically, they ended up supporting the use of indecisive force. To Clark, some of his colleagues "seemed determined to resist their obligation to win." To his dismay, they also resisted making the maximum effort in the Balkans for fear of diminishing the readiness of forces for Iraq or Korea: "The Chiefs were seriously considering withholding forces to be ready for two ... hypothetical major theaters of war elsewhere, even if it caused the United States and NATO to lose the actual war in Europe."
Beginning with his assumption of command for the occupation of Bosnia, Clark became persona non grata in Washington. At one point he even heard that General Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was saying that Clark "had one foot on a banana peel and one foot in the grave." Several days into the air war, Clark reflected ruefully on how odd it was that he had never been invited into strategy discussions with either the secretary of defense or the president. As he plaintively recalls, throughout the war "I always flashed back to the television footage of General Schwarzkopf going with General Powell to Camp David to brief President George Bush on the Persian Gulf [War]."
Cohen and Shelton even tried to prevent NATO's supreme commander from attending the NATO summit held in Washington during the war. Clark went anyway, and he reports a poignant scene that took place at a reception hosted by the American leadership. As he approached a receiving line that included Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Cohen, and Shelton, several of them glanced at him. "'Stay away' was the clear message from the body language. It was jarring."
But once Europeans entered the room, Clark was soon surrounded by a respectful group of ministers and heads of state, "making me almost the center of a second receiving line." If not a prophet, Clark was a commander without honor in his own country. Indeed, after victory the supranational commander received the ultimate snub from his national superiors -- they booted him from office several months early to make room for a top Washington player, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Ralston.
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