What has General Clark said recently...?
cnn.com
CNN CrossFire Transcript / Aired August 22, 2003 - 16:30 ET
<<...CLARK: Well, I think this country works best when the ideas that drive it are centered.
The majority of this people in this country really aren't affiliated with parties. They're independent. They look at the candidates. They assess the issues at the time. And they don't want radical policies on either side. What they're looking for is a vision. And that's what this country needs as a way of getting forward. We lost our vision in the Cold War when the Cold War ended. We lost the idea of deterrence and the containment of the Soviet Union.
And we never managed to reconstruct it. Instead, foreign policy became a partisan playground during the 1990s. And then, with the war on terror, suddenly, we found ourselves engaged. America woke up. And the outside world mattered, but we didn't have a framework for relating to it. And now we're in Iraq, of course.
(CROSSTALK)
CLARK: And so we need a vision to pull us together. It should be a vision that's centered...>>
<<...Look, we went into Iraq under false pretenses. We've got the Army tied up there. We can't reinforce those forces very well because we don't have enough forces to really roll it over. We've got an emerging nuclear problem in North Korea that hasn't been dealt with. Al Qaeda is apparently seeping in and building its structures inside Iraq, the very thing we supposedly went to war to prevent. And we've never found the weapons of mass destruction.
There apparently was no imminent nuclear threat. And yet we're now going to have to use our credibility to muster support to go after Iran and prevent them Iran from developing nuclear weapons. So I think there's some enormous challenges in foreign affairs...>>
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And from a June 25th CrossFire Interview with Wesley Clark
cnn.com
<<...BEGALA: Well, let me ask you about one of the issues. Whether it's you or Mr. Bush or one of the Democrats running, the next president is not only commander in chief, he is the occupier of Iraq. And we have already lost 51 men since the day President Bush landed on that aircraft carrier. What should we do, rather than complain about how we got into the war, what should the next president do about that occupation? Should we stay or should we go?
CLARK: Well, I think we've got to try to do as much as we can to make that a success. We can debate whether we should have been there or not, but the fact is, we are there. And if we make it a success, there will be some benefits that come from it. To make it a success, the Iraqi people have to want us there. We have to legitimate our presence. International organizations in there supporting us. I believe we need a greater role from the United Nations, at least in terms of overall legitimacy, and we need to get the Iraqi political process moving at the greatest possible speed...>>
<<...BEGALA: Well, let me ask you about the current president again, and then come back to analyzing his performance in office. Tucker and I, a minute ago, had a heated argument about this analyst from the State Department, Christian Westermann , who says he was pressured. The White House says, well, maybe it was only about Cuba. There is another analyst, Greg Tielman (ph), another State Department Intelligence analyst. He told "Newsweek" magazine that there was shock and anger over how intelligence was being misused by the Bush administration. Are you concerned that our president might have manipulated intelligence to mislead the American people?
CLARK: Well, I don't know what the role of the president was. I think that remains to be determined, but I do know this. That when you mix up policy with intelligence, as we have apparently done from this -- there was a predetermination that started back in the 1990s to go after Saddam Hussein. 9/11 provided the opportunity to mobilize public opinion to do that.
And then it was, as the former speechwriter, David Frum says in his book. He says he was told in December. He says, write for the president's State of the Union. Make your strongest case in one or two sentences for why the United States should attack Iraq. And I think when you mix up policy and intelligence, you get bad intelligence for sure, and you may get bad policy, also.
CARLSON: But, fill out that theory a little bit, which I've heard a lot from the Democrats, certainly. What would be the motive, do you think? Why the Bush administration want to sort of mangle or spin intelligence in order to invade Iraq?
CLARK: I don't know if you can -- like I say, I think that the American people deserve a hearing on this. I think it needs to be openly, transparently presented as to what exactly the issues were.
CARLSON: Are you suggesting that's what's happening...
(CROSSTALK)
CLARK: But here is my speculation...
CARLSON: ... on Capitol...
CLARK: According to my speculation on this thing, because I did talk to a lot of people both before and after 9/11. There were a lot of reasons to be concerned about Saddam Hussein. Number one is we always believed he retained some weapons of mass destruction, although I for one never believed they were an immediate threat.
Number two, the Clinton administration's inability to really focus on Iraq and do something about Saddam Hussein provided a partisan opportunity for the next administration to make it a centerpiece of progress. And there was a larger belief that somehow there was a window of opportunity that the United States had a period of maybe 10 or 15 years before China would become too strong where we can use our unchallengeable military muscle and clean up the area.
And there was a thought that the road to Jerusalem ran through Baghdad and maybe if you could just whack Saddam Hussein and take away his support to the Palestinians and the terrorists that are there, then maybe the terrorists wouldn't fight so hard. Then you can go to the Israelis and say, OK, now, make some concessions and let's get some peace. There were a whole lot of things, and I think what sort of emerged is, it was how can we conventionally explain this in a simple way that doesn't get us into geostrategic calculus. And it was fixated on a problem of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction...>>
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MORE OF CLARK'S STATEMENTS ON THE ISSUES
veteransforclark2004.us
Foreign policy
"The United States has an active role to play in the world, especially in preserving and extending our core values around the globe; however, we must still balance our actions and convictions with the ideals and opinions of other nations."
"The United States is a 225-year rolling revolution. ... We are the embodiment of the Enlightenment. If we're true to those principles, then it's a foreign policy of generosity, humility, engagement, and of course force where it is needed. But as a last resort."
"What I learned during my time in Europe was that the strongest force in the world is an idea whose time has come. In Europe, and in much of the rest of the world, freedom, human rights, international law, and the opportunity to 'be all you can be' are those ideas today. For the most part, these are our own American values. And they are ideas whose formulation and dissemination owe much to American example and leadership in the past. Because we live and extol these values, the United States enjoys a solid ethical basis for its power, a supportive community of like-minded nations and international institutions, and a moral force that extends our influence. Preserving these ideas and projecting our values should therefore be ranked among the most important American interests."
"We must still recognize and respect the strong convictions of others, especially when they disagree with us. No doubt, our ideas will appear challenging or even dangerous to some. We have to balance our pride in our heritage with humility in our rhetoric. Living up to our values will cost resources that could always be used elsewhere. We can't do everything. But doing what we can will likely mean that we occasionally send our men and women abroad, into ambiguous, dangerous situations. But these are the burdens we must carry, if we expect to maintain the benefits we currently enjoy. They provide hope for others, and a purpose beyond our own prosperity. However, to carry out our responsibilities around the world, strong multilateral relationships are critical; the United States cannot always 'go it alone'."
"Shared risks, shared burdens, shared benefits -- it's not only a good motto for NATO, it's also a good prescription for America's role in the world."
"Achieving success will be easier the more that American actions can be drawn from the legitimacy of the United Nations and American direction ratified by other states and multinational authorities."
"The United States has the opportunity to use the power of the international institutions it established to triumph over terrorists who threaten not just the United States, but the world. What a tragedy it will be if we walk away from our own efforts, and from 60 years of post-World War II experience, to tackle the problem of terror without using fully the instruments of international law and persuasion that we ourselves created."
"[With regards to Iraq,] rather than presenting the international community with a problem and asking its assistance in helping to resolve it, the United States government effectively presented the solution and asked for countries to agree with its views."
"This is an administration which really hasn't respected our allies. If you really want allies, you've got to listen to their opinions, you've got to take them seriously, you've got to work with their issues."...>>
Homeland Security
"Working productively with America's allies is critical to winning the war against terrorism."
"Terrorism is a multilateral problem. You cannot defeat it in one nation. You need international police work, teamwork, international harmonization of laws against terror, a whole series of things. You act unilaterally; you lose the commitment of your allies to make it work. That's the one thing that will kill you in the war on terrorism."
"Much of the terrorist network draws support and resources from within countries friendly or allied with us. And here there are very real limitations to the use of American military force. What we really need are closer alignments... Through greater legal, judicial, and police harmonization, we need to make the international environment more seamless for us than it is for the international terrorists we seek."
"For better or worse, however, the war against terror appears to be under exclusive American control. And every twinge of American decision-making that smacks others as U.S. unilateralism undercuts our friends abroad, the very people who must align their laws and procedures with our own if we are to win."
The United States needs to keep homeland security and the war against terrorism at the top of our list of national priorities; we can't be distracted by other entanglements, including Iraq, that might divert our attention."
"The issue to me has been that we have known for a long time that Osama bin Laden is a problem. The difficulty was always to mobilize the American people and bring enough comprehensive pressure to bear to do something against terrorism. Well, 9-11 did that. But the administration has squandered a lot of the international goodwill that came our way after the attacks and is now squandering our domestic energy by forcing us into Iraq."
"The Bush administration's mistake in Iraq, says Clark, is one of priorities. "They picked war over law. They picked a unilateralist approach over a multilateral approach. They picked conventional forces over special-operations forces. And they picked Saddam Hussein as a target over Osama bin Laden." |
